Dream - 28 (Patreon)

Samazzar could feel Dussok and Takkla’s gazes on his back as the three of them strode toward the feasting pit.  Technically Grimmshold and Chief Grolm called it a pavilion.  Theoretically the pit had a roof made of crude timber with a combination of straw and leaves layered across it in a haphazard and lazy facsimile of thatching, but Sam had seen how little the covering actually did to stop the rain.

Moreover, the goblins hadn’t seemed to figure out that water flowed downward.  After every major rainstorm, Grolm chastised Grimmshold for the roof leaking while the kobolds and a number of lower tier workers formed bucket chains to dredge the knee-deep water out of the hole.

The one time Sam had tried to explain the issue to Grimmshold, that the lowest point in the tribe would turn into a kind of sewer where all of the fluids and runoff collected, the angry shaman had punished him.  The blows from the incensed goblin’s staff hadn’t really hurt, but it had almost been worth the inevitable nausea and agony to watch them pull out a haunch of diseased meat and wave it in his face.

Something came off of the cut green, slimy meat.  It floated through the air, slightly hotter than its surroundings, before it landed on Sam’s face.  Grimmshold had given Samazzar a lecture about how the kobolds were slaves, and they didn’t get to tell the shaman what to do as a fever had rapidly overtaken him.

As soon as the goblin had left, Sam dragged himself to his alchemical equipment, muscles screaming in pain and scales itching.  The next hour or two of his life were some of his most miserable, fighting through whatever affliction Grimmshold had had infected him with in order to brew a number of curatives that took the edge off of the illness.

“Are you sure about this?”  Takkla hissed behind him.  Samazzar turned back, flashing her a bright smile in the dim afternoon light.

“Chief Grolm expects results,” he replied with a shrug.  “The second level of the elixir is mostly complete.  I don’t see anything wrong with announcing that I’ve finished a prototype a little early.  After all, the mortality rate on using elixirs made from the sort of ingredients I have available to me is so high that no one will be surprised if the first couple of test subjects die terribly.”

“That’ll buy me the week or so I need to actually finish it,” Sam continued, tapping the side of his head with a claw.  “The Chief will be upset about the stunt with the reservoir, and this will keep Grolm from getting too angry.  If there are any problems?  Well, I can just blame the inadequate reagents that have been provided to me.  If I was in a proper city, I could have made something effective and safe by now.”

“Well,” he caught himself, chewing on his lip for a second.  “Relatively safe.  Even a master alchemist can’t make a level up elixir that works every time.  There is always some element of risk.”

Dussok shook his need, snorting as he shuffled after Samazzar.

“The goblins are going to kill all of us, you know,”  Dussok said slowly.  “I don’t know what sort of gamble you’re taking here little dragon, but unless the elixir works, we’re all dead before the end of the month.  Chief Grolm has been happy with your success so far, but I’ve seen how they react to failure.  It usually involves us feeding the unfortunate soul to the hounds.”

“Don’t worry about the hounds,” Sam replied, winking at his sibling.  “I added something a little extra to their meat tonight.  We aren’t going to have to worry about them being hungry for a long time.”

Dussok’s hand on Samazzar’s shoulder halted him, spinning him slightly.  The bigger kobold stared at him, muzzle open slightly in horror.

“Little dragon,” he whispered.  “What have you done?  You are free to throw your life away, and mine has little value, but you cannot risk Takkla like this.  I couldn’t bear it if-”

“WHERE IS THE KOBOLD!”  Chief Grolm’s booming voice echoed out of the feast pit.  “Grimmshold, I thought I told you to bring him to the feast at sundown.”

“Dussok,” Samazzar reached up, putting his claw over his sibling’s for a moment before pulling it from his shoulder.  “I’ll readily admit to being a bit… reckless, but I’d never but Takkla and you at risk on purpose.  I just want you to know that I have a plan for all of this.  It’s just that I don’t trust your acting skills and I don’t trust Takkla to not accidentally tell you what’s going to happen.  I’m sorry, but part of my play is you being genuinely surprised.”

“What-”  Dussok frowned, back at Sam, letting his claw be removed.

“QUIT CAPERING AND MAKING EXCUSES!”  Grolm screamed, their voice loud enough to literally alter the pressure of the air around Sam.  “Find the Kobold and bring him here Grimmshold.”

“That’s my cue,” Sam said with a wink, turning away from his siblings as he strode toward the feast pit once more.  “Follow my lead and enjoy the show.”

Grimmshold met them just as Sam reached the ‘pavilion.’  The shaman opened their mouth, clearly about to tear into Samazzar with some biting invective, but Sam kept going, striding past the shocked goblin and jumping down into the torchlight of the feast pit.

Every goblin in the tribe sat at one of the twenty or so crude tables stretched across the muddy expanse.  The slimy, mud covered walls were lit with the uncertain, flickering light cast  by torches, made from a mix of pitch and animal fat, and jammed into them at regular intervals.  On the tables were a dozen pigs, barely cooked and already half devoured, as the hooting mob of goblins tore into the meat with animalistic frenzy.

“There he is!”  Chief Grolm shouted, standing up from their throne, a big slab of granite that someone had carved a cylinder out of to make way for the goblin’s massive girth.  “The man of the hour and my most prized possession.”

Samazzar bowed with some flourish, his tail flicking high in the air as he paused his movements to bend at the waist.

“Enough with that you little shit,” Grolm said cheerfully, waving a bone covered in meat at him.  “You’re late, and your antics cost the tribe almost three days worth of drinking water.  If you hadn’t finished the second level of the elixir, I’d probably be watching you fight my hounds right now.”

Sam’s smile faltered slightly, before returning to his face with the exact same brightness as before.  He’d known that the Chief would be mad, but fighting the hounds was a death sentence, one reserved for the worst of the tribe’s traitors.  Theoretically if the offender could survive in the pit for ten minutes, they would be rescued, their fighting prowess too valuable to sacrifice for the amusement of a fight, but Samazzar wasn’t entirely sure that any goblin, including Grolm, could make it that long.

“But you finished the second level,” the Chief continued, bringing the bone to their mouth and ripping a chunk of still bleeding meat from it before continuing, grease and flecks of unchewed food dribbling down the goblin’s face and onto the swelling roll of their stomach.  “I’m still pissed off at you, but if we have even a couple other warriors on the second level, the Shattered Rock crybabies will be a memory.”

Grolm paused, smiling cruelly before patting their belly.

“A delicious memory,” they finished.  “Their chief in particular looks fairly delicious.  All of that muscle would roast up nicely once we put him on a spit.”

All around Samazzar the goblins paused their meal to begin hooting and gibbering in appreciation for Grolm’s words.  The handful of warriors that had ascended with the help of Sam’s elixirs simply clapped from their seats of honor up near the chief, but the rest of the goblins were uncontrollable.  Some jumped up on their tables, screeching incoherently, while others simply began throwing handfuls of pig at their neighbors.  Still others tackled nearby goblins, rolling around in the mud as they began to grapple in what Sam now knew was a mating duel.

“A toast then Chief,”  Samazzar said, letting his usual infectious optimism swell his voice like a balloon.  “My research may have disrupted the tribe’s water supply, but I have something better.  Part of the alchemical process to create the second tier of elixirs required me to brew alcohol in order to isolate the healing properties from lace cap mushrooms and balance them out with the toxins distilled from the essence of viper grass.  Perhaps fortunately, I have over-prepared when brewing the spirits.

“Oh?”  Grolm asked, a single meaty eyebrow raising as they leaned forward on their throne.  Somewhere behind Sam, Dussok and Takkla shrank back.

“It is back in my quarters Chief,” Samazzar continued, motioning behind himself with a claw, “but I’d be happy to fetch my tubs of it.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t planning on putting it in a barrel or bottling it for sale, so it will be a bit unwieldy to transport it, but this seems like just the sort of occasion where a little alchemy strength alcohol for everyone would be appropriate.”

The din from the surrounding goblins reached an almost deafening level.  Even the warriors stood up, smacking their hands together and cheering while the rest of their companions danced in the muddy pathways between tables.

“Go,” the Chief commanded, motioning with the bone in their hand as they sank back into their throne.  “If the booze is good enough, I might even forgive you for wrecking the cistern.”

“Thank you Chief,” Sam replied, bowing once again, “but I will need my siblings to help me transport the-”

“I really don’t care,” the big goblin cut him off.  “It’s not like slaves were going to get any pig meat anyway.  Get the drinks and hurry back!”

Spinning around, Samazzar jogged toward Takkla and Dussok, waving a claw at the two of them as he ran past.  Confused, they followed Sam, pausing for a moment as he clambered up one of the crude ladders that were the only way in and out of the feast pit.

As soon as all three of them made it to the ground level of the goblin village Dussok cleared his throat meaningfully.

“There isn’t any alcohol, is there Little Dragon?”  The other kobold asked meaningfully.

“Nope!” Sam responded cheerfully as he continued jogging toward the corner of the village where the three kobolds lived.  “Well sort of.  I’ve made something like alcohol, but it would blind you and make you sick if you tried to drink it.  I just needed an excuse to buy us some time to let the sleeping draught take effect.”

“What!” Takkla squeaked behind him.

“What do you think I put in the pig feed after Grimmshold yelled at us last night?” Samazzar asked with a chuckle.  “It took me a couple months, but I found a compound that would slow the pigs down a little bit, but that would knock a goblin out for a full night.  That was half the reason the first round of the elixirs took so long.  I was using the warriors as test subjects until I could get the balance just right.”

“We are all dead,” Dussok remarked glumly.  “Unbelievably dead.  If there are mysteries to be unlocked through a more complete understanding of death, we are set to learn them all just before the hounds tear us apart.”

Sam giggled, his tail swishing as he tried and failed to hold his mirth in.

“If I ask why you’re laughing, is it just going to make me more upset?”  Dussok questioned, his voice resigned.

“The hounds are sleeping right now too,” Samazzar responded proudly.  “It won’t be them eating us.  Rather, it is about time to take their bloodline once.  Then, finally, we can head home.”

“But Snappy,” Takkla whimpered.  “He was a good dog.”

“Snappy would rip your throat out the second you turned your back on him,” Dussok replied evenly.  “Still, Samazzar, do you think Chief Grolm will just let us escape like this?  There’s no way we won’t have the entire goblin tribe pursuing us to the ends of the world.”

“Escape?”  Sam asked rhetorically.  “The plan doesn’t involve us escaping.  A dragon may retreat, but it never truly runs away, it just bides its time for later, preparing itself for revenge.  The Greentoes will burn for enslaving us.  All of them.”

“But-” Takkla began, only for Sam to silence her with an upturned claw.  He ran into their shack, digging around through some of the equipment he had salvaged or otherwise crafted in his time serving the goblins.

A minute later, Samazzar emerged triumphantly, holding three tubes, each end adorned with a sharp bone needle.  In his other hand were three small pouches.

“You can ask questions later,” Sam said cheerfully, handing one of the pouches to both Takkla and Dussok.  “But for now, you should eat the contents of your bag.  It will prepare your body for evolution.  Without it, I can’t guarantee that the scale hounds’ bloodline won’t rip you apart from the inside.”

Glumly, Dussok opened his bag, wincing as he glanced inside before upending it into his muzzle.  A moment later, his jaw began to move with a crunching sound, distaste flickering across the bigger kobold’s features as he chewed on the compound.

Without further comment, Samazzar poured the collection of animal bones, paste, and dried scale hound droppings into his own muzzle.  Somehow, it tasted worse than the description, a combination of sulfur, musk, and bile.

Sam swallowed, his throat drying up as the substance absorbed almost all of his excess moisture.  His stomach flipped, rebelling at the terrible concoction, but after a moment of concentration, he managed to keep his gorge down.

“That was awful Sam,” Takkla complained, her tail slapping against the ground unhappily.  “Couldn’t you have added some water or sugar or something to improve the flavor?  That literally might have been one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten.  It made raw cave rat taste like grilled rabbit.”

“Unfortunately, I couldn’t,” Samazzar replied apologetically, leading the way to the scale hound pit.  “We can talk about my lacking flavor profile later, for now, the three of us should focus on evolving while the tempering solution is still in our system.”

He jumped down into the pit.  When no one followed him, Samazzar looked back up to find Takkla standing at the edge, her scaly arms crossed as she glared down at him, one clawed foot tapping the ground angrily.

“Please hurry,” he implored her, “if we don’t get started now, all of us will have to take another dose, and I don’t want you to mistake my urgency for the desire to repeat that experience.”

With a grumble, Takkla jumped into the hound pit, joined a second later by Dussok.  Sam didn’t waste any time, setting each of them up next to one of the sleeping scale hounds before jamming the needle into the sleeping monster’s chest.  The moment his second needle slipped into Takkla’s arm, she stiffed, her entire body locking up as the hound’s bloodline began to interact with her own.  Samazzar performed one final check to make sure the transfer tube wouldn’t come out of her body on its own accord before moving on to Dussok.

“Will she be alright?”  The big kobold asked, nodding toward Takkla’s twitching form.

Sam looked back at her, tail swishing nervously for a second before he turned to Dussok.  He nodded, and his sibling turned over his arm, revealing some of the weaker scales beneath so that Samazzar could finish the process.

“I don’t mean to be glib,” Sam practically whispered.  “The sensation is insanely unpleasant.  Right now her body is being torn apart and rebuilt, and I genuinely don’t think there is a way to do that without wrecking your day.  That said, the process is fairly safe.  All of our bloodline levels are low, and the compound I had us eat is very powerful.  It should be more than enough to keep us alive as we struggle through the transformation.”

“Then do it,” Dussok said, gritting his teeth.  “I’m not as sure as you that we’ll all end up as dragons, but I am tired of being a kobold.  It’s miserable being at the bottom.  A little pain to traverse a rung up the ladder of power is a small price to pay.”

Samazzar thrust the needle into Dussok’s arm.  His sibling’s eyes rolled back into his head, and a strangled scream tore itself from his throat as his body arched upward.  One final glance confirmed that the tube was in place before Sam turned and walked over to the final scale hound.

“I guess this is goodbye, Chompy,” he said with a grin, patting the side of the monster.  “I would say that it was a pleasure knowing you, but you always were a pain in the tail.”

With that, he slid the sharp point of bone into his arm.  Almost immediately, Chompy’s hot blood flowed into Samazzar, mixing the scale hound bloodline with his own.  Muscles locked, twisting his body, but strangely there was no pain, a relic of the bitter concoction he’d just consumed.

Instead there was heat.  Scalding, pulsing heat that erupted from within Sam’s body, somehow separate from his magical perception and control as it thrummed with each beat of his heart.

His body was a drum.  Scales stretched tight over bones as Sam’s heart slammed into his rib-cage with the force of a hammer breaking stone.  Fire blossomed in his veins as it sought to tunnel its way to freedom, to explode from his chest and into the night air.

Flesh and scale twisted, expanding and retracting with each heartbeat.  Samazzar’s body clenched, curling into a ball as his tail thrashed madly.  Somehow, he could sense the warmth from the scale hound behind him growing more distant, smaller and cooler as changes stole over him.

Pressure filled him, building to a crescendo as a counterpoint to the boiling drumbeat hammering through his veins.  Sam’s very scales itched, tight and uncomfortable as his body expanded.

Then his eyes opened.

The night was almost silent, only broken by Takkla’s groan as she shifted to his left.  Samazzar rolled over, his muscles stiff and unfamiliar as he planted his claws on the muddy floor of the hound pit and stood up.

For a second, he wobbled, his legs unfamiliar and too long.  Above him, the lattice of logs that was designed to keep the scale hounds in was much nearer than he remembered, barely a claws length above his head.

He looked down.  Chompy was dead, a husk drained of all essence.  In a rough circle around the hound and his feet were kobold scales, shed as Samazzar went through his change in order to make way for their thimble sized replacements.

Sam held his arm up, barely noticing that the moon was in the sky as he marveled at the well muscled ruby limb.  It was longer than he remembered, his claws replaced by hands like a goblin or a human.

Admittedly, each of his fingers ended in a supernaturally sharp talon.  Somehow Samazzar knew that he could still use his bloodline abilities to sharpen those nails into a deadly weapon capable of punching through a goblin’s metal armor with ease.

“Blast it little dragon,” Dussok moaned next to him.  “That’s the last time I-”

He stopped as Sam turned his gaze on his sibling.  A second later a broad smile broke across Samazzar’s muzzle.

“Saurians!”  Sam exclaimed happily, reaching down to grip Dussok by his wrist and pulling the creature that he had become to his feet.  “It worked!  I mean, I knew it would work obviously, but it actually worked!”

Dussok almost had to duck to avoid the log cage.  Once again he was a good head taller than Samazzar, his scales a more earthy rust-red in contrast to Sam’s gem-like brilliance.  Behind him, a tail, slightly slimmer than a kobold’s, but longer and ending in a sharp bone blade, twitched anxiously.

As a kobold, Dussok had easily been the strongest person in their tribe, but now?  Corded muscles rippled up and down Dussok’s body as he brought a taloned hand up to his face, marveling at his new extremity.  Now, Sam would be willing to bet his last merit that the brand new Saurian could defeat Chief Grolm in an arm wrestling match, even with the big goblin’s elixir granted strength.

“What in the name of the mysteries and this splitting headache is a Saurian?”  Dussok asked, dropping his hand to his side.  “The least you could do after all of that is actually speak some sense.”

“We made it to the second tier of the draconic bloodline,” Samazzar responded excitedly.  “That means bigger, more resilient bodies, and the potential for bloodline gifts that dwarf anything available to mere kobolds.”

“I certainly feel stronger,” Dussok said dubiously, opening and closing his hand.  “Still, I miss my claws.  Fingers just don’t feel right.”

“Snappy!”  Takkla shrieked, drawing both Samazzar and Dussok’s attention. She scrambled to her feet, backpedaling away from the dead hound.

She was taller than in her previous iteration, but not by a lot.  Takkla was barely as tall as Samazzar’s shoulder, just over chest high on Dussok.  Unlike Sam and Dussok’s slow faltering steps as they got used to their new bodies, her movements were almost supernaturally quick and graceful, her delicate violet scales flashing in the moonlight as she dashed backward.

“How do you feel, Takkla?”  Dussok asked gently, taking a half step toward her.  “It seems like the little dragon managed to pull it off, all three of us have evolved.  He was just about to tell us about the sort of bloodline abilities that might be available to us-”

“Hmmf,” she turned away from the two of them and jumped.  For a moment, the glimmering silhouette of a pair of wings appeared behind her, flapping once and propelling her up over the edge of the pit.

“Huh,” Dussok remarked, pausing to watch their sibling saunter away.

“That’s new,” he continued, turning back to Samazzar.  “Still, it’s not surprising that one of us gained a bloodline ability from the evolution.  It’s only a matter of time before you manage to trick or kill your way into some more heartsblood.  Then we’ll both have abilities to match Takkla.”

“I can breathe fire now,” Sam responded apologetically, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck.  “I can’t produce many flames and they don’t exactly travel all of that far, but once I reach the third level in the mystery of fire, I won’t need to use a torch or a lantern.”

“Wait,” Dussok froze.  “What did you say?”

Almost sheepishly, Samazzar took a deep breath.  As he exhaled, something inside him shifted, and a small gout of flame, barely larger than his new hands, burst forth, briefly creating a cone of fire before it disappeared.

Dussok kicked the floor of the pit, absently tearing a huge chunk of dirt out of the ground before muttering, “this isn’t fair.  Takkla can almost fly and you can sort of breathe fire, and all I got was really strong.”

“We’ll figure something out soon,” Sam said soothingly, patting Dussok on the shoulder.  “But, remember.  If your bloodline doesn’t give you what you need, there’s always magic.”

“That reminds me!” Samazzar exclaimed, clapping his hands together as a thought suddenly hit him.  “Evolving was only the first step.  We still need to handle the Greentoes and leave with the ingredients we’ll need to save Crone Tazzaera.  I’ll need your help with the goblins.”

“Are we going to fight them?”  Dussok asked, straightening slightly.  “I could use a little bit of combat to get over the disappointment.”

“Sorry,” Sam replied.  “Nothing so pulse pounding.  I just need your help with transporting the tainted alcohol I mentioned earlier.  Even if we are stronger now, a proper fight with all of the goblins, especially with the warriors that have extra strength unlocked from the elixirs sounds like a terrible idea.”

“No,” Samazzar continued, a wicked smile out of place on his muzzle.  “They’re all asleep and in one place.  If we can’t win a fair fight, instead we’ll just have a barbeque.”