Tuleni began by addressing the elephant in the room: the moon-rise ritual.
“Tonight moon-rise ritual. Tuleni suspect family will attend tonight, perhaps because someone important receiving dragon ichor. Knowing person unimportant, Tuleni meeting them eventually. Already knowing what asking soon: Kayrux bringing people into clinic. Tuleni accept. Healing important, every day working day when lives risking.”
I let out a relieved sigh, despite knowing that this was the likely outcome. Tuleni was a true doctor at heart and would see the doors of her clinic open every day even if it were inconvenient for her. She’s dedicated her life to this place, which meant that she’d always be here to heal. She smiled at my relief, her black daggers of claws clacking together as she drummed her fingers on her lap.
“Tuleni living many years Kayrux, seen exact thing before, seen own children going into ritual. Whatever ichor being, doesn’t agree with internal kobold organs easily. Changes kobolds, strengthens dragon blood somehow. Faerkurch study ichor, even scribe master cannot knowing unless speaking with priestess and demon hunter. Tuleni know them. Dark hearts, cruel minds. Bad kobolds.”
Her features grew fierce as she remembered something, but a few moments of breathless pause allowed her to return to her composed state.
“Advice giving. Attend ritual because pray towards dragon, perhaps spare important person. Faerkurch thinking something bad coming tonight also. Until then, please tell Tuleni things, then helping prepare medicines for patients.”
Alright Tuelni, I can help out while mom tells you about her expedition. I think I’m zoning out again while my hands work on setting up all of the empty beds. I hope I don’t see Vimna lying in one of these beds tonight, that’d be too much for me to handle. Keep working, keep it all put in the back, and just focus on the things in front of you. It’s probably a bad coping mechanism, but it’s what’s keeping me on my feet right now.
…
Hours went by as I mindlessly prepared the entire clinic for the possibility of having every chair, cot, bed and floor space ready for patients. Mom left after the first hour to go and do some recon with the guards, leaving just me and Tuleni with our pets in the clinic. Tim seemed to be very interested in my cleaning methods, and the occasional sensation of an emotional shift in the room told me that Wilter was also paying attention in some way. I was just trying to reserve as much mental energy for tonight as I could, but instead wound up finding out a lot about both the iron isopod and the magical stone growing tree. Even when I’m stressed out I just can’t shut off the curiosity.
I went ahead and wrote down a note about how the two were behaving around one another and the things they both reacted to, but I decided it would be best to present this information to Faerkurch later. Tuleni taught me how to mix together a simple healing salve to keep my mind off of things, but I just wound up making a lot of it at a nearly perfect ratio over and over until her jars were all full of it. She was indifferent about my autonomous efficiency and medicine preparation speed, but when she figured out that I was able to tell which plants were mana deficient she tasked me with the incredibly slow task of recharging her herb garden. I was knee deep in the plants when my brothers showed up to venture with me to the lower floors.
Instead of heading straight down to the bottom floor, we instead decided to see if we could find Vimna’s home from the workshop floor. I knew which tunnel she went down every day after work, but this tunnel still had a dozen or so dens to walk past and it wasn’t easy for me to just ogle at people in their own homes through their open front doors. Societal norms be damned, one’s home should be a place of privacy! Of course, Dobo’s den just had to be the thirteenth house from the tunnel entrance, so if I had that fear of the number thirteen that Charles reminded me was called triskaidekaphobia, then I’d be shaking in my proverbial boots right now.
We found the entire kobold family just milling about in their home, though it appeared that Vimna and two others were reading at the far end of the room. I motioned for my brothers to hang back a bit since they were all armed and I didn’t want to cause a scare. I knocked my knuckled against the frame of the doorway, causing every pair of eyes to look at me with mild interest and my favorite lab assistant to drop her book and skirt around the family bed/divot in the center of the room to get over to this side. She greeted me with a hug, and upon seeing my brothers in the hallway let out an excited yap.
“Roo, you’re here, and you brought your brothers! Oh, shouldn’t shout, my mistake. I would say come inside, but our den is too small for…did you getting taller?”
Her saying that had all of my brothers moving hands and stepping close to me, because apparently they hadn’t even noticed that I’d grown a few inches last night. Still wasn’t as tall as Humey, but only just a bit taller than Mibata. Now that I think about it, maybe that was why my metabolism was going all over the place this week. The best I could do was just nod along, which she just shrugged off as normal.
“Mom, dad, Roo’s here!”
From a separate room came Dobo, followed after by Gyloa stepping into the doorframe with an abacus in her hands. She smiled and waved, but seemed too busy to come and greet us like her husband was right now.
“Kayrux and…brothers? Sorry, I don’t think we spoke before. Um, we were soon to be eating before going to the altar. Are you here to accompany us there?”
I nodded in agreement before writing him a reply to make the situation make more sense. I maybe was writing just a teeny little lie, but the less questions he asked the less involved in cult mysteries he might be.
“Vimna asked me to come, and my brothers are all part of the city protectors. They’ll be coming with me to make sure that nobody gets lost, and if anyone needs to go to the clinic we can get there quickly and safely. You mentioned food, would you like some help in cooking?”
Dobo blinked at the slate with the look of someone too unsure to make any kind of response. Vimna was buzzing with excitement, and her eyes were glued to her father in anticipation. The poor man caved under the wide, expectant eyes and waved for us to come in. Vimna wasted no time in leading me to their kitchen while my brothers tucked their blades into their wallets to conceal them before introducing themselves. While they were getting to know the red kobold family, I was staring in awe at the mountain of food they had tucked away in their pantry. I’m going to guess here, but judging by Dobo’s resigned stare and Vimna’s boundless enthusiasm, I suppose I’m in charge of this twelve kobold dinner.
Fine, looks like I’ve got to roll up my nonexistent sleeves and get to work behind the stove once more.
…
I’ve never had to cook so much food in all of my lives, even at a restaurant. No matter how much food I made, the family that lived here would eat anything and everything I cooked then ask for more, and so would Humey as well. I hate to say that red kobolds have big appetites, because that felt racist in some kind of way, but if the evidence collected here was any proof then I at least speculate that this might be the case. Even after cooking a three course dinner, the seemingly infinite pantry of their house looked just as stuffed to bursting as it did before.
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One consolation prize for my exhausting work was seeing them all get to know each other. Humey and Gyloa helped me in the kitchen, but the tiny woman and the burly boy actually got along quite well, and by the end of it were working in sync with Vimna and myself. Mibata attempted to remain secluded by the doorway, but one of the daughters, Ghȧxni, somehow realized that he was just shy and offered him a friendly challenge of some kind of kobold version of chess. She didn’t stand a chance, and neither did any of the others, but he still played along and gave them advice on how to play the game better. Tokols needed no assistance in getting to know them, since he was the right height to match them and turning his scales red made him match the color theme of the house. Their game of kobold trivia was good background noise to cook to, and really made the evening go by smoothly.
Everyone had a chance to get in a good power nap to help digest their food, but eventually the time had come for the ritual crowd to gather. We heard the families down the hall begin to leave, and as one big pack we joined them on the cryptic march towards the lifts. I held Vimna’s hand the entire way down, but every second of our trip was another second that my eyes scanned the crowd looking for anything suspicious. There weren’t any camera drones, no elders were watching me, and overall everything was just as it was two months ago. Everything was normal, almost uncomfortably normal.
We arrived down to the bottom floor, and in no time at all we were met by Juaki and Bahruk, who had come down here ahead of time to wait for us. By their reports, Yabtin and Rakyat were staying put with the shop closed after hearing some odd rumors of shipping manifests being destroyed, and the guards were supposed to be doubling their security efforts tonight. My brothers also added to the information pool by saying that they had seen no evidence that anything was wrong, but tonight would have three elders watching the event from afar while the priestess did the rites. This sounded incredibly odd, and perhaps might even be a sign that this whole trap was set just to catch us. There’s no backing out now, we’re already here and that’s final.
There was still some time to look around, and doing so made me have terrible flashbacks again. The looming figure of the dragon statue five stories above us looked especially sinister with the massive plates and spikes along its back. The black stone of the altar also looked menacing in every aspect as the dark stone appeared to be perfectly smooth while also having some kind of porous divots that didn’t really exist, and the air around it felt much colder than the air in the crowd. Looking up from below and seeing the stars suspended in the sky felt wrong, as though looking up at that sky without the moons there was like being forced to kneel looking down into the mirror. How is Vimna going to react to that magical fuckery when she sees it, and will she be alright after this?
The double full moons peeked over the rim of the mountain top, and atop the altar appeared the priestess elder from the shadow of the dragon statue. How she was able to conceal herself like that was a mystery, as even my hyper-aware magical senses told me that she just appeared there without any sort of spells. She stepped to the edge of the altar and surveyed the crowd silently, but it appeared that the time of the ritual was not yet at hand. She cracked and awful snaggle-toothed smile and called out in glee for all to hear.
“Greetings, people of Terokos! Tonight is the night that we once again partake of the moon-rise tradition of introducing the youth to the great dragon. Those who are here to observe, hold silence as the ritual commences, those who are here to accept blessings, ascend to the peak of the altar.”
Vimna looked up at me with worried eyes, but reassurances from her parents was enough for her to let go of my hand and travel with her siblings to the foot of the pyramid-like platform. The praetorian told them to not bring anything with them, but all of them were bare of any items so they just climbed the steps carefully. Every inch they drew closer to the top made my pulse hasten, until I could feel the pounding of the blood vessels in my eardrums. I fought to keep my breath steady, yet I found that having my hand clasped firm in the fingers of my brother’s hand was the most calming thing I had available.
Through my enhanced senses, I could feel the mana in the air swirling around the altar like an invisible tornado, with more energy being poured directly on top of the stone statue by the very light of the double moons. Most shockingly, there came a rhythmic pulse of mana rising from deep below that felt like a heartbeat, albeit one so large and strong that it would have to belong to something truly gargantuan to be alive. That was the pulse of a dragon’s heart, or at the very least the beating of some unknowable and ancient force that called itself a dragon. Whatever it was, it was responding to the ritual energies here before me and was channeling the mana into that mirror atop the platform.
That priestess woman, Quhros, was acting as a conduit for the mana herself, and now that I could see from this angle she definitely was chanting some kind of incantation for the spell. She looked to be completely focused on her task, but that deranged grin didn’t seem to leave her face even as the magic came to a critical point of swirling and pumping. She stopped chanting, and with a wave of her hands directed the mana to flow into the stone below her, where I could sense that it was being channeled into a tighter and tighter space just below the mirror. She pulled something from below her robes, and into the mirror she poured some black liquid of unknown purpose.
The reaction was immediate. Though I couldn’t see from the angle I was at, the black liquid seemed to be entering the mirror and mixing with the present mana, and in response there came a surge of mana from deep below that rushed to meet it. The chaotic form of the compacted mana writhed and snapped like an enraged viper, and even as the mad priestess resumed chanting it still sought to fight at her powers. The group of young kobold standing fifteen strong now made it to the top of the five flights of stairs just as the violent magic energy was subdued by this eldritch ritual.
The old woman turned to face the crowd to once again address us.
“Behold, the dragon has accepted the infusion! Tonight’s ritual shall be one of great success! Tonight the dragon will accept only the strong! Tonight the great ancients will peer through the veil of death and give their blessing to the worthy, and we shall bear witness to their divinity unleashed. Rejoice! Rejoice!”
Every part of my brain was screaming that something was amiss. This wasn’t how it went down for us, and at no point was there ever a mention of an infusion. I looked to the adults in our group, but all four looked equally aghast at this development. Juaki could see that I was beginning to lose it, and in a single motion she was between me and the altar, shaking her head for me not to do anything. I know there’s nothing I can do, but I can’t…I won’t…damn it, there’s got to be a way to stop this!
Charles began to warn me of something, but I was in too much of a shock to know what was said. I looked up helplessly as the elder walked around the altar mumbling under her breath, as the magic from within the stone began to coil and snake around the edge of the mirror, as the first few kobolds were called up to the mirror. No, this wasn’t right either, she was calling all of them up at once, not even bothering to announce their clans or families this time! This reeked of a sacrifice, and nobody else was willing to stop it. I looked to Dobo and Gyloa, and the sheer dismay they wore ripped my heart in two.
I didn’t even need to think about it to know that the lightning rune was forming in my arms and spine. I didn’t even focus on the fact that the hard-bound limiters that would keep me at one-tenth output shattered. I was deaf to the alarms ringing in my ears that something was entering my mind. I wanted to destroy the altar and the elder along with it, to reduce it all to molten rock and ashes to save the one I loved. This city would never forgive me, but I’d take that chance if it meant stopping this madness.
I never got the chance. My runes collapsed in on themselves as time slowed to a crawl, my senses going dull as a hand wrapped around my heart to drag me into the dark. Everything went silent as my mind was taken to a place I knew but was unfamiliar with. The empty city, the one from my dreams. No, this place was different, there were thousands of kobolds here, but I just couldn’t see them standing all around me, and above me there were the moons just as they were supposed to be, only they were…red.
There was something behind me. Something big. It was mere inches from the back of my neck, and I could already feel it on my scales. There wasn’t a sound, nor even any warmth, but it was there and I knew it was waiting for me to turn around.