Dream - 29 (Patreon)

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Race: Saurian

Bloodline Powers: Strength, Rending, Emberbreath
Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 2
Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Good Air 4, Embers 4, Pressure 3, Current/Flow 3

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“Are you sure about this?”  Dussok asked hesitantly, his bigger body easily bearing the weight of the trough filled with wood alcohol.  “What if one of the goblins wakes up and raises a fuss?  I don’t like them either, but there’s an awful lot of them.  Maybe it would be better if we just ran away while they were all asleep.”

“Nope,” Sam replied, struggling slightly to carry his half of the trough.  “This is all part of the plan.  If we don’t devastate the Greentoes they’ll just hunt us down.  I doubt the Chief will let us get away with using their prized scalehounds to evolve.  Plus, this is an important element of my baptism.  It’s just something that I need to do.”

“There,” Takkla pointed to a spot by the edge of the feast pit.  “Put the alcohol there and that should be the last of them.  Then it will just be a matter of knocking off all their stoppers so that they can evenly fill the hole.”

She paused, cocking her head slightly as she looked at the thirty wooden barrels, tanks and troughs that Sam had filled with the products of his distilling experiments over the course of the last couple of weeks.

“About that,” she continued, frowning as Dussok and Sam wrestled the last container into place.  “Even if we knock off all of the stoppers, that will only be enough to partially fill the pit ankle deep.   I still don’t understand how you plan on stopping the goblins from escaping, let alone actually lighting the alcohol on fire.”

“Simple!”  Sam answered with a grin.  “We’re going to pull up the ladders and then I’m going to jump in and light it myself.”

Takkla paused.  She closed her eyes, pressing her new fingers together against the bridge of her muzzle as she exhaled slowly, working the digits silently in small circles as she tried to ease some invisible tension out of her scales.

“Samazzar,” Takkla began slowly.  “You do realize that if you’re in the pit to start the fire, it will be very hard for you to escape the fire?  This seems like a fairly obvious conclusion to me, but I know how you can get when you’re focusing on your next accomplishment.  I just want to make sure that you’ve thought this plan all the way through.”

He grinned at her, eyes flickering and dancing with their own internal light like the flames they were discussing.

“I’m counting on it,” he replied eagerly.  “I’ve learned a lot about fire while brewing oils, potions and elixirs for the goblins.  Right now, I need a sufficiently powerful baptism to push me over the edge.  What better way to advance a tier than to literally bask in the flames consuming my enemies.”

“After all,” Sam said happily, “It’s what a dragon would do.”

Dussok sighed, walking over from where he had just finished settling the trough of alcohol and placing a clawed hand on Takkla’s shoulder.  He looked down at Samazzar for a second before speaking.

“That all sounds very poetic, little dragon, but the mysteries are things of fact and knowledge, not art and feeling.”

“Ah.” Samazzar shook his head before disagreeing with his sibling.  “Maybe this attitude is why you’ve struggled to learn the mysteries, Dussok.   On their surface, the mysteries are clean and logical, like alchemy.”

“But,” he continued, his eyes flashing with excitement, “once you dive deeper, they’re almost alive.  The way the mysteries interact, interdependent but each with its own flavor and feel to it.  The more I ponder them, the more they feel like a squabbling family, giving and taking from each other in ways that make sense intuitively, but that I can’t properly explain in words.”

“Fire is a perfect example,” Samazzar said, motioning briskly toward the nearby pit full of sleeping goblins.  “The way it dances and burns, mesmerizing but dangerous.  It is a cornerstone of life and civilization, but it also brings death and fatal burns.  Dussok, fire is poetry.  The sooner you embrace that, the sooner you’ll begin to truly progress in studying the mysteries.”

Dussok shrugged, inclining his head slightly toward Sam.  He squeezed Takkla’s shoulder and sighed.

“If you say so little dragon,” he responded.  “After all, you’re the closest thing we have to an expert on these things.  Takkla and I just want you to stay safe.  The world is a cold enough place without family.  I don’t want you risking yourself unnecessarily.”

Samazzar grinned at his siblings before stepping past them and sliding down the steep dirt wall that hemmed in the dirt pit.  Around him, heaps of lumpy goblins snored loudly, many of them face down in sumptuous meals laid out before them.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered up to them with a wink.  “Compared to the rest of the things I have planned, this is barely a risk at all.”

“That’s hardly comforting Samazzar,” Dussok rumbled, flashing him a nervous smile.  “Still, I can only think of one time you’ve truly made a mistake on a gamble of this magnitude, and over the course of the past four hours you’ve managed to rectify that error.”

“Just remember to kick down the ladders,” Sam hissed back.  “I’ll be able to climb the walls, but the goblins can’t.  We want to make sure that this is as clean of a sweep as possible.”

Takkla touched a hand to Dussok’s scales, shaking her head slightly.

“Leave him,” she said.  “Samazzar has made his decision, and that means that neither of us will be able to talk him out of it, no matter how foolish it is.  You should remove the ladders and pull the stoppers on the alcohol containers to the right, and I will work left.  Hopefully the little dragon knows what he’s doing.”

Sam shot them a quick grin before touching two of his new fingers to his brow and saluting.  Then he spun around, tail swishing behind him and made his way toward the center of the feast pit.

Everyone was asleep.  Some of the goblins were snoring in the mud, pants half undone as the effects of the sleeping draught kicked in during the middle of their grotesque mating displays.  Others were slumped at or under their tables, succumbing to the drugs while still stuffing their faces with pork.

At the far end of the hall, Chief Grolm was folded forward, their face buried in the flabby rolls of their own chest.  The big goblin snorted, shifting slightly as they scratched the underside of their bulbous stomach before returning to the steady, measured breaths of a dreamer.

Sam blew out a sigh of relief.  Grolm had been the one sticking point in his plans.  He’d experimented on the rest of the goblins enough to know their tolerances and to adjust the intake of the pigs accordingly, but for Grolm?  He barely knew anything.

The big goblin certainly had taken at least one elixir, but for the life of him, Samazzar couldn’t figure out whether the Chief had taken two.  Regardless of whether Grolm had magically altered their body, they were already big enough to make Sam doubt his dosages.  There was a whole lot of Grolm to poison, and a small part of Samazzar had been terrified that he would hop into the pit only to find the Chief armed and angry.

Grolm snored fitfully, sliding downward in their throne.  Of all the Greentoes, the Chief was really the only one that Sam was afraid of.  Ordinary goblins couldn’t threaten his new body, and even the elites that had taken an elixir could only hurt him if they could hit him.  Between his new size, speed, and the advantages provided by his magic, Samazzar was fairly confident in his odds against any of them.

He walked down the central aisle toward the goblin chief, careful to step over the half-naked and mud covered bodies of sleeping creatures.  Sam paused, nostrils flaring as the harsh scent of wood alcohol assaulted them.

Around the edges of the hole, Takkla and Dussok were running from container to container, tipping troughs upward so they would empty into the feast pit and unstopping barrels.  Absently, Samazzar pushed with his mind, making a cocoon of pressure and good air around himself in an effort to ward off the fumes.

He stopped in the center of the pit, surveying the sleeping goblins.  Around the edge, Dussok pulled up the last of the ladders while Takkla sloshed the last container onto its side, draining it into the massive hole.  Already some of the sleeping forms were beginning to stir as the acrid fumes began to assault their senses.

Sam went down to one knee, pressing his clawed finger into the wet mud that lined the bottom of the pit.  The alcohol trickled around his first knuckle.  He hadn’t had the time to brew enough of the flammable liquid to completely submerge the gathered goblins, but the shallow pool that was creeping up toward his ankle would be more than enough.

Air rushed into Samazzar’s lungs, puffing them out.  Magic tingled in the back of his throat as Samazzar willed the dragonflame into existence.  The embers itched and burned in his esophagus as his blood hummed, creating them from thin air.

The fire spat from his muzzle, really more of a cough than anything dramatic or impressive. For a fraction of a second, the thin stream of flame seemed to hang in the night air as Samazzar frantically wove a heat-proof barrier of will around himself.

Then, the entire world exploded as the fumes rising off of the alcohol ignited.

Sam tried to shore up the pressure wall around himself only for the force of the explosion to shred it like cheap cloth, sending him flying into a nearby table, knocking the wind out of him and breaking the poorly made furnishing under his weight.  Around him, the sleeping goblins stirred awake, snores converting to screams as the very air of the pit seemed to catch ablaze.

He reached upward, grasping at the good air above the fire with his mind and wrenching it downward as his lungs screamed in protest.  The dancing flames licked higher, feeding on good air even as Sam tried to funnel it toward himself.

With a grunt, he poured his entire focus into the thin sliver of healthy air as it wove through the fire, attached to a tether of his will.  The good air expanded, ballooning from a dwindling pocket the size of Sam’s fist into a wave of life-giving wind.

The fire roared to life around Samazzar, burning away at the edges of the good air even as he gulped it greedily down.  The goblins screamed and writhed as the flames bore into them, charring their flesh and stealing the life from their bodies.

Sam stepped away from the table, focusing his willpower on maintaining the shell of heat magic that encased him.  He walked down the aisle, eyes closed as he used his magical senses to feel the conflagration all around him.

Chief Grolm bellowed, a sound of agony and panic as the massive goblin burned along with the rest of his tribe.  Most of the goblins were down by now.  Either burned to death by the hungry licking flames, or unconscious from a combination of smoke inhalation and the sleeping draught that was still weighing down their bodies.

Abruptly, he stopped.

Samazzar spread his arms wide, listening intently to the crackle of the inferno and the snap of wooden beams as they burned through.  Without really thinking about it, he lowered some of his magical defenses, letting the heat from the roaring flames bake his scales and make his eyes water.

It was as if something was calling to him.  Like there was a presence in the fire as it writhed and leapt toward the sky only to tumble back to the earth and curl itself around a wooden table, flickering in short steady beats as it tried to regain the energy to launch another tongue of orange light toward the heavens.

Hesitantly, Samazzar took a step forward.  A moment later he swayed to the side, moving in time to some unheard music as the fire raged around him.  With each passing second Sam’s movements become more definite and sure as he began mimicking the writhing flicker of the inferno.

He leapt into the air, clawed hands grasping toward the night sky toward the night sky only to land amidst the roaring flames, twirling and skipping along through the burning aisles of the feast pit.  On the throne Grolm slumped to the ground, skin blackened and flaking off under the onslaught of the fire, but Sam didn’t stop.

There was something about the mystery of fire that called out to him.  It sang in a voice that he could barely understand about forests burning to cinders, of forges melting metal itself, and of lava flowing down the slope of a volcano lighting any brush it found ablaze.

Samazzar didn’t fully understand what he was hearing, but he danced.  Spinning and swaying to the music as the mystery of fire settled over him.  The flames in the pit began to die down, the initial fuel from the alcohol troughs long since consumed.

All that was left were the massive tables burning merrily amidst piles of corpses and spoiled food.  Through it all, Sam danced unseeing, each jump timed to the invisible rhythm of the flame.  He skittered across the dirt floor of the pit, long since baked dry by the conflagration, his shuffling feet touching down in patterns that made no sense outside of Samazzar’s clouded logic.

Then, the music ground to a stop.  Sam found himself panting in the middle of the feast pit, his scales tight and burning hot and his tongue lolling out as his body tried to compensate from the intense heat that had slipped through his magical shield.

Fires still burned in the pit.  Samazzar wasn’t exactly sure how much time had passed, but the ramshackle wooden tables were all still ablaze.  The goblin corpses smoldered, unmoving in piles around him, spewing thick black smoke that turned his mostly empty stomach.

Sam willed the pressure barrier back into place, sealing off his poor nostrils from the charnel smell of the pit.    He looked up, wincing slightly at the sight of the cheap thatching burning merrily.

He reached up with one clawed hand and concentrated.  Drawing a wisp of flame down from the roof and settling it just above his hand.  Almost immediately, Samazzar could feel the ball of flame beginning to fade as it traveled away from its fuel, but a steady flow of good air prevented it from collapsing entirely.

The sphere of fire transformed into a string, a narrow cord of brilliant light that writhed over his fingers, wrapping around his scaled hand before coalescing into a circle once more.  Samazzar smiled widely, dismissing the flame as he closed his fist on the spot where it had once been.

Whistling cheerfully to himself, Sam practically skipped through the smoldering remnants of the goblin feast.  When he reached the dirt wall, he carefully side-stepped the bodies of the handful of creatures that had managed to shake off the sleeping draught long enough to make it to where one of the ladders should have been.  There they had perished, dirt caking their stubby green hands as they tried to dig and claw their way out of the burning deathtrap.

Sam ignored them, activating his bloodline power as he dug his claws into the wall.  His magically enhanced nails cut through the packed dirt, easily carving out handholds.  Barely twenty seconds later, Samazzar clambered over the edge, his scales caked with dirt and soot.

He clenched his hands together, stretching his arms upward in an effort to cleanse the kinks and sore spots from the muscles of his neck and shoulders.  Sam winced slightly as he surveyed his surroundings.  Although the fire was mostly contained in the feast pit, the burning thatching had already spread the blaze to some of the nearby goblin hovels.

A sigh dragged itself from his throat.  He’d made a point of gathering most of the available supplies that they would need for the journey back to the mountains near the edge of the village where he’d lived with Dussok and Takkla as a kobold, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t treats and trinkets he wanted to loot from the abandoned town before he left.  Still, he could protect himself from the fire fairly effectively now.  The spreading flames were annoying, but in reality they only accelerated his timetable.

“Takkla!”  He shouted, cupping his hands around his muzzle.  “Dussok!  Where are you?  It’s time for us to get moving.”

A shadow stepped away from a nearby hut.  Barely taller than Samazzar’s chest, a hood covered its face, but his stomach fell when he recognized the leering skull that topped the creature’s walking stick.

“You’re so naive,” Grimmshold remarked dryly.  “In the midst of slaughtering my entire tribe, you didn’t bother to check the bodies to make sure that the spellcaster was amongst them.  Honestly?  You remind me of a babe.”

“What babe?” Samazzar growled back, tensing his legs and spreading his claws wide.  Grimmshold pointed their walking stick at him, shaking the bleached skull with one hand while the other pulled a green piece of meat, writhing with maggots, out of a pouch at his hip.  “Where are my friends?”

“You tried to use poison on a poison master,” Grimmshold chuckled, waving the meat back and forth.  “I returned the favor.  They’re feverish, miserable, and sweating, but they should be fine so long as you rescue them in the next hour or so.  After that the feverwrack will start permanently damaging their lungs and livers.”

Sam narrowed his eyes at the goblin.  About twenty five paces separated the two of them.  Close enough for the wretched creature to taunt him, but not enough that he could launch a surprise attack before they managed a working of magic.

“What do you want?”  Sam hissed, pushing with his mind to a bubble of high pressure air around himself.  The natural current and flow of the wind stilled, passing around the magical barrier as if Sam were a rock diverting a river's current.  “Is this about merits?  Are you trying to cut a deal with me?”

“A deal?”  Grimmshold spat out, breaking into a bleak laugh.  “I might not have been on the best terms with the tribe, but you killed everyone I knew.  We’re beyond deals boy.  No, this is about keeping your friends and you alive long enough to suffer properly for what you’ve done to me.”

Samazzar didn’t respond, instead reaching out with his mind to the nearby burning buildings and summoning two balls of flame.  They flashed through the air, red-orange snakes of energy and magic, before wrapping themselves around either of his arms.

“Ah,” Grimmshold said appraisingly, lifting the wriggling chunk of meat high.  “A babe with the power of magic.  Teaching you your proper place will be a treat.”