Silver held his spear close, listening. There was no noise, just endless quiet, and the plotting of Axel’s feel into the dirt. He held his weapon, the pointed edge facing away. He intuited the basic nature of the thing, to poke at the enemy, but he wondered about Axel’s weapon; a wicked looking curved blade.

It didn’t look very useful for fighting, though Silver had to admit it was plenty sharp, something Axel loved to demonstrate. All along their expedition he swung it, tearing through mushroom flesh like it wasn’t even there. Axel grinned wickedly as he admired it, turning it over in his hands again and again. Silver subconsciously backed away when Axel showed his sharpened teeth. Soon, the landscape of the cavern changed.

The previously smooth landscape rippled, dunes of rot and dirt filling their sight. Mushrooms emerged from these too. The farther away from the epicenter of their spread, the more the fungus mutated, here looking small and squat and round, covered in spines or spikes. Silver raised a hand to Axel, signaling him to stop. “What this?” Silver asked, digging his hands into one of the dunes of rot.

“Rot pile.” Axel said, unimpressed, arms folded.

“Fresh rot.” Silver replied, running the wet dirt through his fingers. At least, he hoped it was dirt. It was still wet— not in the way the dew covered, humid dirt was, but like it had just been flushed through water. Silver looked up. Above this dune of rot was one of the many holes that perforated the ceiling of this floor. Dirt and rot caked the walls of the tunnel above them, dimly lit by mushrooms encroaching the border of the hole.

This dune was among the smallest.

“No silver here. Only Silver.” Axel smirked, a twisted expression on his reptilian face as Silver stood and they continued forward.

Silver paused again only a few minutes later, hearing an odd, scraping noise. Axel heard it too, holding his weapon and looking around. They paced carefully, scanning the horizon of dunes around them. The dunes had gotten larger the further they had headed this way, each one aligned with one of the holes above. They stood nervously, hearing the odd, buckling noise. It was less a scrape, and more the sound of rolling, distantly echoing towards them from multiple directions. Eventually, they ended up back to back, holding their weapons, when the noise stopped. It was replaced with a distant, echoing thump, thump, thump that was quickly growing louder, falling towards them, slamming against the walls of the tunnels above them—

A red Kobold hit one of the rot piles, followed by the dirt and muck she displaced as she fell. She landed with a splat, sending mud out in a splash around her. Axel pointed a blade at her, but she didn’t see them, or at least didn’t react if she should.

Her tail was wide, but cut short, the wound still fresh, her hand removed as well, gore dripping into the rot pile. Silver looked to the ceiling, raising his spear high.

“Kobold?” Axel asked, confused.

“One of us…” Silver replied, creeping over to the unconscious Kobold. He poked her with the bottom of his spear, but she didn’t react or stir. “From above.” Silver looked up at the hole she had fallen through. What was up there? More Kobolds, like them? More insects?

The red Kobold was bigger than either Axel, a full head taller, with bigger muscles and a wider frame than either of them. Her legs were shorter, her body larger.

“Not us.” Axel spoke, his tone aggressive. He gestured with the blade at her. “Not ours. Continue on. Find wall.”

“No.” Silver shook his head. The Kobold was hurt. Bleeding. He would take her back. If he left her here, she would bleed out. The gods could fix her. Silver lifted her as high as he could, propping her up on his own shoulder, and dragging her back. He stumbled, every step a massive effort against the foamy earth.

Axel watched, conflicted. He looked towards his goal, to the mission he had been given, then back to Silver. Out, towards the chittering things, through the endless mushroom forest, alone? Or together with Silver? Reluctantly, he supported half of the red Kobold’s weight, dragging her back to the dungeon.

It took nearly twice as long to return, and Silver sighed in relief as he caught sight of the stone edifice rising in the distance.

Valleria awoke to a pounding headache, a burning right arm, a missing tail, and the softest bed she’d ever felt. Her first thought was that, if this was the afterlife, it wasn’t so bad. Her mother had told her that on a Kobolds death, they would be reborn as a dragon.

Valleria didn’t feel like a dragon.

She felt like shit.

Like royal shit, though. At first she thought that she must have been left somewhere laying in mud, but it was too warm here. On top of that, there was thin cloth covering her. Slowly, keeping her breathing even, faking sleep, she cracked her eyes open. Inches from her face was another Kobold, glistening green, staring down at her. She jumped so quickly she accidentally head-butted him, before grabbing at her head in the pain and confusion.

The tiny, green Kobold worked to keep the plate of food he had balanced. Valleria only just noticed it as it tipped precariously towards her.

How had she just noticed? The aroma filled the room, flooding her senses. Her stomach rumbled. How long had it been since she ate?

“You rest. Injured.” The green Kobold said, before turning around and looking into the air behind himself.

“Thank you…” Valleria rasped.

The green Kobold continued to stare into the empty room behind him. He moved quickly, setting the bowl of food onto the table beside the bed. Valleria pulled the blanket around her closer, examining it. It was the finest cloth she had ever seen— she didn’t even see a single hole in it, a single tattered edge. There was no stitching at all to fray, it was like it was a single piece of—

“Can hear? Mark?” the green Kobold interrupted her thoughts. She looked up.

“I can hear you. Are you Mark?” She asked. “I’m… you can call me Val.” She moved to raise herself up, pushing hard with her left hand, grunting. Her whole body ached.

“No.” The Kobold answered, his tone more aggressive. “I’m Mala. He Mark.” The Kobold squinted, his face screwed in apparent contemplation. “Alverost say… why you speak… common tongue.”

“Common… tongue?” Valleria asked, confused at this little lizard with unending questions. He appeared to be talking to someone else. Talking for someone else. “Who is Alverost? And Mark? Your clan leaders? Where am I?”

Valleria looked at the platter of… food. It was plant matter, surely. Mushrooms. Soaked in water. They had some of those in the rot city. But none like… this. She looked around the room for the first time, drinking it in. A mushroom occupied one corner, flooding the room with a dim… light? They had plants that produced light here!? Valleria immediately leaned towards it, in spite of the pain, observing it carefully. The rot city was covered almost every hour in darkness, only lighting for a brief flicker of the day.

“Common tongue… Alverost speak. You speak. Strange, here. Eat, you must recover.” Mala said. Valleria looked to the bowl of mushrooms, reaching her hand inside of it, pulling out soggy mushrooms, and shoving them into her mouth as fast as she could. The liquid was warm, and she shivered at the taste of the cooked stew. “Not like that! Use spoon.” Mala interrupted her. She stopped, looking up at him. He lifted a small tool from the tray, made of—

“Is that… wood?” Valleria exclaimed. It wasn’t any ordinary wood either— it was fresh wood. Unstained, unrotten. Pristine. The kind you build thrones out of. Is this what wood looked like? Made of smooth white, adorned and marbled with green— Valleria grabbed it, clutching it close. Treasure— treasure to bring to the clan—

No. She was clanless now. She closed her eyes hard. She was no longer Longtail. “You use something like this… to eat?!” She was aghast. Wood was… treasure.

“Yes. Have many.” Mala produced a second spoon from the white pants that covered his lower body.

Valleria looked up towards his spoon. Then back to her own. She tried to stab it into the mushrooms in the stew, to no avail.

She kept trying, eventually succeeding in spooning out mouthfuls, shoveling them as fast as she could manage. Her stomach rumbled like a true dragons now. She grabbed the bowl, tilting it back in her mouth, devouring it as fast as she could.

“Alverost, Mark, Gods. Heal Kobolds. Build home. Heal you?” Mala indicated the last bit as a question. It made her wince. She put the spoon down, looking over at the nub of her hand.

“What do you mean build home? This… all of this, was them?”

“Yes. Light in the dark. Food.” Mala perked up at this. “Bowls. Cooking!”

“Are they the ones that made that wood? And this… this glowing mushroom?”

Mala looked behind him again, staring into space. “Yes. Make wood. Make many.”

“How many of you Kobolds are there here?”

Mala waited a second before replying. “Two dozen? Thirty?” Mala repeated.

Valleria frowned, conflicted. Some strange entity was here, making treasure. What if it was similar— or even the same— that she had brought home that day? The treasure eating stone. Still, though, it might be a risk she would have to take. They had thrown her to the Pit— The Pit! No one had ever returned from the Pit, through any of the various tunnels that lead below. And whats more, her brother was up there in their city, alone and defenseless. He couldn’t fend for himself— he was still a youngling! So she steeled herself, meeting the eyes of Mala.

“How can they heal me?”

Mala looked into space much longer before replying.

“You agree. They heal you. You tell them about above— surface. Kobold city. Monsters.” He finally answered after a long delay.

Valleria nodded. “Okay. Take me to them.”

Mala looked back. Then he looked to her bowl of food, now empty.

“Follow me.” Without any delay, Mala stood, leading Valleria out of the room. She stopped at the door, running her hand down it. It was wood, too, pristine. Enough to build a treasure out of.

Her eyes wandered up and down the hallway, lingering on the various small Kobolds that stared at her in curiosity. They were in various states of undress, wearing a mix of white, green, and black clothes. They were a motley mix of deep colors, blending in with the stone. Warped mushrooms hung from the ceiling, filling the hallway with a dim light. The stone floor was patterned into bricks carved away from the ground.

Her eyes flickered to every door as she passed them. For the most part, they were the same white and green, though some were a deep, dark black, that nearly seemed to glitter at the edges.

Eventually, her path reached its end. Mala stood outside of an open staircase that lead downward.

“You go. I stay here.”

Valleria swallowed, taking another look around the strange place she had ended up in, wrapping her fingers around the nub of her right hand. Then she began to descend the steps. The gray stone slowly turned darker, to an ebon, as the walls changed to reliefs of pillars. The whitish light of above was replaced with a nearly violet light here. Eventually, the hallway opened wider, revealing an open room. On the other side of it sat a gem— unlike the one she had found before, but… bigger.

Two Kobolds, matching its different colors, stood at either side of it, holding sharp, jagged weapons. They reminded her of the clan guards that protected Lord Raeph. The same ones that escorted her before him to be declared guilty of crime. These ones, though, were much shorter. She stepped towards the Kobolds, causing them to aim their weapons at her.

“Are you Mark and Alverost?” She asked.

The white Kobold looked back at her in confusion, then to the stone at the center of the room.

There was an awkward pause, and then she saw a sea of swimming lights beneath the stone floor. Like a river they moved, flowing, and they rose, and coalesced together, touching the stone floor in a spot of bright, rainbow light.

“Touch roots. Alverost heal you.” The black Kobold spoke. She looked between the roots and the two Kobolds, and between the roots and the crystal at the other side of the room. It was completely featureless, but looking at it, she could swear it seemed… impatient.

She leaned down, supplicating herself on her knees, and reaching the nub of her right hand to the mana. It connected, and—

Pain. Mind numbing, blistering pain, as mana flowed through every single fiber, every single vein in her body. She knew thats what it was because of the two minds that were touched her own. They circled her like sharks. Gods indeed, how had she not noticed? They were like twin suns, spiraling around her, poking and prodding at everything she was. They sat upon her mind like heavy weights, pinning her to the floor. Their very presence in the room pressed against her. This entire time she had been in their domain without realizing it, so thick and viscous it made the air like a solid.

“Val— leria. Valleria. Let me heal you.” One of the two voices spoke, soft and gentle.

“Yes. Please.” She whimpered.

She had thought she was in pain before, her right arm bloodied and bandaged, her tail removed.

She hadn’t known what pain was, not until she felt the fire of mana stitching together flesh, weaving sinew and bone and nerve tissue, her right hand a burning flash of bright light.

When it was done, her mind was a confused mess, a chaotic mix. She still felt the god’s presence in the room, poking and prodding and twisting, and her head was filled with a million swimming thoughts, like—

What the hell was a shark? A fish? And why do they circle people? And what is a twin sun? She could feel them, now. The voices that hovered in midair, that the Kobolds spoke to.

“Tell us of the surface.”