<– Serene, Chapter 1 – The Swamp
Chapter 2 – The Rat
I settled into my home, catching vermin to eat for now and eyeing the cave fish greedily. The rat trundled off to explore the environs, a spider-web becoming stuck in his fur so that he thrashed around, annoyed, until it was off – I laughed at his antics, but watched the passages deeper into the cave carefully lest larger ones appear. After eating more or less my fill of white cave crayfish and beetle larvae, I began working on my net again.
The sound of dripping water and the smell of clean water helped me focus, the rhythm of the vines and the loop I was weaving becoming almost meditative. The pain from the cuts on my fingers was substantial but a couple hours later when it was done I sat back, looking the net over, realizing it would fall apart quickly without constant repair. It was better than struggling with the line and hook for hours – I scrambled out of the cave down the scarp and set it under the waterfall, using stones to brace it so that I could lift it free.
I looked out at the swamp then, thinking about gathering more firewood, but further resigned myself to the cliff-face for now at the sound of some creature crawling through the brush I couldn’t see – another snake, or maybe worse. I went to check the skin I had cut from my attacker, and realized the fat and tissue had to be scraped clean from it if it wasn’t going to smell. I set to work on it next, carefully drawing the knife over it, finding the best way to pull it free with a handy rock.
My eyes shot up periodically, to watch the rat explore. The cave was mostly smooth, but some parts of it were choked with the same bizarre flowstone formations I had admired in my more adventurous explorations of the warren. It was said that water caused them but I couldn’t see how – the only water I could see was in the pool here, which was slowly draining out through the cave entrance to join with the brook I followed here.
I got up, distracted, and followed the formations further in, stepping carefully through the smooth pebbles of the cave floor even though I couldn’t help but make noise. I hunted as I went, snatching up insects I knew to be edible from the warrens – big cave crickets, grubs that would turn into the biting insects that occasionally plagued our nests, and stinky millipedes that little other than kobolds would touch. These were a rare treat for the more adventurous, especially those small enough to squeeze into less traveled sections of the warrens the adults couldn’t manage.
I peered deeper into the cave, expecting something to jump out at me any moment. I saw more mushrooms and fungus, their mycellum seemingly denser deeper inside, the glow easily feeding me the light I needed to explore further, but nothing else. Satisfied I was not in any immediate danger if I slept here, I poked around the cavern walls for any shinies, picking some likely pyrite-crystallized fossils free from the stone with hard claws, wincing as the cuts on my fingers warned me against further movement but unable to resist them.
My pupils dilated, looking them over, and I scrambled back to the corner I realized I would need to build my nest in. I set them down there, backing up, staring at them, and tripped backwards into the gravel. I gave an indignant squeak, but it broke the spell they had over me, and I set about bringing over larger rocks to form the basis for a nest – a rough circle laid out by the roundest, most interesting stones I could find.
The gravel was soft enough to sleep in but I went outside to dare the base of the scarp anyway, pulling leaves and rush from the side of the pool free in a big bundle and scurrying back up to my cave. I set them down in the nest, and almost immediately the rat settled down inside it, snoring happily. I laughed, surprised.
“Serene is glad she could make male comfy bed. Serene will sleep on dirt where rat can’t hump.” I sat by the underground pool, tired but satisfied by my progress. After a while I went to check the net before it became too dark.
There was enough for me there that I was satisfied I wouldn’t starve, though I saw then the net was too small to fully feed me each day, and that it would quickly begin to fall apart. A few fish had gotten stuck in the fibers, their gills backed into it after realizing they couldn’t pull away. I hadn’t intended for them to die in the net.
I wasn’t sure they were safe to eat, having sat that way for an undetermined number of hours. I pulled them free and brought them back to the rat, who chomped them up without a second thought after smelling them in his sleep. It watched me, eyes gleaming in the dark, softly breathing.
Reluctantly, but feeling the chill of the cave, I settled in next to him, pushing him over gently to make room for myself. He roused and I knew he wanted me again. I leaned back against the rocks, spreading for him – he entered quickly, fucking me and grunting as he did, the angle allowing his thin member to glide past my clit in a way I hadn’t experienced with him and I gasped, my paw going to my slit, wondering at the absurdity of the situation but enjoying myself anyway.
“Could call you Heaver. Or Grunt,” I say, watching him thump his hips into me, stifling a yip as he found a particularly sensitive spot. His needs were simple and direct, reminding me of the younger males, newly awakened to their bodies, uncomplicated by the consideration of their partners. I lay next to him after he pushed off of me, his cold paws digging slightly into my scales before slumping next to me in the circle, the absurdity of it returning.
“Think Serene will call you Grunt,” I say finally, eyes closing and enjoying the warmth of him next to me.
I explored the cave, collecting crystals that were too big and glittery to ignore to set around my nest, finding the huge spiders that obviously fed on the bugs I had caught earlier, and examining the fungi that gave me the light needed to do so without brands. I felt the absence of fire keenly, but my leg needed to heal. I swam, occasionally, in the pool – the yawning depth below me was oddly terrifying, I felt at any moment that some huge creature would pull me under, no matter how little it made sense.
At one point the pewter pendant slipped free from my neck, and I yelped, grabbing for it. It sank quickly, the image of the horse with a horn flashing in the bioluminescent glow, warped by the churning water as my paws flashed down to drag through the thin string that had fixed it to me before dropping into the dark waters. I sobbed longer than I should have at this small loss, irreconcilable with how it was given to me but still a fragment of my past life gone forever.
I began to work on a new net, larger and sturdier than the first and constructed with far more care. This took up the bulk of my time, besides fishing and repairing the first one. I was always, always hungry, it became a background of my daily life.
A heavy rain came one day and the net beneath the waterfall gave way to a flood of detritus. A scrap of torn fabric, waterlogged twigs, a few struggling, crunchy crayfish, and some minnows were all I found in its broken frame. I turned the fabric over in my hand, feeling the smooth weave – I wondered where it came from, some misadventure by the humans into the swamps from the nearby city, or maybe forgotten pillage from my own tribe on their way back to the mountains.
I did my best to repair it, strapping new sticks to the frame and pressing strips together where some had broken. I set it back under the waterfall knowing it would yield far less, now, but it was still worth the trouble. I sighed, thinking of whether I should fix it further or focus on other things.
The new net nowhere near done, and my injuries healing, I swallowed my fear and dove into the pool to catch some of the crayfish I saw in the depths. They were far deeper than I realized, and I was not a strong swimmer. I emerged, sputtering and defeated, treading water. But having ventured deeper once, it was no longer so intimidating.
I gathered some of the water weeds I had seen instead, thinking I might be able to do something with it. Grunt came over to take a drink and sniffed these where I had thrown them on the side of the pool, crunching into one of the thick succulent leaves. I tear one off and taste some as well, hesitantly, the bitterness giving way to a sweetness I enjoy.
Grunt slumped over, grooming himself, and then in a fluid motion got to his feet, hopping around in a semicircle, nose twitching, I watched as his energy ramped up until he was bounding around the cave, his paws making scrabbling noises on the gravel. I laughed, heaving myself out of the pool, tearing a section of the weed off with my teeth to chew and chasing him in play.
He pushed further into the tunnels than I had dared explore and I followed, bold, as the bioluminescent fungi began to be dense enough to support some plants. The ceiling had a crack to the outside in one chamber, light filtering down to nourish a huge mound of the crawling dark ivy that struggled in the surrounding cavern, thick vines grown over centuries I now saw were supporting their runners. I collapsed against this, laughing, my paws clenched into the foliage that felt like silk against my body.
Grunt came forward and mounted me, and without a thought I curled my body around him, accepting his entrance. I came, then, for the first time since I had been abandoned, his cock pressing into my thrashing, excited body, pushed back with gentle rustling into the vines by how eager he was to cum inside me. I felt no relaxation after, my body still buzzing with energy – I pushed him aside, the beauty of the chamber forgotten, as I returned to the cavern with the pool.
I cut a thick section of the leaf and began to chew more. My eyes wide, I swallowed. I worked on the net with renewed purpose, my spirits uplifted and seemingly renewed by my adventure, the pain in my leg an afterthought in the glow – I decided I would finish it that day, but I ran out of vine again.
I chewed more of the leaf. When I ventured out to gather more vine I saw it was dark. I cursed, angry, and pushed forward anyway, crashing recklessly through the swamp to pull them down from the trees, my knife forgotten in the cave.
My arms aching, I hauled them back into the cavern, panting, a burning exhaustion threatening to take me over. I dumped them at the entrance and went inside to chew more of the leaf. I dove into the pool to clean myself, my body swimming with instinctual grace, my paws finding themselves clamped around a large cave-fish.
I pushed with my legs only to the surface, heaving it onto the cave floor, grabbing with shaking hands for more of the leaf next to the pool. I scrabbled over the lip of it, my chest heaving, my vision blurring as I chewed more. The noises around me grew cold, like the brush of a feather against stone, distorted and crunchy.
I passed out. My heart stopped. My fur laid over my flesh wet and cold, the cave silent around me save for Grunt’s gentle snoring nearby.
The eyes open in the void, the stars, the mind. I see her face. I reach out and touch her cheek but I do not know her name. She presses her hand on my forehead and I feel the raging headache of the stimulant even through death. I scream.
My mind was flooded with visions of a serene landscape, lush green forests, mold creeping over fallen logs, the wetness of all life and death. She presses, harder, the headache fading into a throbbing rhythmic pain, and then just a pressure, my own heartbeat, her hand cold and damp like the pebbles under my face. I try to look at her but my vision slides off into slime mold and afterbirth, fossil shells coming to life as I stumble to my feet and crash down again next to the cave wall and my bed on the cold stone, my screams fading into whimpers of wonder and burning exhaustion.
The gravel swarmed under my gaze as if it was water as I came to, Grunt’s warm body pressed against me urgently, disturbed. I retched, my body trying to push the gorge of the plant free, at the same time my paw reaching for it again, distantly by the pool. To tear more, to chew more, the bitterness lingered on my tongue, and I wanted more.
My body too weak to comply, I closed my eyes and sleep, a matted mess of damp fur as cold and exhausted as the night I found my way to the alcove.
After a time, I rose, my body sore, shaky, but functional. I could tell Grunt had thought nothing of using my unconscious form, as always. My paws trembled as I pushed myself upright to my feet, the darkness around me a disconcerting mess of snow and floaters as my eyes struggled to adjust.
I stumbled my way to the new net and groaned – it was torn and battered by my convulsions and careless work. I realized I’d have to rebuild it, more carefully. The stimulant kept me moving but at the cost of my clarity and reason.
I went to check on the older, smaller one. One lousy minnow, dead in the flat strands, lay waiting. I tossed it to Grunt, disgusted, and started outside with my fishing equipment.
I pulled in a few small fish from the pond. As usual, not enough for a real meal, especially after the burning fatigue the stimulant plant left in me. I ate these whole, using chunks carved out with my claws as bait for the next.
I pulled in more vines, repairing the first net. A setback, is what this was – a hard day, but not worse than when I arrived, drenched and on death’s door. I went to check the drying spot I had built for the wood I gathered, bringing a few more branches, watching and moving carefully.
The world around me seemed to hum as my strength returned, though still the hunger gnawed, the blood in my ears a pounding rhythm keeping me moving. It was getting easier, my wounds were nearly healed. I just had to get a few more passes on the new net done and I could plan my next step.
I fed myself with the vermin of the cave for the night, feeling a strange sadness building as I scoured the walls for the bugs and spiders that I pinched dead and popped in my mouth. Where was this going? How long could I live here, how much could this strange not-warren give me?
Already the pool was looking less vibrant, less alive than when I found it. The fish had darted to lower depths, sensing my predation. The crayfish were out of reach, as always, and the plants I had chewed were no sustenance.
I left the pool alone for now. I laid next to Grunt in the nest and he roused, nudging me over so that he could take me. My body was tired but I allowed him to, a tiny pang of fear entering me as I considered pushing him away.
His smell seemed stronger, now, the feeling rough and unwelcome, and I lay back afterwards grateful he was done. I slept fitfully, my fur full of dust and mud from the day’s work, the air feeling too cold to get up and bathe. Grunt walked off sometime at night to hunt.
I woke the next day with a headache. I could tell I was getting sick. I ate from the crude net, the catch larger than usual – I went outside to bring in some wood from the drying spot, as the weather was clear, and Grunt was nowhere to be seen.
Shivering in the morning fog by the time I got back, I piled it together, but the fatigue I felt pulled me back from starting the fire right away. I went deeper into the cave and curled up by the sunlit mound of flowering vine in the gallery, the air there warmer and humid. I slept for another few hours, undisturbed, and waking I felt renewed.
Grunt had come back, and was sleeping in our nest. I looked him over – he was speckled with blood, I knew he had found some smaller creature to ambush and crunch up. I went to work on finishing the new net, taking care to bow out the weft and not draw the soft stripped vine bark in too tightly so that it would make a pouch for the fish to sit in.
I marveled at my ingenuity, understanding the mistakes from the first easily. Why didn’t the tribe have me do this? Why was I deemed unable to learn these things?
It had always seemed like they treated me specially, like I was glass they could not break. Would it have hurt them to teach me to weave? To fish? I set it down, anger building, suddenly wanting to scream.
I let it loose, a roar uncharacteristic to me, unlikely from my small form. It shook through the cavern and startled Grunt, who bounded towards me. I flinched back, afraid, but he merely pushed his nose up to me to make sure I was ok, sniffling, his large whiskers twitching.
I stroked his head and neck and leaned against him when he settled next to me, the warmth strangely calming. Familiar. After a while I picked up the net again and he watched me as I went through the motions finishing it, less carefully but the majority of the work guided the strands of stripped bark faster and surer towards the end.
I looked down and realized I was done. The frame, a square of straight staves I had cut notches into with the knife, was straight and strong. The bark lay over the notches snugly, drawn down tight by the netting, the basket middle bowed out slightly and with a gentle, aesthetic curve.
I turned it over in my paws, excitement and pride building, testing it by bouncing it against the ground gently. It held, the partially dried strands rattling as they flexed, and I brought it out to the waterfall to replace the crude first attempt. I was ecstatic at my success, anything felt possible after making such a critical and useful thing.
The excitement was infectious and Grunt pushed against me to mate. I laid back in the alcove, accepting him with almost a greedy desire, pushing against him as he rutted so that he squeaked with surprise. My finger pushed inside of me after he left, driving me to a quick, gasping orgasm, my back scraping against the rock as I arched upwards.
Some part of me felt like it was sharing my pleasure. The presence wasn’t unwelcome, but I wondered at how fragmented I was becoming here. It quickly receded leaving me confused but unbothered – nothing about it felt hostile, just not quite myself.
I look over at Grunt, who was grooming himself after his fun. He looked up at me expectantly, and I tossed him a fish from the old net, eating the other two it had caught. I looked at the new one, a few small pebbles and one thrashing minnow already caught in the trap. I felt a strange pang of sadness, seeing it struggle – again seeming to come from outside myself – but slurped it down as well.
I hopped out of the alcove, the spray of the waterfall dampening my fur, and realized the sickness I had felt earlier was gone. A bounce in my step, I scrambled up the scarp, but my feet slowed as a strange pressure built in me, a darkness pressing around me so deep that closing my eyes felt like opening them again, yet the calmness I felt as I came to a stop overwhelmed all fear.
Everything shifted. Eyes, darkness, and stars – the mind again, pressing, a hand closing around mine, wiggling my fingers just so. A buzzing in my ear, like a dragonfly shooting past, became deeper as it circled me, a drone like the howling of wind. The sound slowed, slowed, until I could feel it beat against my ears and body, a pulsing rhythm that filled me from my feet up.
It traveled through my hand and grew into a pair of ripe, glowing berries. I opened my eyes, and there they were, nestled in my paw. I stared at them for many minutes, Grunt walking up, watching me, the calmness and rhythm still felt through me. The smell was irresistable, sweet like grapes with a yeasty tang.
I put one in my mouth, hesitating for a moment, and then bit down. The taste was incredible, like golden rum and honey, tart and somehow creamy all at once. I felt my hunger – present for days (or weeks?) and always gnawing at me – vanish.
Grunt nudged my leg and I looked down at him, staring at the berry expectantly, eyes unblinking. “Grunt is always hungry!” I hissed, suddenly jealous, protective of the incredible fruit. The magic that had made it faded away from me unnoticed.
“Hungry, horny, hungry, horny.”
He looked up at me, into my eyes, and back at the berry. Not apologizing, without shame and without fear of me. I sighed, my paw lowering, dropping it into his chomping mouth. I watched with regret as he ate, the pure unbridled pleasure palpable on the rodent’s face.
I closed my eyes trying to recapture the rhythm. I could feel it, a vibration in me, the dragonfly drone a pale imitation of its former intensity yet there it was. I could feel, also, the world around me through it. I wiggled my fingers subconsciously imitating the pattern I had made in the rhythm but no ambrosia filled my palm this time.
I opened them and looked down at Grunt, and I realized with a start that I could sense his heartbeat, racing, as he looked up at me. He pushed against my leg, and through the connection I felt an electric buzzing of desire, pushed faster by some other distant pulse in his body. I felt his breathing getting faster, his body vibrated with the internal forces that pushed him, felt the excitement at my paw touching his fur, and he was in front of me again, desperate to sate the demands his body placed on him.
I looked down at him with renewed understanding as he jumps at me insistently. Through the calm of the magic I felt any judgment of the creature that was left dissolve, an understanding that this was not a kobold and could not be expected to understand my fears. I knelt and let him mount me over my back, taking me from behind with an eager thump, the heat of him pressing against me and into me quickly.
I arched my back, easing his entry, my belly taut under my fur. His body was a whirlwind, paws grasping at me hungrily, greedily, and I responded in kind. My vision blurred as I embraced his animalistic need, the rhythm of the natural magic pushing us together, our own needs becoming intertwined, small yips leaving me as he thumped against me.
A golden, shimmering pool of light surfaced somewhere inside me, mirth filling my body and becoming my own. I started laughing like I never have before at his grunting, excited mating, and at my own abandon in surrendering to it. The pool vanished, seemingly with a wink.
Grunt finished, sliding out of me wetly, and I collapsed forward, panting and grinning. “Serene is going crazy. Wants rat for mate. Have to get out of swamp.”
I got up after long minutes and made my way back to the cavern. I felt like new after the berry, like I had just left the warrens and was starting out on the hunt. I remembered the vista, before we climbed down into the moraine, how the swamp seemed to stretch on forever but how hints of the ocean had glimmered in the south behind a rise in the next mountain.
I gathered up my knife and wrapped some of the bark I had left over from the net around its tang, forming a crude handle at last. I wondered where I could bring Grunt that he could find some of his own kind. I couldn’t afford to feed him and me, it was time to say goodbye, but I didn’t have the heart to scare him off and wasn’t sure he’d be intimidated by me anyway.
I laid back in the stone next, suddenly conscious of how uncomfortable it was. In the warrens, rodents were small, mice traveling in with infested grain from the humans. They found spots where kobolds wouldn’t go, abandoned nests in places too damp to inhabit, seeps in the cave walls not yet patched by the plaster we made for this.
I wondered where rats like Grunt lived in the swamps. I reasoned they might be in caves like this, but I had seen no sign of droppings other than Grunt’s in its passage. Still, the scarp extended far to the south, and there were probably other openings into the cliff face.
I drifted off for a brief nap, and then woke, setting out with the knife, a clear head, and a great deal of misgiving along the cliff. I hugged its wall, planning to scramble up if any predator threatened me, with Grunt trotting after me. He seemed to want to veer off into the swamp, so I followed where it seemed safe and open enough.
Grunt pushed through dense brush without regard for the speed I could navigate it but I followed, wondering where he’d lead me – if it was to hunt, he was doing a poor job of it. I eventually stumbled through the thicket into a dry grassy mound rising into a hillock, and in its face was a burrow. Grunt was nowhere to be seen.
I approached slowly, cautiously. Fear rose in me, my stomach working against its emptiness, my eyes wide. I noticed a bag by the entrance, forgotten, pushed out with bones and scraps of fur I knew were the refuse of a carnivore. I got close enough to pick it up, and then Grunt lunged out, pushing me down, his teeth chomping away trying to gain purchase on my struggling form. I whipped my knife around and slashed at his side, and he darted back, squeaking and standing over his burrow.
Inside I heard more, smaller noises, the call and scamper of other rats. I backed away still on the ground, eyes locking on him. I felt the rhythm rise in my ears, the pulsing of my heartbeat working against the natural flow, Grunt’s faster and angrier but locked in resonance to mine.
I slowly felt the calm from before return, both of us settling down, Grunt backing away into his burrow to guard his family. I realized my knife had not even cut through his fur from what I saw of his flank. I moved off, carefully, realizing I couldn’t stumble through the brush I had followed him through, and left further into the swamp instead.
My shock at the betrayal was replaced by a strange relief mixed with grief. The rat had a new purpose now, and I felt it would no longer pester me. I was alone again.
I realized I still clutched the bag in my paw. I opened it up for a quick glance inside. I found a few glimmering coins, which I resisted the urge to pull out and admire, a rusted key, and a rolled piece of molded parchment. I pulled this free and looked it over careful not to tear the page.
I could not read the glyphs but there were drawn features I recognized of the area, the cliff, the sun’s direction over the sky, and what I thought might be the waterfall. Several locations were marked trailing outwards from the cliff through the swamp, with drawings I had no context for. I put it back in the bag carefully and made my way back along the cliff. A chill entered me as I trudged through the swamp’s shadowy muck, and I washed my feet in the pool below the waterfall.
I looked at the net and realized I had more here than I could eat. I brought my catch up, thinking of how Grunt would have crunched through the fish, his hands holding the scraps in. Through tears I started to light a fire, only the second since coming here.
I set out some stones for the fish to crisp on when the fire was hot enough, and laid them out, thinking about the berries from before. The smoke was thick but it whipped out of the cave quickly from the air-flow of the gallery deeper in the cavern. I closed my eyes while they cooked and focused again on the strange pulsing rhythm I felt now, always, a complement to my heartbeat.
The sensation was hypnotic, like I was on the edge of a lake, my body being pushed by its beating. My hearing filled with the sound of my blood as well, the cadence slowing and synchronizing as I focused on it. The fire crackled and spit, sending sparks flying up into the air, but and I began to become aware of its lapping rhythm as well, the fuel eaten and replenished by its rippling flames joining the greater pulse.
The drip of water, the searing flesh of the fish, and my own rhythms then, not just my heartbeat but my hunger and thirst, the desires I felt, even how tired I was. I stretched my paw out, remembering the presence, how it moved my hand for me, how the pulsing crawled down it into my paw.
I felt them grow again, like the magic had flowed through me and out into my palm, and opened my eyes as they did. It was as if someone had pressed a needle into the air, and out of it flowed life. I watched in wonder as the berries formed, from dry seed to golden spheres of nourishment.
The smell made it real, the distinctive musty grape and ale. I got up, wide-eyed. “Serene is witch! Serene uses magic!” I squeaked-yelled, celebrating, cavorting around, shaking my hips, dancing, air-thrusting.
The skin of the berries broke in my hand and I ate them, greedily, the honey of their juices running over my cheeks and down my throat. I realized I could smell the fish burning and darted over to take them off, gingerly, laughing. They peeled away with some of their flesh remaining on the hot stone – I flipped them over to cook the other side.
My body buzzed with unspent energy. I wanted to run, to conquer the swamp with this new power. My head was full of stories about magic, my eyes always widened when a kobold that had been outside related an encounter with anything even slightly arcane.
I scurried over to grab the pouch I had found by Grunt’s burrow, dashing the contents out onto the ground next to the fire. New possibilities opened to me, new ways and new hopes – the map was barely legible in the light but I poured over it, imagining the route to the marked places. I turned the key over in my hand more obsessively than the shiny coins.
I pulled the cooked fish free from the fire, and ate until my stomach was full, though strangely the berries felt enough. My eyes shone in the light, thinking of simply walking out of the swamp using this power to sustain me. I had everything I needed, didn’t I?
Eventually my eyes grew heavy, helped by the heat of the fire against my drying fur and the sound of its crackling flames. I curled up there, bed forgotten, and slept. I dreamed of the cold of the mountain leading down from the warrens, how none would hold me at first, of the angry and annoyed faces of the hunters and of an arm, softly furred like my own, closed around me and filled with golden light.
In the morning I got up, feeling like myself again. The past night felt like a blur except for the smoking remnants of burnt fish on stone, the coins glinting on rock. I pushed these back into the pouch and got to work fashioning a rough belt from vine so that I could carry it with me.
I worked my knife through its weave, though it cut at the bark. After putting the belt over me and tying it, I felt a little strange, the vines sticking out more than I wanted at an awkward angle. I cut these away the best I could but still it didn’t fit, didn’t make sense to wear, and dug into my scales through my fur painfully when I drew it closed. Tailor I was not.
I pulled it free, naked once more, and decided to just use it as a handle to carry them on. I set out through the woods, humming a song I had heard from another kobold that had always captivated me. My voice was like a croaking frog but no one here scolded me so I sang.
Oh, why is my hunger – My hunger so deep – Deep and dear hollow – Down to my feet – My bones are a knockin’ – Knocking together – But why is my hunger – Light as a feather – Why is my hunger – Light as a feather
It was a strangely morbid tune for my mood, but it carried me through the swamp, my eyes searching for open ground constantly. I had only a vague idea of where the map was pointing – I hacked chips out of the trees as I went as pointers, remembering how disoriented I was in the upper swamps. I was enjoying myself immensely, the newfound confidence pushing me forward.
Eventually, on a part of the swamp raised up out of the muck, I came upon a great stone monument. A low central plinth supported a carved mess of vines and serpents. Atop it all was an enormous crow.
I stared up at it, my throat dry. I knew of the gods, how humans had countless deities, even multiple pantheons. For kobolds it was simple – the dragons were our protector, even our god feared them, and when we died we would be reborn.
What god would have a crow as its image? They were scavengers, full of the smell of the dead. Kobolds did not eat crow, though few parasites could challenge our fiery draconic intestines.
I approached, my paw resting on the rounded form of a snake, trailing around and following the stone scales of its sinuous body until it moved up the statue. I stepped back and circled the monument until I spotted a stone door in the side of the plinth. I could see a crack I could wriggle through where it had been upset by years of wear by the swamp.
If a kobold died in the warrens, they were cleaned and brought to the dragon to eat. So here, then, was my first grave. The kobolds stole from these too, of course, something that earned an unmatched fury from the humans.
It seemed simple and right – why should wealth be buried in the ground with the dead? Yet still I felt an unease as I approached the tomb. I climbed up the stone, wedging my foot paws into the frame of the door and hopping up to catch the lip of the door.
It collapsed forward, far more precarious than I realized. I tumbled with its enormous bulk down into a pit where the stairs had given way, hearing it break against the rock below before hitting my head and hurtling into blackness. I lay there for hours, unconscious, my face bleeding into my fur, before I awoke to the sound of rain.
I groaned, pushing myself up – my throat felt like sand, my head throbbed dangerously. In the filtered starlight inside the tomb I saw a great mound of silvered treasures, urns and baubles decorating a place that had been left untouched for centuries, now destined for ruin. I stumbled down to these, looking them over for anything that could be useful. I took a silver cup, threading it through the vine loop I pulled free from under a stone that could have crushed me dead.
On my face I felt the trickle of cool water from above. I looked up – enough of the collapsed stair remained to make my route to escape clear. I looked back at the treasure with immense regret; I thought maybe I could come back to this place, with more vines and without the terrible headache that pressed through my greed.
I struggled my way up, the stone collapsing further under me as I lept free into the swamp. The rain had subsided for the moment. I realized, too late, I could have stayed for a while longer under the monument, but I wondered also how long it would stand, remembering cave-ins in the warrens and how one could precede a larger. I moved away from the great stone figure, reluctantly beginning to try to find my way home.
In the distance I heard thunder.