The trick to killing a chicken was to break its neck quickly and quietly so it couldn't struggle or cry for help. I kept this in mind as one foolishly walked around the corner of the house I was hiding next to. I kept perfectly still and silent as it inched closer to the shrub that concealed me, and the tip of my tail curled in anticipation.

As soon as the chicken was within my reach, I leapt from the shrub, dug into it with my talons, clamped my jaws around its head, digging my pointed teeth into its throat to stop it from crying out, and pulled it behind the shrub. With a swift twist of my head, I snapped its neck, and opened my jaws, letting its head hang limp as I delightfully tasted the blood on my teeth.

It was uncharacteristically thoughtful of the humans to let their livestock roam around where anyone could catch them. Among the smarter things that these surface dwellers had accomplished was the breeding of other animals for use as a regular food supply.

They weren’t the only ones with the idea, of course. My people had learned to tame the predatory creatures around us to help with hunting, and with members of the tribe who'd attained a supernatural connection with nature, myself included, we could even control their breeding. Thing was, our underground warrens would be too difficult of a transition for surface animals to make domestication worth the effort.

The closest thing we had to livestock were the rats that infested our warrens to feed on scraps of our food, which we kept in check by sending our children to practice their hunting on them. Good memories.

I clutched the dead chicken in both arms, keeping a firm grip around the wound in its neck so I wouldn't leave a trail of blood, and started walking quietly to the other end of the alley between the two human houses, hoping to make it back into the woods without being noticed. My hopes were dashed.

After I'd stepped away from the houses and began to pick up my pace, a loud barking noise broke the silence. I turned to see a four-legged animal with brown fur and a head with a long, broad snout and floppy ears. It was another animal domesticated by humans, a hunting dog.

The dog sniffed the spot where some of my chicken's blood had soaked the dirt. It reared its head back and barked again. A human came running in response to the dog's call.

The human had no fur on its head, revealing a pale scalp stretched tightly around its skull, though it did have some brown fur under its nose and on its chin. A greyish green garment covered its torso, and a black garment that was fit to each leg went over its lower body. All of its clothing seemed to be woven from plant fibers, unlike the grey hides I wore when I patrolled the surface.

The human said something to the dog, I didn't speak their language, but I could tell it was a question because of the way its tone shifted up. I turned my head back to the woods and started running.

“Kobold!” the human must have spotted me, and I could hear rapid footfalls from it and the dog. The human was almost twice my height, but I knew I could run at the same speed. The dog, on the other hand, was probably faster.

As I sprinted away, I tightened my grip around my chicken with one arm and released it with the other. After I'd woken up that evening, I'd communed with the wilderness and readied a spell that would allow me to make animals friendlier to me. I'd intended to use it to help lure my prey if I needed to, but, thank the Five, I hadn't. That meant I could use it on the dog.

Even as I continued my dash to the forest, I could hear the hunting dog getting closer, snarling angrily as it charged. As soon as it was within a few paces of me, but before it was close enough to nip at my tail, I spun around and cast my spell.

“Charm animal!” I yelled in draconic, and the dog stopped in its tracks, skidding on the dirt and stopping just in front of my snout. After staring right into my eyes for a solid four seconds, it sniffed my face and began licking my red, pebbly scales with its wet and floppy tongue. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes to keep the dog's saliva out of them.

Though the dog was no longer hostile, the human was still catching up to me, and I’d just used my only charm spell. Not that it mattered, it only worked on animals. I looked at the dog and pointed at the human.

“Attack!” I yelled. The dog turned its head to one side and whimpered. It was then that I realized that even though the dog may have become friendly to me, friends didn’t murder their other friends for you. On top of that, the spell only gave animals a kinder disposition, it didn’t mean they automatically knew what your commands meant, and this dog would have been trained to obey commands given in the human language.

I quietly cursed the humans for their totally sensible decisions and continued running. The time I’d foolishly squandered trying to command the dog had allowed the human to get closer, but he’d stopped to try to get the dog to continue the chase. The dog just looked up at its master and gave it the same conflicted whimper it had given me.

Just as I’d passed the first trees of the forest, I heard the human stop yelling at the dog and the footfalls resumed. I wasn’t worried. In the village, the night may have been lit by the stars and the moon, but the woods were shrouded by a canopy of trees. Kobolds like me lived underground, and we could all see in the dark, one of the nicer features the dragons had thought to give us. Better yet, I’d spent years as a ranger on the surface, I knew how to navigate a forest. In other words, we were in my domain, now.

I weaved in between the trees and stepped over the roots expertly, while the human stumbled clumsily and fell behind. The human wasn’t going to catch me any time soon, but if it was willing to follow me into the woods, it wasn’t to give up any time soon, either. I may have been able to outmaneuver it, but a kobold’s stamina isn’t much compared to that of a human, I’d have to throw the soft-skinned giant off my tail before I got tired.

Luckily for me, scouting and hunting on the surface hadn’t made me a fool, and only a fool would tread on someone else’s turf and steal from them without a plan for if they were caught. Before entering the village, I'd set up multiple makeshift traps in the forest, and I would lead the human into them. I spotted one of my tripwires tied between two trees dead ahead and ran straight towards it. In the darkness of the night, my pursuer was as good as blind, but the only problem it gave me was eliminating my ability to see color. The human would never see it coming.

I tightened my grasp on the dead chicken in my arms and leapt over the tripwire. I kept running after my feet hit the ground, then I stopped and spun around to see the human barreling around the trees and looking around in confusion. It yelled what I assumed to be curses at me, and continued running in my direction. I must have made enough noise for it to follow me with its ears, or else humans had better eyes than I thought they did. No matter, it still didn't seem to notice the tripwire.

In order to make sure my pursuer hit the tripwire at full speed, I decided to provoke it,

and started a dance where I repeatedly jumped from one foot to another.

“You'll never catch me, softskin! You're too slow and stupid!” I yelled, and even though the human probably didn't speak draconic, it must have figured I was insulting it, because it sped up and yelled furiously.

I turned around and resumed my dash, listening with great delight as the human's yell of rage turned to a startled scream when it snagged my tripwire, followed by a heavy thud when it hit the earth. The human quickly scrambled to its feet and started running again, yelling even louder. I led it in the direction of another trap, this one a snare, which I skirted around and ran past. The human stepped right into the snare and caught its foot. The snare was released from the ground, and the tree branch it was tied to yanked it upward, and the human screamed again as its leg was pulled out from under it and into the air.

With the human currently snagged and flailing about upside-down, I had an opportunity to call for my ride. I took one hand off the chicken and brought it to the wooden whistle around my neck, which I blew into, releasing a high-pitched sound that could only be heard by draconic creatures, as well as a few others.

Normally, I'd be doing this kind of thing with a team of other kobolds, we'd watch each other's backs and work to throw our pursuers off our trail. Those days were over for me, after that stupid wyrmpriest condemned me for one little practical joke, I was no longer welcome in any land that recognized the rule of the dragons. My tribe would not take me back, for I was deemed a heretic, but Gix, my bonded mount, was loyal to me, not to the religion. I could still rely on him.

I stayed in one place so my ride would simply run in the direction of my whistle, and not have any difficulty finding me. I looked at the human, who was still struggling in the snare. It didn't show any sign of breaking free any time soon, but its yelling was sure to attract attention from anyone who had followed after it announced my presence. The human was unarmed, but it was still stronger than me, making it too dangerous to approach, so I wouldn't be attacking it with my dagger. I put the chicken down and unslung my crossbow, then I loaded a bolt and took aim at the struggling human.

I hesitated before squeezing the trigger. Humans lived in large groups, which meant they were social animals. I reflected on kobold society back home. We were weaker than the other races that inhabited the land of Tsa Thac, which included the other creations of the dragons--who weren’t always friendly--and the various monstrous animals that stalked the land. We only survived by working together, everyone looking out for each other’s needs, because that was the only way anyone’s needs were fulfilled. If humans lived by even a similar philosophy, killing one of their own would motivate them to hunt me down, and I didn’t doubt that they had the means to do so.

From my experience scouting the surface in Tsa Thac, human adventurers were well equipped and highly resourceful. Far too strong for even large groups of kobolds to fight head-on. Then again, if those adventurers had enough hide to dare the dangers of Tsa Thac’s wilderness, they were probably among the stronger samples humanity had to offer, and after I’d passed between the mountains on the southern border of Tsa Thac, I’d deliberately made a beeline for the inner country in the hopes that their defensive measures would be softer than they were at the frontier. Even so, you didn’t stay alive by taking chances, if all I did was steal one livestock animal that the villagers could do without and humiliate one of their people in a way that didn’t result in permanent injury, before leaving and not coming back, it was less likely for them to waste their time trying to convince quality warriors to go after me. I put my crossbow back in its harness, picked up the dead chicken, and carried it up a nearby tree to wait for my mount.

It hadn’t even been a full minute before I heard the sound of Gix’s clawed feet sprinting against the ground. Out of the foliage, a creature with brown feathers ran into view. He resembled a large bird, but instead of a beak, he had a featherless snout with a mouth full of pointed teeth. Unlike the proper wings possessed by a true avian, his forelimbs ended in three fingers with curved talons, which were also present on the feet. His two feet each possessed a toe with an extra long claw, which had to be held off the ground to keep it sharp.

I jumped from the tree and landed in the saddle on my pet deinonychus’s back, slipped my feet into the stirrups and turned back into the forest. I kept him sprinting in as straight a line as possible until we were deeper into the forest than the locals were likely to follow us. The human who’d chased me had called out to the other members of his community, and I wasn’t willing to bet that the hunting dog I’d charmed had been the only one in the village. As we reached a relatively comfortable distance from the village, I eased the pressure on my stirrups and Gix slowed in his pace. Deinonychuses have good stamina, but it’s never wise to exhaust a mount when you don’t need to.

Gix and I veered off into a camping ground that we’d scouted out before. There was a relatively large space between the trees, and I could see that three of the snares I’d set up had been set off by rabbits. I brought Gix to a stop and dismounted, then walked up to the snares to gather the dead rabbits. As I did so, I heard Gix leap into a nearby tree, beating his wing-like forelimbs to help his jump. When he came down, he had a dead lamb clamped in his jaws. He carried over to me and dropped it at my feet, having been trained to let me cook all food before eating it. The lamb had a bloody gash in its throat, the kind left by a deinonychus’s foot claw. I’d left Gix to hunt on his own earlier in the evening so I’d be able to sneak into the village more easily. He must have found the lamb after it had strayed from its mother, possibly getting lost in the forest, and stashed it in the branches for safekeeping.

I pointed a taloned finger at my raptor and said, “Gix, watch!”

Immediately, the deinonychus ran off and jumped into another tree, from where he looked down and surveyed the area for intruders. With my back being watched, I was free to start a fire to cook my game.

I started by gathering branches from the ground, examining them to make sure they were dry and putting them in a pile, and cleared off a patch of land with my foot, then surrounded it with stones from the ground around me. I placed the thicker branches into the fire pit, then placed twigs on top of them to serve as kindling. After setting up two vertical sticks on either side of the fire pit to serve as the basis of a makeshift rotisserie, I removed my backpack and set it down next to me, then removed my flint and steel and started hitting them together to make a spark.

The flame took a while to light, with some sparks almost catching, only to fade away seconds later. Of all the abilities the dragons had refrained from giving us kobolds, fire breath was the one I wanted the most right now. Sure, there were other breath weapons, but I was red of scale, which meant I would be a fire breather. That would perhaps be the most useful one, having the ability to start a fire to cook one’s meat. Well, cold breath might help preserve the meat, I certainly had enough to spread out over a few days, though I had no salt to act as a mundane preservative, and being uncomfortably close to a human community meant I didn’t have time to wait for the day and let the sun dry the meat. As it was, it would spoil within a day or two. I weighed my options of eating it all now or having some for tomorrow. With limited space in my backpack, most of which was taken by my tools, the best decision would be for Gix and I to eat as much as we could now and live off the nutrition until we could get another meal.

After the flame finally took, I removed my dagger from my belt and used it to cut off the chicken’s head and skin it. I reached in and pulled out its giblets, then skewered them and the main body on a stick and placed them over the fire, turning the stick to cook all sides evenly. When I was done with the chicken, I moved on to the rabbits and the lamb, cutting and preparing the meat in the same manner.

When all the meat was cooked, I let the fire die down, put it out by shovelling dirt on it with a small trowel and set the meat down on a blanket made of animal hide. I set aside the lamb and two rabbits for Gix, but not before taking a rib of lamb for myself. When I sank my teeth into that lamb, the firm meat and strong, juicy flavor made me wish I’d taken it all for myself, but I decided to let Gix eat his own kill. He was a good mount, and he deserved a good meal, especially if we might go a day or two without eating.

Compared to the succulent taste of the lamb, the chicken was a bit of a disappointment. The rabbit had a similar taste, but with softer flesh. Regardless of taste, I was glad to have a proper meal with potential food to spare.

The chicken and the rabbit proved to be too much for one sitting, so I put the meat I had left over in my backpack to save them for later. I picked up my crossbow, which still had a bolt loaded, and looked into the trees.

“Gix, eat!” I half shouted, half whispered in the direction of the branches. Gix lept to the ground and moved in on the meat I’d left for him. While he dined, I kept watch, surveying the woods with my crossbow trained. I scanned all the brushes and trees around us, searching for any sign of a human or hunting dog drawing near. I might have been able to see in the dark, but that didn’t mean my vision wasn’t hampered. It was hard for anything to stand out when everything was a shade of grey.

When Gix stopped eating, I began clearing the fire pit. I removed the stones and gently set each of them down in a random location, then I scattered the burned sticks and used my foot to cover the ashes with dirt and leaves. I placed the rest of my supplies in my backpack, which I put back on, and kept my crossbow handy. I approached Gix and put a hand on his saddle, to which he responded by lowering so I could mount more easily. I leapt up on his back and used the stirrups to guide him away from the campsite. The night was still young, and I had a great distance to travel if I wanted to avoid attention.

I didn’t know if I was ever going to establish a good status quo in my new life, certainly nothing like the life I had before my banishment, but my time hunting in Tsa Thac had taught me to take life one day at a time. I didn’t need a consistent quality of life, I didn’t need companions, and I didn’t need a community. That being said, I really would have liked to have one or more of those, but if the Five felt the same way about me as her priests did, she sure as all nine circles of Hell wouldn’t let me have them. Either way, I’d learned to make my own luck, and that was what I’d do.