“Identify yourself!” Roggsar shouted, voice cracking as his claws dug into the handle of his pick. “Which tribe are you from! Answer quickly or I’ll put my pick through your skull.”

Sam just cocked his head to the side. He ignored the flurry of activity just beyond the wooden gate as he looked at Roggsar with all of his senses for the first time. Bad air puffed out of the guard's nostrils as his body glowed a dull orange beneath his rat-leather jerkin.

There was something… satisfying about his new angle, looking down slightly on the guard that had towered over him . Roggsar shuffled back a step, eyes flickering from side to side as he sought some sort of support or backup.

“Say something damnit!” The guard was practically shouting now, the knuckles of his claws white as they clenched around the pick. “Are you a friend or foe!”

The thud of footsteps echoed behind Roggsar as a handful of guards ran up, hastily tying their armor into place as they approached with their picks in the crooks of their arms. Paklen led them, her face almost alien without the usual good-natured smile on her muzzle. She stared past Sam, peering into the darkness beyond him as she tried to determine whether he was the vanguard of some sort of attack.

“Paklen!” Samazzar called out, finally breaking his silence. “I thought you said you’d be waiting for me to come back so we could have some rat stew and talk about my adventures. Your friends can come with but I’m not buying them stew with my merits, they’ll have to get their own.”

She skidded to a halt, squinting at Sam for almost ten seconds before she voiced her disbelief.

“Little dragon?

“I don't know about little,” he replied, gesturing downward with false humility. “I’m a fair bit taller than you now.”

“You’re still awfully short for a dragon,” she responded, but there wasn’t any heat to her voice. Instead she looked him up and down with awe. “What in the name of everything that’s good happened Samazzar? Did you decide you were sick of being a runt and speed through the entirety of your puberty in just two weeks?”

“Maybe I did.” Sam grinned down at her. “How are Takkla, Dussok and Crone Tazzaera doing? I don’t know if I’ve ever spent this long apart from them.”

Paklen slung her pick over her left shoulder, waving a claw at the rest of the guards. Only two of the four kobolds had managed to fully tie their armor into place. One was surreptitiously trying to tie down a pauldron while the other simply let her greave flap open and unsecured.

“False alarm,” Paklen called out, motioning dismissively at the troupe of soldiers. “There aren’t any invaders. Just Samazzar coming back from who knows where after miraculously growing to twice his normal size.”

“But,” Roggsar’s tongue darted out, licking his thin lips. “How do we know it’s him? Whoever this is, they don’t look anything like Samazzar.”

“Oh that’s him,” Paklen replied with a snort. “I’d recognize that shit-eating smirk anywhere. Plus, he knew me by name and more or less referenced our earlier conversation verbatim. I had no idea how he managed to pull this transformation of his off, but I’ve learned better than to second-guess the little scamp.”

The four guards that had accompanied Paklen to the gate grumbled, turning around and wandering off toward the barracks where they had been resting. The one trying and failing to tie on their pauldron ripped the chunk of armor off of their shoulder and threw it to the cave floor in disgust. A second later, he sheepishly picked it up off the ground and tucked it under an arm before jogging after his companions to catch up.

“But seriously Sam,” Paklen turned back to him, planting one of her claws on a hip and shaking her head. “How did you manage it? You were hardly up to my shoulder when you left and now you’re looking down at me.”

“I triggered my bloodline,” he replied with a grin, slapping a claw to the scales of his chest, just above his heart. “I told you that I had a dragon in me. Just you wait, this is only the start.”

“But how?” Roggsar whispered, staring at Samazzar like he was a ghost. “Lellassa said that you failed your awakening. There’s no way your bloodline waited this long to trigger.”

“I activated it on my own.” Sam beamed at the incredulous guard. “I found a creature in the deep tunnels with a draconic bloodline and harvested it. One thing led to another and I manifested my bloodline gifts then and there.”

“But that’s impossible.” Roggsar shook his head. “Without Lellassa’s help, there’s no way you would have survived a full transformation.”

“Wait,” the guard froze, cocking his head at Samazzar. “Did you say gifts? As in plural? Did you develop a bloodline ability in addition to growing bigger and stronger-”

“Calm down Roggsar,” Paklen cut him off. “If the little dragon wants to keep his secrets he can. Our job is only to make sure he isn’t a threat to the clan. Sam is sam. He’s only a threat to kobolds that want to stand in the way of his dreams. Let him through.”

“But Paklen,” the other guard turned to her with a frown. “Lellassa will want to know that he’s activated his bloodline. You know that she tries to keep records of every ability manifested in the clan.”

“Then she can ask him about it herself,” Paklen replied acidly, crossing her arms and staring down Roggsar. “This is Samazzar we’re talking about. Without him and his friends collecting more food, the tunnels around here would be a whole lot less crowded. I’m not going to let you give him a hard time.”

“So I can go in?” Sam asked brightly, his thoughts already whirring ahead to his reunion with Crone Tazzaera and his littermates.

“Welcome home little dragon,” Paklen answered with a warm smile, stepping aside so that she no longer barred his path. “It’s good to have you back.”

Five paces to the left, Roggsar shifted uncomfortably, his unhappiness written all over his face. Still, he didn’t say or do anything, letting Samazzar pass en route to the creche cave without any further comment.

Main Cave and the tunnels leading out of it just seemed different from Sam’s new angle. Where they had once been full of adults, larger than life figures engaged in the mysterious acts that kept the tribe functioning, now he just saw dirty walls, poorly constructed huts, and scared kobolds searching for excuses not to get up off their tails.

It might have been his new height, but the mystery and wonder had faded from the tribes’ actions. As a pup, he’d always assumed that adults were constantly busy, gathering food, fighting foes, and laboring for the general welfare of the tribe. Now, as he looked down upon them for the first time, they all looked so terribly mundane. Refusing to make eye-contact with him as they scurried away, tails flush against the floor so as to not show disrespect toward a bigger and more physically imposing kobold.

Silently, Samazzar glanced down at his claws as he walked. For perhaps the hundredth time he reached down, rubbing them against his scales in a vain attempt to clean Iksos’ blood from them. In the alternative, it was possible that his malaise was based off of what he had been forced to do.

He stepped into the creche cave and a smile lit Sam’s muzzle. In the center of the cavern, a dozen and a half pups pulled on one end of a vine opposite Dussok. The big kobold made a show of struggling as he played tug-o-war with the little ones, but Sam noted the easy steady breaths coming from his littermate’s barrel-like chest.

Nearby, Takkla sat atop a flat circular rock that someone had dragged next to the cave’s fire. Her eyes were closed and claws extended toward the flames as Samazzar walked in, but almost the moment he crossed the threshold, her head whipped around and her eyes opened.

She glared at him across the open cavern for a second or two before a smile bloomed on her muzzle. Takkla hopped up from her seat with a smooth, almost snake-like agility before bounding across the cave toward him.

“Dussok!” She shouted, her claws clicking as they pounded against the stone floor. “Get Crone Tazzaera! Sam’s back, and the crazy little scoundrel managed to pull it off. I’m not sure what he did, but he managed to evolve his bloodline.”

Dussok’s body blurred, his muscles seeming to expand as they flexed. He pulled, jerking the string of pups off of their feet as they clung to the vine. One or two had a moment to yip in surprise before they spilled to the cavern floor in a tumble of skinny limbs and alarmed whines.

He turned back, grinning at Sam with a quick wave of his claw before taking off at a job toward the small side cavern where Tazzaera spent most of her time.

Before Sam could say anything to Dussok’s retreating back, Takkla leapt into the air, wrapping him up into a hug.

“It’s good to see you again Samazzar!” She laughed, extricated herself from him as she led the way back toward the fire. “For the first week Dussok and I kept to our day to day routines, training and trying to unlock the mysteries with Crone Tazzaera’s help, but after that-”

She shrugged helplessly before continuing. “Dussok was just complaining about how your absence had made our lives too predictable and mundane.”

“It wasn’t a complaint!” The big kobold shouted back, exiting Tazzaera’s side chamber with the withered old woman clutching his arm for support. “Samazzar has a way of making things exciting in a bad way. I could do without the excitement of being pursued through half of the deep tunnels by a cave millipede.”

“Still,” Dussok continued, reaching down and easily lifting the frail crone up to her traditional seat next to the fire. “It is good to see you again. Even if you did somehow manage to grow until you’re almost as tall as me.”

“Somehow?” Crone Tazzaera asked acidly, only to break down into a prolonged coughing fit.

Finally, the crone’s violent hacking came to an end. She glared at Sam through a pair of rheumy, watering eyes.

“Do you care to tell everyone the level of the bloodline you ingested to trigger your evolution?” She asked crossly, rapping her cane on the rocks of her ledge for emphasis. “Or maybe it was a matter of quantity. How much heart’s blood did you absorb? Was it three times a safe dose or did you only double up?”

Sam shuffled awkwardly. Despite towering over the crone, he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes. Instead he kept his gaze on his feet while she glared at him.

“Still,” she wheezed. “What’s done is done. You knew better than to consume too much blood essence and I imagine you paid the price for doing so. The changes you underwent couldn’t have been pleasant or painless.

He finally looked at her, nodding shallowly with an anxious smile on his muzzle.

“Come over here so I can have a better look at what you’ve done to yourself,” Tazzaera wheezed, waving a claw at him. “I do hope you got at least some of the ingredients I sent you out for. As impressive as your changes are, it would be a shame for you to have spent all that time and effort only for your magical progress to stall.”

“Of course!” He replied, jogging over toward the fire circle as he rooted around in his bag for the spoils of his journey.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam made out Takkla and Dussok walking to meet each other. They met just as he was arriving at the fire, holding claws gently while Dussok inclined his head downward, resting his chin atop Takkla’s head as he whispered something to her.

Good for them. They’d been through a lot, and apparently giving them a bit of time alone was exactly what the two of them needed.

“So little dragon,” Tazzaera began, nodding in the direction of his littermates while Sam began sorting through his pack to remove the rare chunks of fungus that were the focus of his expedition. “Now that you’re all grown up, when are you going to look into finding a mate? At this rate Takkla and Dussok will have me looking after eggs of their own by this time next year.”

“Tazzaera,” Takkla hissed, her face lighting up with warmth in Sam’s heat vision. The older kobold just chuckled only to break down into another coughing fit.

Samazzar frowned. Now that the crone brought it up, he honestly couldn’t think of any kobold, male or female, other than Lellassa that he’d been attracted to. There simply wasn’t really anything about kobolds that interested him. Their bodies were thin and spindly, talons blunt, and scales dull and lusterless.

As for Lellassa? There were rumors around Center Cave about her. That her bloodline ability let her influence the mind of anything with scales. Sam wasn’t entirely sure he believed it, but at the same time there wasn’t any denying that she was the only kobold he’d reacted to in that way.

“I don’t know,” he responded a bit stiffly once the crone stopped coughing. “I haven’t really met anyone that sparked my fancy. I guess I’ve just been too focused on magic and my bloodline to actually pay much attention to girls.”

“That’s how you end up like me, boy!” Tazzaera cackled. “The most powerful magic user in the entire clan, but still withered and alone.”

“Don’t worry Sam.” Dussok nodded at him from across the fire. “A relationship will come to you in its own time. There’s no need to force it. Your efforts are better spent working on yourself.”

“Of course,” Samazzar replied, grateful for the out the big kobold had provided him. “It almost doesn’t make sense for me to pursue someone from the tribe. After all, it’s only a matter of time before I evolve into another species entirely.”

Tazzaera shook her head, dulled and yellowed teeth poking out of her muzzle as she smiled at him. The fire popped, sending a plume of sparks up into the air as Samazzar handed his hard-won reagents over to the crone.

As the tiny motes of fire floated on the wind currents, he took a moment to marvel at how the very way he viewed the world had changed. The flecks of burning wood in the air glowed in his vision, both as a heat source source, and as embers themselves. Simply by thinking about them, he knew that they had come from his fire, and roughly when the twigs and firemoss that had created them were added to the blaze.

The air itself was a mixture of good and bad air, a bubble of low pressure created by the heat from the fire pressing upward and stirring the flow of air around the room. The sparks danced and floated as they flowed through the cavern before eventually winking out, their fuel expended.

“Perfect!” The Crone exclaimed as she finished sorting through the reagents. “There’s more than enough here to get you to the fourth rank in all three mysteries.”

“So that means rudimentary control and amplification of the mysteries right?” Takkla asked, her eyes gleaming as she leaned forward. “Samazzar will finally be able to change the outside world with his magic?”

“Oh, it’ll take a lot of work, but he’ll be able to do more than just impact the world,” Tazzaera beamed back at the three of them. “Once he reaches the fourth rank, Sam will finally be able to learn the noble mystery of fire. The little dragon will be taking his first steps toward becoming a magi and entering a much larger world.”

“Congratulations Sam,” Dussok rumbled, leaning over to clap him on the shoulder. “Takkla and I will catch up to you in the mysteries sooner or later, but this is huge. You’re about to be the first member of the tribe able to wield the mystery of fire in years.”

A bright smile lit up Samazzar’s face as he looked around the fire. There wasn’t an inkling of the jealousy and fear that he had seen in the tunnels outside of Center Cave. Dussok and Takkla were happy for him, and Crone Tazzaera looked more proud than anything.

“When can we start?” He asked, his voice cracking despite his new larger size and more developed lungs. His friends’ smiles enveloped him, and a warmth filled Sam’s chest that had nothing to do with the roaring flames.