It was strange, waking up without the press of bodies. He missed the warmth, the security. There was nothing to be done about it though. Shaking himself awake he rose and took stock of his surroundings.

The cavern was filled with piles of fur, the sleeping wolf men, no Kobolds, covered the floor like a fuzzy carpet. Some were already up and moving about. Some nudging their sleeping comrades awake while others simply went about their business.

Khale looked over to where his mentor slash babysitter was still deep in the grips of slumber. Considering how disgruntled the adolescent Kobold had been, Salad elected to let him get his beauty rest and try to memorize what he looked like, in case he had to find him again.

The problem was that there was practically no visual difference between his Kobold and the others. Also, the utter lack of colors wasn’t doing him any favors either. He snorted in frustration and was hit with an astonishing amount of sensory information.

He had been trying to ignore his sense of smell since it was often overwhelming, but now that he thought about it suddenly having a dog’s sense of smell would normally be too much for a human. He’d have to get used to it, and now was a perfect time to learn. Leaning in he gave the older Kobold a sniff. He had the decency not to go full dog and sniff his backside, still, the process felt alien to him. Then the scents rolled in.

It was bizarre, he could tell where this guy had been by picking out scents he knew. He could smell the musty and dank odors of the tunnels, the myriad of scents from the mushroom forest, and the dense musk of other Kobolds that he had come into contact with. Then he got down to the adolescent’s own scent and it was... strange.

As far as he could tell, every Kobold had a similar smell to them, but now that he was paying attention there was a subtle undertone that was similar to a fingerprint. The sensation was truly bizarre, at first, he had thought it was something similar to lavender. That wasn’t quite right though, it was deeper than that and more… sharp? Jagged? After turning it over in his head, he decided it was more of a purple smell. How the hell THAT worked he had no idea, it just sounded the most accurate in his head. Following that revelation, he finally nailed down the rest of the scent.

This fucker smelled like a purple zig-zag.

He idly wondered if this was how dogs actually interacted with their sense of smell or if his wires were getting crossed from his brain trying to parse input it very much was not designed for.

Trying to ignore the increased weirdness he started to sniff a few others to try to get a baseline for how other individuals smelled, but it was all over the place. One smelled like old pottery mixed with an electrical fire. Another smelled like chili peppers and newly fallen snow. One just straight up smelled like a busy Mexican restaurant on a rainy summer day.

And one smelled like math.

Yeah.

Fucker smelled like an obscure equation that Khale couldn’t quite nail down. He didn’t even know how to process that one. Gave that one a WIDE berth.

As he was going around more Kobolds were waking up and he noticed two things.

One, they were all standing upright on two legs, and two, their balance was absolute garbage. Though that seemed to be a matter of age, as he watched he noticed that the smaller the Kobold, the more often they would trip or bowl themselves over for no reason.

It was more evidence that the whole bipedal thing was something Kobolds grew into. Now that he thought about it, it was sort of something similar with humans, since they started off crawling rather than walking. The only difference was that for Kobolds moving on all fours was far superior in terms of mobility and agility when compared to a crawling human.

He also noticed that all of the other Kobolds were standing on two legs, no matter how bad they were at balancing. Trying to gauge where he landed on that scale he tried to eyeball the size of the smaller adolescents to himself. He guesstimated that he was only one or two heads shorter than the smaller ones and tried standing up on two legs to see if it was easier to balance now.

It wasn’t.

He had to immediately abort into a forward roll in order to avoid mashing his nose into the ground. He did not need a kick in his face dick this early in the morning thank you very much.

It was at about this time that his assigned teenager had decided to wake up. Khale, realizing he couldn’t really call him teen wolf anymore mentally assigned him the name Zig-Zag, if for nothing but his own convenience.

The adolescent did his morning business and started muttering groggy greetings to a few of the others that were already awake. One of whom, with no small amount of mirth, pointed out Khale who had been following Zig around like a puppy.

Considering that ‘puppy’ was the most accurate description of Khale at the moment, he wasn’t sure why anyone would be surprised.

Zig-Zag for his part did his absolute best to ignore the hanger-on and went about waking the others up, some with gentle nudges and others with some well-placed kicks.

After everyone was up and about groups and cliques formed up again. Zag was apparently something of a lynchpin of one of the congregations, considering how the crowd formed around him.

He on the other hand was ignored, for the most part, only really getting acknowledged when disparaging comments were thrown his way. Though they were mostly in the form of conversations that consisted of something along the lines of ‘Sucks that you got saddled with babysitting duty’ or at least that was the vibe he got from the tone and occasional instance of word comprehension.

Zag seemed less angry about the assignment now that it was clear the new addition wasn’t going to be giving him too much trouble. Since Khale had made an effort to be low maintenance, the one thing the older Kobold had to do was only look over his shoulder every once in a while to make sure he was still there.

Now that the entire cave was awake there was a certain energy in the air, some Kobolds bounced in place or from foot to foot in anticipation. Of what, Salad hadn’t the slightest idea.

Soon enough he got his answer as a few adult Kobolds entered their warren and the groups went ballistic, howling and jumping up and down. Even Zag was visibly excited, though his fur just puffed out instead of the arm-waving some of the others were partaking in.

The big guy from yesterday stepped forward and started barking, literally barking, orders out at groups of Kobolds. Khale couldn’t make out most of what the adult was saying but it sounded like a doggy version of a drill sergeant. Some groups sagged as they were given what were probably some of the more undesirable jobs while others yipped and whooped.

Eventually, he made it to Zags group and gave Khale a considering look before giving his group their orders. The group’s initial reaction to the orders they got was surprise, but that was replaced by a mixed bag of emotions. Some looked excited, others worried or outright afraid. Zags expression was still stuck on surprise, and it took a moment but eventually, he nodded his head in acceptance. Though it looked more like he was drawing a sideways figure eight with his nose.

With that, the adults filed out of the cave with all the youngsters following, though some of the less enthusiastic ones dragged their feet, right up until some angry barking convinced them to keep up.

As they traveled through the tunnels groups would spit off from and head down their own tunnels while Zag’s group followed the big guy who seemed to be marching to the entrance of the warren. At least Khale thought that was where they were going. It was really hard to keep track of where they were going when all the tunnels looked the same. As he took another turn a smell tickled his nose, fresh air, and a bit of color was returning to the tunnel.

It was actually a little difficult for him to exit the warren, since the entrance was a hole in the ground he had to traverse a rather steep incline.

Zag had turned back, looking a touch disgruntled at needing to help the whelp of the group, and nearly got beaned in the face as Salad put his wall jump practice to use and launched himself over the taller teen. The big Kobold, or Big Boss as Khale had taken to calling him actually looked surprised at the maneuver. Though after a moment of contemplation just shrugged and started leading the group down a worn game trail.

After a little bit of walking the group came to a clearing that was absolutely packed with Kobolds, all of them were adults and some were even armed and armored. Though their armaments left a lot to be desired, oversized kitchen knives poorly tied to blocky staves and slats of wood-like material lashed together to make armor. One Kobold was wearing a pot on his head with the handle broken off and jagged eye holes having been broken out from the inside, making it look like someone had been cooking firecrackers in the thing.

Once the group was assembled Big Boss gave a short speech that Khale still couldn’t make heads or tails of, outside of the random bite, food, and death.

The death part was rather concerning, but the other Kobolds seemed to like the speech and were getting riled up. With a rather impressive flourish he turned and started marching deeper into the forest, and the group followed after.

It took about two hours of walking and the initial excitement had dialed down to boredom. However, once the group was called to halt there was visible excitement amongst the crowd again.

Everyone started advancing in a crouch or on all fours. Surprisingly enough, the all fours option was fairly rare and taken up by the oldest-looking Kobolds.

As they crept along Khale noticed a change of scenery, the mushroom forest gave away to a small marsh with actual trees. They looked like willow trees, except their leaves looked like corkscrews and had a dark navy blue-green color to them. They also had large silvery green fruit growing from their branches.

Other than that there wasn’t anything that he could see that would garner such a cautious approach.

Then an island one of the willow’s was growing on stood up and looked in their direction.

The entire group froze as one, as what looked like a cross between some sort of burrowing beetle and a turtle sniffed the air. It started to plod closer to their hiding space, it stopped to smell again, only now there was a war cry from Big Boss as the mad bastard charged from the undergrowth, kicking a few passing Kobolds forward as ran towards the monster. Soon the rest of the Kobolds were howling and running at the monster as well.

To Khales horror Zag and the other adolescents were also sprinting towards the turtle beetle thing. He was debating whether he should join them when the creature's mouth opened up, it looked like the maw of a giant snapping turtle, with the exception that a pair of wicked-looking mandibles folded out from within the jaws and let out an ear-splitting roar.

Yeah, fuck that. Toddler vs. Island monster isn’t a match-up I’m game for.

The youngest of the group quickly hunkered down under some ferns that gave him the benefit of cover all the while letting him watch the battle with his vision only marginally impeded.

Thirty-ish Kobolds surrounded the beetle-turtle, the Burtle mentally decided and started tearing into anything they could reach. Unfortunately for the ones closest to the mouth, they found themselves grabbed by the Burtle’s mandibles and were swiftly swallowed whole. Yowling and visibly struggling even as they became lumps in the abominations throat.

Khale turned his eyes away from the high-octane nightmare fuel and towards the rest of the group. Anyone who didn’t have a weapon was clawing and biting to not much effect, the massive shell didn’t gain even a single scratch. The six massive trunks that kept the beast standing looked like tortoise legs covered in an armored insect carapace. The only Kobolds that made any headway there were those either lucky enough to hit the joints where the plates connected, and even that wasn’t doing much.

Pot-head was throwing mud clods at its eyes while Big Boss tried to savage the neck. It was almost working. However, the rest of the Kobolds had wised up and were avoiding the beast’s mouth and without a suitable distraction, the Burtle wasn’t letting the large dog man latch onto its neck.

Looking at the behemoth Khale wondered if it was even possible to take the thing down at all.

Then one of the knife-wielding Bolds stuck their implement somewhere sensitive. He couldn’t see where, but he did see that the behemoth was absolutely rip-roaring pissed. It started jumping and kicking and swinging its massive bulk around, stepping on a few unlucky Kobolds who were crushed into the marshlands. Broken limbs sprouting from the ground in an almost comedic display of the macabre as the newly dead found themselves in freshly made shallow graves.

Despite its tantrum, the beast made a fatal mistake, it was no longer paying attention to Big Boss. The large Kobold seized the initiative and dove into the opening in the flailing Burtles defenses and tore into its throat with a ferocious snarl.

The only thing that kept the fight from being over right then and there was the size difference between the Boss’s jaws and the neck it was biting into. It looked like it was as big around as a car tire. Still, the gaping wound Big Boss left wept blood as the Burtle screeched in pain as it rounded on the comparatively diminutive pack leader and hurled him off of the beast's savaged neck and into the mud.

It bore down on him and snapped with both jaw and mandible. It was only a lucky shot from Pot-head that got it in the eye that the Boss was able to dodge the attack by the barest of margins. The Burtle didn’t stop and drove the leader back into the woods, giving chase the entire time. So far into the woods, that Khale was going to have to worry about being discovered slash trampled soon.

He looked for the safest place he could move to, with the Burtle fast approaching, deeper into the woods didn’t necessarily mean safer. It crashed through the giant mushrooms and underbrush like an out-of-control tank as it tried to catch its prey who was taking advantage of the terrain to break line of sight and gain some distance. The pack had been diminished slightly but by no means was the horde cowed. They chased the rampaging best, nipping at its heels in a fairly literal fashion.

Making what he felt was a logical decision, he started to dig. In the manner that all dogs buried bones and otherwise destroyed lawns. He initially tried to be quiet but he soon realized that with the commotion the Burtle was making he could have put on a rock concert and no one would pay him any mind. Which was fine by him he needed to dig. As the danger got closer he dug faster, he had to get underground where it was safe! He needed to be in the tunnels he needed to-

Khale had been so focused on his endeavor to dive back into the earth he was taken completely by surprise when Big Boss dived past him, only a few feet away. That roll, he soon learned, was to dodge the lunging head of the Burtle. The beast’s head slammed into the ground like a boulder fired from a catapult. And then before him, the wretched bleeding furrow in the Burtles neck appeared just out of reach, and just about large enough he would be able to almost fit his entire head inside. Then the behemoth was on the move again, and the moment passed.

The sudden need to be underground vanished as quickly as it came as Khale was struck with an idea. An Awful idea. One that would more than likely get him killed. If he could just burrow into that wound, he would be able to tear into some major arteries and it was in a hard spot to be attacked directly, the only caveat was he would have to take care not to get thrown off.

Or crushed.

Or mangled.

He started to paw at the ground again. This was a really bad idea, but he had a sneaking suspicion that if Big Boss went down the entire hunting party, Khale included, was likely to go with him.

Setting himself against the base of the mushroom he was hiding near, Khale planted himself in and prepared. He looked for the spots he would have to hit on the way up. It was possible he could use the knee as a foothold, in fact, the entire front leg in the right position would give him the perfect approach vector, but he would either need a boost or make the initial jump up to the knee itself.

He waited and watched as the rest of the hunting party sped past him in an attempt to aid their leader. They yipped, whooped, and barked trying to gain the Burtles attention. Unfortunately for the party’s fearless leader, the giant monster only had eyes for him and him alone. Even when some Kobolds were able to catch up and latch onto some of its legs again, it paid them no heed.

Big Boss dodged and weaved but was clearly starting to tire, as the monster chased him, though the beast had slowed as well. It was when Khale saw their path head towards a stone just tall enough for him to use. He tried to guess the timing and as the creature surged forward, only missing Big Boss by a hair.

Sprinting at max speed he jumped up and sprung up onto the rock, and aimed for the knee. He hadn’t really had a moving target for stuff like this before, but he was able to make corrections as his momentum carried him forward and leapt again.

Hitting the knee he sprung upwards, all he needed to do now was run up the shoulder and he was golden.

Naturally, this is where the plan went sideways.

As he had failed to take into account the Burtle’s own forward momentum. So he wasn’t able to bound up the leg to its shoulder. Instead, its stride, coupled with a reactionary attempt to remove another attacker, ended up launching him up and away from the neck rather than towards it.

The end result was Khale being launched up and over the Burtle entirely, spinning completely out of control. Panicking at and desperately grabbing for anything the strange willow tree flashed in his vision as the beast’s path brought it closer. Ou to fo sheer doggy slash Kobold instinct his jaw snapped forward and latched onto one of the long wispy branches. Except it didn’t feel like a tree and trees don’t bleed.

Suddenly he was jerked to a halt as the Burtle came to a sudden stop and let out a high-pitched squawk. Everything seemed to happen so quickly after that. First, the Burtle threw itself onto its side and the tree that was apparently not a tree at all retracted into the shell. All of this combined to launch Khale away as the not-branch he was hanging onto cracked like a bullwhip.

Sent spinning, he tried to curl into a ball and roll with the impact, it sort of worked. Landing hard on his shoulder he rolled until the momentum laid him out flat. The good news was it didn’t feel like he had hurt anything too bad.

The bad news was the Burtle was continuing to side roll right at him in an attempt to render the tiny dog person into paste.

Fortunately for Khale, they were in a forest, and even though the Burtle had been able to topple some of the smaller mushrooms, that had been when it was using all six of its legs. The mushroom tree it slammed into didn’t budge an inch, which left it writhing upside down as it tried to bring its head about. Mandibles snapped inches from his face as he tried to right himself and back away. Though in his panic it was more of a mad scramble for safety.

Then Pot-head came out of nowhere and latched onto the Burtles neck. Soon he was joined by Big Boss as the two savaged the already damaged neck of the beast. It tried to retract its head into its shell, but with the two digging in their metaphorical heels they bought enough time for other Kobolds to arrive and help. Soon the entire hunting party was dogpiling the Burtles neck and keeping it from retracting.

The legs flailed ineffectually in the beast’s panic and soon the screeching died as the creature expired. With a crack and a pull, the crowd of Kobolds tore the head from the body, and a quiet settled into the forest that was only interrupted by the panted breaths of the victorious party.

They looked at each other in what was clearly surprise, from the body language and expressions it seemed to Khale that none of them had expected to actually win that fight.

Which raised the pertinent question of why the hell are we even here?!

No answers were forthcoming, then the moment passed, and then the hunting party started to cheer, which meant lots of barks and howling. They leapt about, some doing what could be charitably interpreted as dancing. Then a few lined up and performed what he would have sworn was the canine equivalent of the Can-Can. Quite a sight to see on digitigrade legs

Big Boss and a few others rolled the head upright and he stood on top and addressed everyone.

From the reaction of the crowd, it was quite the stirring speech. Shame Khale could only catch a word here and there. But he recognized the last one as the boss gestured to the carcass.

“EAT!”

Khale might have been in a good amount of pain and utterly exhausted, but that didn’t stop him from being ravenously hungry. He surged with the crowd and found a patch of skin thin enough that his teeth could tear through. Once he was done with that he found that eating unprepped meals as a Kobold was a rather violent affair.

He had to watch the others first to figure out what he was supposed to do. The adults ripped chunks of flesh out with their teeth and swallowed it whole. Khale copied them, though he felt an almost primal wrongness to what he was doing. The small strings of giblets had been bite-sized so it wasn’t the same thing exactly and it wasn’t the raw meat making him squeamish. It was that he was swallowing entire mouthfuls without chewing. On the other hand, it was like he was finally really eating a full meal. The only way he could describe it was that it had the same feeling you got when you sat down for a full course meal as opposed to grabbing a quick bite to eat.

Despite his dueling instincts, he stuffed himself until he actually had a bit of a paunch going. He backed off and noticed there had been something of a feeding frenzy as the whole group focused on the torso and ate as much as they could. Then things got strange.

They removed the legs and it was clear they were taking the head, but they made no move to take the carapace or bones and the rest of the torso was left more or less untouched. The weirdness truly took off when he noticed a good number of adults standing around with their mouths open near the rear of the body. He watched in fascination as a large, hollow-looking fang extended out from the center of their mouths.

Now all of the Kobolds had fangs, but they were more in line with regular non-moving dog fangs. This however was better described as what you would see from a serpent, maybe a little straighter, but definitely very different. He watched as they suddenly approached the uneaten end of the body and bit into it, obviously taking great care to bite down in a certain way. They stayed like that for a moment and then retracted their teeth with care, leaving only a bite mark and not tearing out a chunk as they had been moments ago.

Curious he ran his tongue around and he found a seam at the top of his mouth. Did this mean they had venom of some kind? Then why use it when the stupid thing was already dead? There was also a weird smell on the wind coming from that direction.

It smelled unappetizing, not bad and it wouldn’t make you nauseous, but he wouldn’t want to put that in his mouth.

Weird.

They started to cart the legs back and Khale moved to follow, but his full belly coupled with the long hike out and all the excitement had really tuckered him out. He was flagging when a rough paw scratched him behind the ears.

That felt WAY better than it had any right to.

He felt himself getting picked up and the smell told him it was Zig-Zag.

The adolescents had been spared carrying duty for the most part and Zag held him in the same way you would for most tuckered toddlers, in both arms with the head over your shoulder.

His hurt shoulder wasn’t helping, the full stomach convinced him to sleep, but it was the gentle rocking that came from Zags walking that did him in. Soon he was fast asleep.