Chapter 7: Are Kobolds Cold-Blooded?

Azwold used his canoe’s oar as a walking staff and I hobbled behind as we hiked to the dark hole in the tree line. We found a wooden spike driven into the ground where sand gave way to soil. Tied around it were clusters of black-and-white feathers.

“How much of your plans are hunches?” I asked, entwining hand vines with missing finger bones. “Or are you privy to more specific information than I? My phantom fingers led me true, but how do you know where to go?”

“I have a quest log, yeah,” he said. “And maps.”

“Care to share it with the rest of the party?” I rolled my hands.

“Sure, I can try,” he said. “Hang on. I can see all this stuff in my viewer. It just looks like my character is holding the tablet. But I bet I could just show you from my tablet. Wait, do you have one?”

I realized he was right. I reached into the coat’s pocket and set about answering my questions:

Quest Name: “Gnarlroot the Eld’s Stolen Bones” (Progress: 5/11)

Quest Type: Epic, Multi-stage, Class-specific

Class: Spirit Mage (Level 31+)

Materials: [Hive Scepter], [Honeycomb], [Grandfather’s Journal], [Mantis Goggles], [Tower Key: AD]

Objectives:

- Unravel the clues in [Grandfather’s Journal] to discover your next location

- Pick up where your ancestor left off, and restore Balance

Rewards: 300XP, 500 gold, [Eld Rib], [Grave Buckle]

(When 11/11 Complete: [Spell: Summon Epic Skeleton])

Quest Text:

…

I glossed over much of it. The quest text had puzzled Azwold, but it was a meandering maze of jargon to me.

“Does the red color of the text mean something?” I asked.

“Means it’s too high level for you,” he said. “You’re still a nub.”

‘Nub’ was new, and I did not care for his tone.

“My hunch is you’ll get killed,” I said. “I am already dead, so’s fine by me.”

“There’s a link between this place and the Spirit Realm. I feel it as sure as my own pulse. But,” Azwold’s tone shifted somberly, “it’s stifled. Something’s causing static amidst the signal.”

“Say you?” my frame sagged. “Let us explore, then. If we must.”

“You have to follow me anyway.”

“Curse you,” I groaned. “The illusion of freedom is the least I ask.”

“Come.”

Azwold coiled his coat tight, then crawled through a tangle of entryway. I followed into the hole-in-brambles, though it was not human-sized. Moonlight faded as we went.

Beyond the entryway and below the jagged canopy, I spied a galaxy of faint purple light. The forest sprawled out before me, dotted through with lamp-lit paths. Azwold walked toward the closest of the dim lights. I had seen them at a distance already, but the mage was more familiar with this world than I. I let him orient us and choose a path. This time.

The lamps’ peculiar nature demanded closer inspection; the bodies of small, purplish squid stretched out over bioluminescent plant bulbs. Azwold said the glow might have a mild black-light effect, but his gear was too drab to react. I missed the meaning of this, insisting he choose a direction instead of prattling.

He sensed whispers of the Spirit Realm most to the north, so north we went. As we ventured, the lamps imparted a sense of walking alongside drifting jellyfish; something I had done below the waves just yesterday.

The mage put his hand up to halt us. “Something on the path,” he whispered. “Go check it out.”

“Well, since you asked nicely.”

Azwold snuck along behind me as I crept, growing surer by the step that what lay in our path was dead. The mage approached and knelt to inspect.

“He hasn’t been dead long enough to raise,” said Azwold over a shoulder. “That means it’s a player.”

“Oh good.”

“I wonder why he hasn’t rezzed?” he said. “Maybe we should find a graveyard and ask Belvan.”

“What?” I asked, surprised. “That name belongs to one of my graveyard’s spirits.”

Azwold gave me a puzzled look. “Every graveyard has a Belvan, Eld.”

“Do you say so?”

“Yeah, he kinda hangs around to help people figure out how to find their corpse and revive if possible. Most players barely talk to him. Kinda sad, really. But my class has more interaction with him. We can see Belvans while not a ghost. Not many can.”

“Ah,” I said, dubious.

“Telemoon,” Azwold read a logo embroidered on the man’s jacket.

“Mean something?”

“They’re a guild. But more like a techno-infestation corporation.”

“You’ll not twist my tongue,” my jaw sagged. “Keep your secrets, mortal.”

“What tongue? C’mon. We gotta be swifter. Telemoon is bad news. That’s all you need to know. This squid glow’s bad for stealth.”

“Aye.”

We walked on and Azwold explained further. Telemoon was a relatively new guild. Its ranks were exclusive and members focused most of their time leveling Gadget Craft. They built strange structures, and most players considered them a nuisance. Azwold explained the concept of “Role Playing” to me, and while I found it odd, it was comprehensible. I knew of actors and theatre troupes. He explained that Telemoon never broke character, but preferred to act on their own, as a group. They often ignored narratives that did not align with theirs. Speculation as to their goals was widespread. The prevailing theory was: to convert the game from a fantasy feel to a more sci-fi one. He tried to differentiate between ‘fantasy’ and ‘sci-fi’ for me, but the most I understood was Telemoon intended to multiply gadgets until one-at-a-time becomes a mounting magnitude.

“Naturally, there’s resistance to their agenda,” said Azwold. “Most are opposed to it, so Telemoon’s progress is usually slow or undermined. But if we don’t shut them down at every turn, they could gain an advantage.”

“Isn’t Gadget Craft your chosen job?” I asked.

“Well, yes,” he said, “but I use my stuff for good.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep.” He grew taciturn.

After better than an hour’s half, we came upon a fence. It was short with wooden spikes similar to the feather-adorned trailhead marker. A jagged halo of moonlight glimmered through a canopy clearing. Like a broken wooden ribcage, the posts enveloped an array of mounds and grim totems.

“Well well,” whispered Azwold.

“A lizard cur graveyard?”

Azwold unclasped the [Hive Scepter] from his belt.

“Defile if you must,” I looked away, wondering where Belvan was. If he was anything like my Belvan, he would advise Azwold against disturbing the grounds.

“We’ve wandered this far in peace because something’s wrong. Must be.”

“Mayhap they’re afeared?” I held up my regenerated arm vines toward a shaft of moonlight, wriggling my fibrous fingers like a spooky puppeteer.

“Maybe,” said Azwold.

The Spirit Mage then opened his tablet and donned his goggles. The smooth black figure 8 lent his head a mantis-like shape. He read with grim conviction. The scepter shimmered a fluorescent indigo, drawing electricity from its enchantment. A filigree of filaments wriggled out, raining from the scepter’s head, leaping from wooden spike to twisted totem faster than the eye could read.

The world decelerated as the quick-flickering bolts cast the graveyard into slow-motion. The dirt mounds trembled. Pebble stacks floundered. Whittled stick and carved bone mementos toppled. But his conviction wavered. He halted, letting the scepter hang in his grip, and the spell fizzled.

We stood in silence as Azwold let his breathing slow. He clasped the [Hive Scepter] to his belt loop.

“Can you [Sense: Warmth of Life]?” he asked, swatting at an insect flying past his ear.

“Of course. Almost always,” I sneered. “Such a malodorous curse.”

“Where?” Azwold held up his oar-staff like a baseball bat.

“Nothing humanoid though, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not talking about dreaming squirrels,” Azwold glared at me, “and you know it.”

“Mayhap kobolds are cold-blooded?”

“Could be.”

The mage grunted; a soft acceptance that we were vulnerable, methought. How encouraging. His research should have prevented such oversights. Had he not studied this place? A smattering of hearsay and amateur illustrations must have fixed notions in his mind.

“[Grandfather’s Journal] doesn’t have an exact location for a Spirit Realm nexus,” said Azwold, “if that is what we’re hunting. I expected more excitement by now, though. A clue or few? It’s time to take stock and reorient.”

He swiped a finger around on the tablet’s screen.

“Watch out,” Azwold pointed the device’s light at the ground, “there’s something off about those pine needles.” He peered around, scanning, then picked up a rock and tossed it.

Twigs snapped and ropes hissed, flinging needles into the air as a net vaulted toward lofty branches. In an instant, Azwold was shining his tablet’s light around. Our gaze gravitated toward strange, shifting shapes beyond the bushes.

There was a rustle in the shadows. Something flew at Azwold from the underbrush. A fishing net… weighted with stones; it tugged him down to his knees. Premeditated and coordinated, we could not react fast enough. How long had they watched us?

“The easiest path is never the truest,” I sighed. “Like I always say.”

“Hush. You never say that,” Azwold switched from maps to spells on his tablet. “Defend me,” he said.

“I tried. You recall? When I said: ‘Let us avoid yon dark forest.’”

A lone skeletal kobold appeared on the path. Its empty gaze fixed on me.

“Who controls you?” Azwold demanded.

“I sense something,” I spoke, disturbed at another sudden ability to sense something. I stared at the grizzly thing, “Horror.”

“They’re afraid? We can use that to our advantage.”

“Nay, not pure fear. Disgust is more the flavor. A violation,” I said, sour. “I can sympathize.”

“Never mind. Can you talk to it? Tell it to make the live ones show themselves.”

The lone bone kobold ambled toward me, jangling. It touched a talisman hung around its neck, then held it up to my animation source. Unhappily, I allowed little tendrils of rib vine to twine around the creature’s jasper talisman. Then I listened.

When the communication ended, I untwisted from the thing’s gemstone. “They demand you help them,” I said. “But first undo the desecration you’ve wrought.”

“I,” Azwold faltered, “that’d take too much mana. I’d be weak. Also, desecration? I spared their graveyard. On purpose. Does this whole questline take place in wacky town? Why and how… hostile mobs are asking us for help? Since when can that happen?”

“They’ve let us come this far for a reason, and we passed a mercy test, but they won’t let us pass a step further ’til you prove yourself a kobold kin friend. Or mayhap ‘ally.’ Translation’s a bit muddy.”

“Friend?” Azwold grumbled, “These creatures are indiscriminate killers. Famous for violence. If we help, what’s that make us?”

“We?” I hummed, “I do as you command. What’s that make me? Accessory to profane arts?”

“You don’t make it too far as a Spirit Mage by wondering whose gram-gram or pap-pap any particular bone pile might be.”

“Aye,” I said, aloof. “All in service of the ‘greater good’ and what-have-you.”

“Exactly, yes.”

“As may be,” I raised a bony finger, “Counterpoint: restore the gravesite, or you can be murdered by a hundred arrows. Can you not feel the eyes? Smell the anger?”

“Alright,” said Azwold, “if we have to.”

The skeletal kobold bent and snatched Azwold’s tablet. Curious eye sockets stared at the glow. Then it scuttled away.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” Azwold threw off the net. “Stop him, Eld!” With a twist of his heel, he bounded after the creature.

“I fancy m’self more an observer,” I hummed, following, “not participant. Perhaps you aren’t embracing the ‘Role Playing’ aspect of things enough?”

“Bah. A guided tour’s better than a fight! Come on.”

The bone kobold scrambled spastically as Azwold tried to catch it. It lurked nearby with the tablet in its clutches instead of escaping with it. Always out of range, scuttling off or scrambling near, it observed us.

Azwold took up the oar like a shovel to dig. Still recovering his stamina from bolting around, he kept his eyes on the creature holding his tablet.

“Guess I’m doing this the old-fashioned way,” he said, then started putting the yard back in order.

I watched progress bars fill as he restored the mounds. Growing warm from work, Azwold de-cloaked and passed his coat to me to hold. I wondered if Belvan experienced this; waiting like a haunting butler as others bustled around him. Even with night breezes wafting through the pines, beads of sweat rolled down the mage’s sinewy shoulders. His colorless shirt dampened.

It took long enough to notice the moon had moved, but as he dug and straightened out grave totems, living kobold kin drew closer. The show of good faith was working.

They were quiet at first; somber and respectful of their dead, I assumed. It was silent enough to hear bugs buzzing at the site’s periphery. But the creatures started to growl and chatter until it swelled to a yappy hubbub. When Azwold finished, the lizard-dog-men were surrounding him, chittering and snorting amongst themselves.

“And lo,” I said, offering the mage his [Tomb Cloak], “a good deed warms their clammy little hearts. What miracles abound.”

Azwold glared at me, “I might’ve left you tethered to that old oak had I known.”

“Known what?” I said.

“You’d try to turn angry bones into funny ones,” he snatched the coat, equipping it.

“I didn’t hear you laugh,” I said, shrugging.

“You’re lucky I let you wear my purple coat. It’s got better stats though, and you’re a weakling.”

“Meh.”

We watched as the kobolds debated amongst themselves. Azwold was keen to notice that every single one was armed; a driftwood and river rock hatchet, a polished wood and bone spear. Harpoons. Slingshots, bows, arrows, a variety of crude, yet deadly looking weaponry.

Azwold told me the kobolds did not drift far from their island. Their weapons, clothing, trinkets, appeared to confirm it. Hides, shells, rocks. One appeared to be wearing an armored vest made of interwoven pinecone scales. I wondered what else they had to protect themselves from besides the occasional intruder. Perhaps from each other?

An aged tribe member made its way to stand before the Spirit Mage. I was not adept at discerning nuance in their features, but this kobold was unmistakably older. Perhaps a matriarch. She leaned on a grey driftwood staff.

“I sense the Spirit in this grizzled one,” said Azwold. “She’s a Shaman.”