Okay, I must be hallucinating. I, uh. That looks like me, sort of. But like some sort of translucent blue hologram of the draconic me I was intending to become. Cocking my head at an odd angle to stare at it, with my left brow raised, right brow lowered in confusion, I’m dumbfounded. Teuila turns to look in the same direction, but makes no comment, gives no indication whether she sees it or not.
The version of me wears a mortified expression, one of sadness and loneliness. One with which I am all too familiar. It appears alone, and makes no effort to display or announce Teuila’s safety, or anyone’s for that matter. My stomach begins to churn as my mind reels towards guesses as to what this could mean. Its jaw moves, as well as its throat and tongue. Since I’m intimately familiar with that jaw, throat, and tongue, I think I can analyze their motions.
It’s trying to speak I think. I can really only read its jaw partially. Wow, lipreading is so much easier on mammals, holy crap this is tough. Okay, so it’s definitely a short loop, pretty sure it just repeated. Something something, on’t, maybe won’t or don’t, rk, maybe work? Won’t work? Some words that I cannot guess at all, that phrase ends with takes egg. I think. Takes egg? Another phrase ends with mushrooms I’m pretty sure. Mushrooms? Takes egg? Mushrooms?
Did, did I just send a hologram ghost of myself into the past to give myself a friggin’ omelet recipe!? Okay, come on Reggie, give yourself a bit more credit. You were obviously talking about the plan to flood the tunnels. But what takes an egg? A new plan? Or, or what if it costed the phoenix egg to send that message back in time? Oh god that’s horrific. To do that, to risk continuing a timeline after having spent it if it doesn’t work. If I don’t heed the warning. Hurp. I’m going to be sick.
There’s still definitely a life in the phoenix-roc’s egg. What’s this about mushrooms though? Have I inhaled hallucinogenic mushrooms, and I’m simply hallucinating something that’s warning me that I’ve inhaled mushroom spores? That would be an odd as hell coincidence.
Teuila’s glancing back and forth between me, and the area where the holographic ghost was. She gets bored of turning her head, so she turns back to face me and stares at me with one raised brow.
I ramble, “So, uh, either I just had a hallucination, or, or uh, that was me, over there, from a timeline where I tried that plan just now. I looked super distraught, and, and, I was the only person there. Like, as if I was the only one still alive to send the message. It costed the phoenix and roc’s egg to send it. I guess so as to be able to create a message that I could see, since I can’t and wouldn’t access my logs.”
Teuila glares at me suspiciously, slightly angrily, she wheedles, “You’re not just saying that, to try to get me to let my guard down to rest, while you go sneak off and do your plan anyway, are you?”
I rapidly shake my head and hold my hands palms-forward placatingly, “No, no, absolutely not. I, I used up a life Teuila. In that timeline, I risked being stuck in that timeline, after taking the life of one of the rarest creatures in all of creation in all universes. I. Glp. I can’t even stomach the thought. The other me, that future me, the idiot, didn’t change back to mammal Reggie, so I couldn’t read their message properly. So I’m making a lot of assumptions based on tongue and throat movement. One of the other things I could make out, was mushrooms, but I don’t know how it was pertinent.”
Teuila’s left brow shoots up in surprise, “You haven’t met the hatchlings yet, have you?”
I shake my head. Te continues, “Okay, they, for one, are adorbs. The oldest, Mushrooms, just came into their magic. They can only speak Draconic right now, so I can’t really hang around them too much without feeling like my brains are melting out my ears. I think I might know what future you wanted you to do though.”
I raise an index finger, drop it, raise it, drop it, then shrug.
Teuila orders, “Keep resting, I think I can handle this. I’ve got this one taken care of Dink, and no solo adventure for either of us, promise. I’ll be right back. Miza and Mushrooms are in for a long couple of nights, but they’re going to be super happy when Dippy leaves. Err, that sounded mean. Never mind, I’ll explain later.”
I could probably use the rest. Teuila’s order aren’t antithetical to my needs or anything. I am still healing, slightly. Miza must have been giving it her all for me, every time I was asleep. Perhaps that’s why I’m so close to being fully healed. Or Kozzurth’s heart, or the combination. Maybe her healing would only work on Draconic or kobold people normally, who knows. Between being Can’Z’aasian critterkin, bound to the core slash heart of a digital dragon, having ingested dragon blood and sputum, and absorbed a dragon’s heart, who knows what the hell my biology counts as anymore. Not even mentioning I have an insectoid, and Draconic form.
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I watch Teuila scamper away before she breaks into a loping sprint towards the kobolds’ warrens. Shrugging, and feeling fairly safe, since I doubt Te would have left me, telling me to rest, if she wasn’t absolutely certain nothing hostile was nearby, I close my eyes to rest. I breathe deeply, and instantly regret it, since I’m laying face up beneath Rayileklia’s constant acidic drizzle. Hack, koff, glp, glug, bluh, argh. Really Reggie? Can’t go a day without accidentally sucking down acid rain? Heh.
Isn’t there some popular media, on Fakeworld, Earth, where people darken the skies to prevent some other entity from being able to win a war? I suppose there’s other ones too where the skies permanently darken from nuclear fallout raising so much dust into the atmosphere. I wonder if that’s sort of what happened on Rayileklia? What if it’s like Can’Z’aas? A young world? For some reason, something nagging at me seems to think that someone I know, or knew, was convinced that it was. I can’t place it though. Hm? Who what now? What was I trying to think about?
Oh wow, my eyes are so, so heavy. Coulda sworn I was, was thinking, thinking about something. Nighty night.
When I wake up, it’s to camp being packed up, and Teuila smiling down at me. Dippy hoists the round-shield that’s as large as he is. It’s like a bowl, or tortoise-shell when he straps it to his back. It’s also filled with tons of crap that doesn’t seem to fall out, somehow. Odd. Zippy, the tiny rock drake, flits about, occasionally landing on Dippy’s shoulder, and it almost seems like they share secret conversations. Dippy nods along or shakes his head sometimes randomly while Zippy is next to his, uh, ear areas.
Cracking my jaw and accidentally my neck as well as I carefully stretch helps wake me up. Neither Teuila nor Dippy seem afraid of an impending insectoid invasion, so I assume the matter was handled somehow. I’m a bit baffled, but maybe Mushrooms has become some sort of immensely powerful sorcerer or something.
Teuila sates my curiosity, “So, I bet you didn’t know that in the deep, deep recesses of Rayileklia, fungus is some of the only stuff that can live. Maybe you could guess that, sciencing it out or whatever, but you probably didn’t know just how dangerous those shrooms and molds and spores are. Mushrooms, the gooberific little cutie, has become a, well, sporomancer I guess. They can generate almost any kind of spore they know about, and with practice, probably even those they don’t. Miza’s a geomancer, moving giant walls of stone takes lots of mana, lots of effort. Moving a tiny trail of stone or soil to move a patch of spores deep into a tunnel complex? Not so much. Still, a lot of tunnels to cover, but they’ve got it handled.”
Huh. Wow. Good job Teuila. I stare, dumbfounded for a bit, forgetting to praise her as she continues, “Oh, yeah, about Dippy leaving and stuff. So, the title the bravest amongst us is like a big important thing for them, and like, if their bravest has to do a quest or something, leaving the warrens, then the spot opens up temporarily, until that one returns. Miza, and her eldest hatchling, Mushrooms, are going to be the bravest amongst us, err, them, while Dippy is gone. There’s like, honor and respect and all kindsa junk.”
Dippy adds, “Y,yep, yes, yes exactly, Miza, Miza always, was always, is brave, strong in her magic, magics, good magics, her sorcery is strong. Dippy, me, I, Dippy is me, I always, was always, am always, proud of my egg-twin. Miza is, is, is the best family a warrior could ask for.”
That’s incredibly endearing. Huh, another set of twins. What are we up to, like, eight or so? Well, we’ve met thousands of people. Most of the twins we’ve met were critterkin, where biology didn’t really happen, so, at best, they spawned at about the same time, or something. I smile towards Dippy. I haven’t really gotten to talk to, or thank my savior yet.
I start, “Hey, Dippy? Can I just say thank you? I don’t know the best way to do it, I don’t know if there’s some sort of kobold custom I could observe. Like, I’m truly, incredibly honored that you saved me. That you jumped down into the trap with all those powerful, terrible rock monsters. I cannot thank you enough. I like living, you know?”
Dippy laughs before replying, “The, the, the squishies, the not-dwarf squishies, Tay Oo Ee Lah and Reggie, the best, best thanks, would be travels, and, and, and safety, to, to stop the dwarf-squishies. Dippy wants to, me, I want to journey with the Reggie, and the warrior woman Tay Oo Ee Lah. Zippy agrees. Dippy, Dippy, I, me, I saved, but you saved too, we both saved, both saved. All good, even, sympa, sympa, sy, uh, square. But, but then, the Tay Oo Ee Lah spared clan, and, and, and, and stopped badbugs. Fought for days together, and then, and then Tay Oo Ee Lah found a, a, a solu, solu, a fix. And we journey to the boomstick lands to stop the dwarves. Kobolds, us, our clan, can never repay, never repay.”
I blink rapidly a bit, trying to parse Dippy’s speech. I feel bad that he’s so anxious. He’s an amazing little fellow. All I can think to do is smile at him and offer my hand. He clasps me firmly by the forearm, so I follow suit as we shake heartily. I really hope we can solve this dwarven problem peacefully. Just, don’t jinx it Reggie. Keep your mouth shut. Maybe Dippy’s endearing-yet-nervous method of speech will be a better negotiation tactic than letting either Teuila or me speak. We’re both pretty awful at it.
We begin marching northward as a trio, still no sign of Dawn, but Dippy and Zippy make for pleasant company. Despite having a seemingly nervous tic or stutter, he’s a rather upbeat little fellow. He must be fairly strong to lug around that shield and all that random stuff with him. He has several contraptions, and toolkits, and, well, so much stuff that it’s like he’s bringing a whole workshop with him. I wonder if he would classify himself as any sort of archetype, like inventor, or artificer, or perhaps ranger since he carries several ranged weapons, and Zippy is his constant companion. No idea. Maybe the concepts don’t even penetrate into kobold society. I mean, I didn’t see many books in there. There were several scrolls in some of the cave-like rooms that I passed on my way out though. I’m unsure if those were stories, histories, spells, legal documents, record-keeping, or just any other random writings.