Meanwhile in the library a valiant human knight with his elven lover were facing down an epic dragon. The hero’s sword enchanted with ancient arcane knowledge the elf had found in a long lost book of elven ancestors. Their epic fight had been long and brutal and the human was ready to confess his love to the elf, unaware that his companion for so long was a man! Little did the elf know either that they were both gay, and that all his attempts to appear feminine had merely confused the poor knight!
At least, that was what was going on in the trashy romance novel Nelva was reading.
“It is for researching humans! Even fantasies have a seed of truth within them!” She insisted after both of the others gave her a long look. It did give Tezira an opening to read it when Nelva was done with it.
Jack just chose to ignore it, even though he himself was fairly curious about the book. He had been with a dude at one point and was curious how this world viewed it. At least that was his excuse for wanting a turn with it.
Blisteringly hot guy love and “Totally platonic” wand-play aside the trio had not found much. The humans had long ago left to their own section of the continent after a number of fairly major disputes with the other species and had largely quarantined themselves. There were lots of tales of heroes coming from the land of humans and doing great deeds (and PLENTY of tales of interspecies love with said heroes.) Plus tales of humans being the grandest villains that the heroes had to conquer (and only sometimes with love. And once with a collar in a book that Nelva refused to let anyone else get near.)
As for information on the frog people there was not much either. However the authors of the few books there were laid out exactly why there was so little info. There was no grand conspiracy or anything either, just:
1: There were not many frog people to study.
2: They didn’t do much to warrant study or take note of.
3: They didn’t get out much.
4: Nobody really wanted to go into the swamplands to talk with them or study them.
Nelva was not very happy that not many people had cared to investigate her people, but the more she thought about the reasons the more she came to understand why. Even she wanted to leave the tribe to study more interesting things and she was one of them! Soon the two delvers got tired about reading about themselves and began the search for a new topic. A topic that had been close by this whole time: kobolds.
They were no happy with what they found.
A whole section, although small, dedicated to them. Famous kobolds such as “Herazasha the great helhost herder” who led hundreds of demonic cows on a quest to pretty much nowhere, documents on great adventures such as “the mighty mallet” of a story of how a dwarf and a kobold teamed up to recover the dwarf’s mallet only to wind up owning half a small kingdom, to inventions such as the “great rapid automatic letter stamper and paper mover to help with writing many stories and books as fast as possible using a wide range of pressable metal parts and a bottomless ink pot.”
The last one was all about how the great “Ty-poi-boa” invented a device that was sought after by writers around the world wanting to improve their own writing speed since the inventor had used his device to write a good percent of the books in the section. The kobold had announced that upon their death that the secrets of their device would be released to the public with his final book. However he had sold so many books he was currently on his third bottle of life-extending elixir.
Jack opted to not explain what a typewriter was, even if he wanted to share just to get rid of such a long name.
There was one book about kobolds they were forbidden from reading: “The dragon slayer slave.” It had been snatched from Jack’s hands as he admired the quite scantily clad kobold woman on the front cover holding a long bloody knife in one hand and a dragon’s head in the other. Despite there being more than one “artistic liberty” taken with the overall look of the kobold, most notably her “clothing,” it was very clearly a slightly younger Tezira.
She quickly put it back on the shelf with a small hiss. “You can read about my stupid younger years when I am not around. And yes, I agreed to that cover. Yes. I had to. Yes. I lost a bet. NO. I do not have a copy you can have of the picture.” She yapped out before returning to the duo. Her tail flicking side to side in frustration as she let out another small hiss from her nose.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I paid for the creation of a few books in here. That was not one of them. I paid for some guy to research other kobolds who killed dragons trying to get attention away from myself, but turns out there was only like four others! And one did it by accident!” She yipped before sitting down right between Nelva and Jack.
Nelva gave her a glare just barely holding back a hiss as the kobold sat very close to her boyfriend. Tezira saw the look she was getting and gave a wide fang filled smile only to move so close to Nelva they were practically rubbing against each other! The frog looked down at the kobold in confusion before simply shrugging and focusing back on the human. She did get what she wanted after all.
“You know. It is kinda nice just relaxin’ with you two.” Tezira chirped out with a sigh. “You two really took the “speak to me informally” thing to heart. It is pretty nice just… being a bit normal!” She waved her hands a bit for emphasis before letting out a long sigh. “A girl getting jealous of me for being close to her man, talking about trashy novels, flipping though weird books, all of that without any “I will be right there boss!” Or “It will be my HONOR dragon slayer!” bullshit!” She practically spat out the last bit.
“Fuck. Sometimes I just want to be a normal person. Going from slave to famous dragon slayer and boss of a group is not fuckin’ easy. Will tell you that.” She took a deep breath before giving a wide smile. “Ah well. My job an’ all that! Now, lets get back to seeing if we can find anything juicy about our human boy here!” She went to hop off the bench only for Jack to put a hand on her.
He knew that smile.
“Hey, how about we get a little snack?” He asked with a warm smile. “I think you gathered enough intel on me and Nelva. Well, what little you could.” Jack offered giving Nelva a small nod to tell her to play along. It felt weird doing such a thing for someone as powerful as her, but to him it was something he wanted to do.
Tezira looked between them very confused for awhile before smiling wide. “FUCK yes! There is a meat skewer stall right next to this library that has some amazing salt and pepper meat options!” She hopped up and motioned for them to follow. “I will, of course, be buying.” She said with a smile before she felt something brand new. A sensation that she had always dreamed of but never thought someone would be so bold.
A hand gently patting her head.
She froze, looking up to Jack who smiled down at her with a wide smile. “No you are not Tezira. One, I have my girlfriend with me. Two, it was my idea.” He explained with a warm, friendly chuckle. “I saw it just down the street as we were coming close.” He explained as they started to make their way out the front door.
Tezira just started at them as she followed behind them, rubbing her hands together as she thought out loud about which flavor she would pick. Soon scurrying just a little to walk right between the two. At first Nelva wanted to object, but when she looked down she just saw a friendly little kobold with just a couple of scars daydreaming about meats. Her eyes wandered back up to Jack’s who simple shrugged and nodded for them to keep walking.
A few moments later, and a brief argument over who was paying, they sat on a bench by a pretty fountain happily munching on meat. The deal struck was that Jack would pay for the large amount of more “normal” meat types while the kobold would splurge on the exotics that she strongly recommended.
Even if they were a bit spicy.
They just sat in the park loudly talking about things they read from the books that had caught their eyes in one way or another. Each taking something different away from the rather large stretch of different books they had gathered and looked through. While there were attempts to keep to the more “academic” books conversation drifted in many “different” ways.
The trio sat, laughed, and argued till the sun started to go down. They all knew with Tezira with them they would be safe, but something told Jack the night was still young. “Hey, our place or yours?” He asked Tezira with a grin. “I bet we already have a room waiting for us knowing John. That, and I bet you ha-“
She held up a clawed hand. “No talk about that kinda stuff right now. I got a place nearby that is a bit more… plain. It has a spare bedroom you two can use.” She explained as she started to walk to the middle ring. She led them down some perfectly normal houses to a normal townhouse in a tucked away corner. She slowly rubbed the handle as she looked the building over with a sigh before opening the door and motioning them in.
“Welcome! It has two bedrooms, a bathroom with running water, a kitchen, and a living room.” She explained as she strolled over to a long couch and sat on the middle with a warm smile.
A smile that did not fully reach her eyes.
“Make yourselves at home!”
Both Nelva and jack saw the look on her face and knew not all was well. The looked at each other and had just a small kiss before sliding onto the couch on both sides of her. She looked at them surprised that they would sit so close to her before both of them put their arms around her.
“Kinda boring isn’t it? No decorations?” Jacked asked in a light tone.
Tezira looked up at him in shock before her eyes wandered over the rather plain house. Her eyes watered just a bit as she nodded. “Yeah, just a plain ol’ boring house.” She explained with a sigh.
“Fitting for just a normal kobold trying to make her way in the world eh? Just a norrrmal kobold.” He stressed as they both pressed against her. She froze, then gave small nods. “Yeah. Normal o’l me.” She squeaked out before they just sat there awhile.
Doing nothing but relaxing together.