Chapter Text
At the least, I'm glad human-me built me for high damage output. Burning my soul like I've been doing is… very uncomfortable, and also probably not as safe as human-me or fiction-me thought it was, but better halfway disconnected from my body than splattered across the trees by a robot-thing too tough for my swords.
So, that's one point for human-me. The balance is still pretty far against, cause it doesn't matter if it's not fair, human-me's decisions hurt me , and I'm falling into the same mental rut again. I shake my head to try to clear it, my tail rolling uncomfortably on the bedroll under me.
"Self-awareness is a good thing," I remind myself in my egg-language. It sounds a little bit less true each time I say it… I sigh and lean harder on my magic, staring into the orange flames of my campfire. I miss my family. I miss my camp. I miss my friends. I miss my bed. I miss tears. I miss the internet.
Well, at least I'm not addicted to that last one, like human-me was.
I hope.
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When I peek above the trees this time, it takes a lot of trying to not shout really loud , cause there's a road there now, and it's maybe seven times my magic's reach, and also apparently I should've been lifting myself way higher cause I didn't take into account how the trees would hide narrow things, and my tail's probly wagging a lot right now cause Dragons above and below that means civilization , and—and I can feel my happiness start to drain away, cause civilization means people trying to hurt me and making me leave, before any of the good stuff. Cause I'm a kobold, and that means I'm bad. So now I need to wear my disguise-hat.
"…Vague ideas about lore and not knowing what to do with a third of my net worth, thank you," I mutter as something I don't quite recognize except that it's not good builds up in my chest. I carry myself back to the forest floor.
The grey hat's in my backpack, and I pull it out as soon as I'm not too busy holding myself in the air. Even though I've seen it hundreds of times, cause I've used it hundreds of times, the part of me that's human-me's still kinda surprised at the beat-up-ness of it. That doesn't matter that much, though, cause its magic is still just fine, and when I put it on top of my horns I feel power around me shift into an illusion of the same human child I usually pretend to be. I stare down at the false tan arms and dull little fingernails above where my real arms are blankly.
"I'm smaller than a ten-year-old," I realize out loud. I blink. I'm not ten, I've been an adult for six years some time this fall and I've already cleared a dozen dungeons on my own, but I'm smaller than a human child. "I really didn't understand humans before."
Then I notice a bit of blue shining through the fake shirt on my fake chest, and I feel myself go still.
"… Bahamut smite me !" I hiss recklessly. "I—How am I gonna disguise myself when my Array just shines right through !"
The spellfire on my chest doesn't answer (and how many times has it ruined my illusion that I just never noticed? ). Neither does my shield or the vials of protect-magics floating in my magic around me which is also going to ruin my disguise . And, as soul-burnt as I am, I couldn't carry even my shield reasonably. Fuck, I can't even walk right!
I feel myself start to droop, which is not-good, and so. I make a bad decision, and I pick myself up with my magic again, and I start carrying myself towards the road again, because it's better to meet people and have to run or fight cause they think I'm weird than to never meet people again and also catch human-me's depression or whatever human-me had.
Of course, the road's empty as far as I can see when I get on it, but that's how roads like this work. It's not even paved. My human memories should've kept their expectations low.
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I dunno if it's lucky or unlucky that it only takes three days of moving myself along the road to run into people again. It's definitely not lucky that I didn't know they were there until I turned a corner into their sightline, cause just floating at twice my height is a really dangerous first impression to make, but now it's too late and at least they can't see my tail right now.
…But they can see my face. And I've never actually thought to check if this hat translates my tail to my face, but it might oh Dragons.
Someone in the cart-camp I just stumbled up to says something that it takes me a moment to recognize as "Who's there?" in some kind of Gnomish.
"Um." I clear my throat and wave. "Hello!" I answer louder, also in Gnomish, which is probly kinda rusty cause I don't think I've spoken it since that dive into the Underdark but I have a good memory so hopefully it's good enough. My tail shivers behind me. "Um, I'm friendly? Not a monster?" Dragons, my voice is shaking like a leaf… I swallow hard. "C-can I come over there?"
The source of the voice, a human—a human man, sitting by a fire surrounded by logs, stands up and grabs a sheathed sword from where it was leaning against his log. "Slowly, please."
My tail shakes harder at that, but I nod. If I have to, I can kill a swordsman, but I don't wanna find out if I still have the stomach for it, so I carry myself towards him at half the speed I could.
"You're floating," the human says, sounding surprised through his weird accent or dialect or whatever it is. He blinks. "You're a kid ."
"I'm not ," I snap back without thinking. Then I freeze. "Um. I. I mean, I could, you might, Darastrixi svern —" and I force my mouth shut because there's not a good way to say any of this and I'm not helping myself with this!
The human snorts, and I try to make my tail still and immediately fail. "Sure, you're all grown up" he says in a voice that makes me think he's definitely patronizing me, and then he moves around behind the fire and sits down again and draws his sword to lay it across his lap, which is, um, not reassuring. He gestures at the other side of the fire with his not-sword-hand. "Come on, take a seat. Tell me how you're doing the floating thing, if you want."
I answer "Okay," in a much smaller voice than I meant to, and I pull myself the rest of the way to the fire and set myself down on a log. "Um, for the floating, I'm a mage," I add, feeling awkward. I wave my hand and wobble my shield. "It's the stuff-grabbing magic, um…" It takes a moment for me to hunt down the right word. "Telekinesis."
The human is… definitely making a face, now. "Oh? Magic?" he asks in a tone that tells me that face was him holding in laughter . "Do you have a magic wand too, kid?"
"I have my Array," I half-growl half-grumble, tail lashing angrily. I gesture to the part of the design that goes up my neck. "Makes me the right shape to—" I swing my hand out from my neck and through a practiced shape and pull power through myself "—channel power to do stuff." And I wrap my power around a log and lift it into the air. "So stop laughing at me!"
"Alright, kid," the human says. There's almost no smile left on his face now, which is very satisfying for the second and a half it takes me to remember he's holding a sword and I just maybe demonstrated myself a threat because of what, pride ? "Who're you travelling with?" he asks in a whole new sort of voice I don't know the meaning of.
I think of my camp, and my people, and how I'll probably never see them again. I set the log back down and grab my knees. "…No one."
The human makes a 'Mm' sound, and then he's quiet for a bit, and I try not to look too hard at his sword. "You hungry?" he asks eventually, quietly. He gestures to a pot on the fire. "I've got some stew here."
I nod. "If you have a bowl," I mumble into my knees. "I only have vials…" Everything else is still in the home I'll never see again.
"Sure," the human says. He stands up and slides his sword back into its sheath and steps over to a chest sitting between two of the logs and then I see something move out of the corner of my eye and my head snaps around to look at…
"…A horse?" I blink, tail curling slowly. It's still pretty far away, so I dunno what colors it is, but it… doesn't look right. "…Human, why's there a horse with forward-looking eyes sneaking up on us?"
"What did—A what?" I hear footsteps, and then the human has his sword in his hands again and he's standing next to me. "Isn't that the horse Augie brought back?" he asks probably-himself because how would I know. Then he glances at me. "You've got good eyes, kid."
"I'm Charririk," I tell him distractedly, cause I just realized I never actually introduced myself, as I watch the horse that's looking more and more not-quite-right walk closer.
"Lars," the human says in just about the same tone. "Look, something's not right about this, we had that horse tied up. You should get behind me."
I shake my head and wave my hand to lift myself into the air. "I'm strong," I tell him quietly. My eyes follow the things steps, and they're not quite right, there's more moving around than just the muscles that should. "If this thing needs fighting, I'm gonna protec—"
And then the horse opens its mouth which is full of lots of sharp teeth instead of flat ones like it should have and it screams like an angry bird made of stitched-together pigs, and it's too late to talk. I snap my fingers and call my sword into my magic just as the monster starts to charge.
"HELP!" Lars shouts, and then the horse jumps and he barely moves enough that it doesn't land on him. His sword's point hits the horse-thing on the way, and leaves a long, shallow cut, and the horse-thing doesn't even seem to notice.
And then I sweep my hands through the air, and I hit the horse-thing twice. The false-sword made of my magic strikes first, from behind the thing, and it cuts into its leg, and then the metal one drives its point into the horse-thing's chest while it's distracted and tears a long hole underneath it and it turns towards me and doesn't stop moving . It jumps again, this time at me , and I get my metal-sword around to try and cut its head off before it gets to me but it keeps coming anyway even though I succeeded .
"Fuck!" I screech in English as one of the horse-thing's hooves smashes into my protect-magic and barely bounces back. "Regener—Fire?" We have fire. I fling myself over the thing's halfway-detached head, to the other side of the big campfire, and jam my metal-sword's handle into the ground to brace.
And then someone shouts "Eyes!" in the same weird Gnomish that Lars uses and I spin to look at where that came from and—
"Aah!" I screech, because something just flashed really bright and my eyes are in a lot of pain like I just decided to stare at the sun and I almost dropped myself because of it. I pull myself up higher in the air and swing my sword blindly where I think the horse-thing is, cause I'm not gonna do any good while I'm blind, and shout, "Flesh-wounds don't hurt it also more warning please!"
And then something explodes a lot of times in a row and my human memories recognize the sound as gunfire and now I'm blind and deaf in the middle of a battle, which is just fantastic. At least I'm seeing big spots of light instead of just white now, though, that's a sign I won't be blind for more than a few seconds and hopefully the horse-thing can't fly Dragons above and below please don't let it fly.
Of course, my barely-there vision goes orange just when I think that and I yank myself to the side as something that feels very hot shoots by me was that fire? Does this thing breathe fire? "Does this thing BREATHE FIRE!"
I blink hard and keep moving and bring my shield around so it's hopefully between me and the fire-breathing horse-thing and then another very-loud-thing happens and my ears go back from starting-to-ring-less to ringing-a-lot. By this point, my eyes can see kind-of blobs of things and that's enough damn me , so I dive for the big blob with the tentacles because that's gonna be the monster and shove my metal-sword down through its middle and into the ground with a shout.
"I think that'll hold it!" I shout, and then because the gods were apparently listening and are terrible, one of the tentacles I can barely see flicks out and wraps around my ankle and pulls me out of my grip which is really bad because how am I gonna kill this thing before it bites me in half!
And the monster explodes, with another really bright flash, and I'm back to blinded, but also I'm on the ground, which means it
let me go
. As fast as I can, I flick my hands out and channel power to lift myself up again, and something
else
grabs me. Before I can react, someone has me wrapped up in a bear hug, and I'm helpless again. I slump.