Chapter 1 - Fiery Awakening

Life can be rather difficult when it comes to uneventful events and unpredictable factors that can make it either an interesting thing or… a rather unfortunate matter.

In this case, I am not sure where this lands me, but I want to say that…

First came the Darkness.

Kind of solemn, giving a bit of flavor to what, to me, was literally nothing. I opened my eyes and I felt dread as I saw everything was dark minus the floor- that one was cold and stone-like.

Definitely not the bed I had been sleeping in and… something about this just didn’t feel right.

Yes, I know, Captain Obvious here, but my mind needed a moment to catch up beyond the fact this whole setting was creepy. And scary. And rather upsetting. I mean, I could tell this place was not safe- that I was not safe.

Also, my belly was hurting like crazy. I never had this kind of cramps before and I felt something burning deep within my bowels. At first, this all felt like a terrible hangover-induced nightmare due to my physical pain but then, like a fiery slap across my cheek, my ‘lips’ parted instinctively as something tore through my throat and-

Flames erupted, shattering the shadows and burning around before my aching belly calmed down.

Torches that had previously gone spent were now rekindled, bringing light upon the room and revealing the proper scenario I was stuck with. Starting with the fact I wasn’t alone.

In fact, crumbled on the ground, seemingly asleep and not dead, numerous scaled entities of the short kind rested. Colorful tiny dragons? No, those were anthropomorphic and their appearance was different from the common Dragonkind.

The short stature, the barbarian-like outfits they all wore, and the lack of wings- I was looking at Kobolds. Malnourished Kobolds at that. Now, with that out of the way, I finally came to the conclusion of what was going on with me when I realized that 1) the room was awfully bigger than it should be and 2) I appeared to be roughly as tall as the rest of the small monsters.

I looked down at my hands, now covered in dark-blue scales and with sharp ends to each digit- four digits for each hand. Then I noticed my tail, with the same color as the rest of the scale and; finally I reached for my face and noticed how sharp and rough it was to the touch compared to normal fleshy skin.

…

“Holy fuck, I am a Kobold!”

I don’t know if it was that shocked exclamation or the sudden illuminated room, but right as I said this the other Kobolds started to wake up. Some took more time compared to others, but the first one that woke up was quite… excited.

“Wait, is the spell over? Are we free?” A feminine Kobold asked, eyes widening. “It’s our turn to be free?!”

Spell? And… wait, what?

“...No, I just burped some fire and lit up the torches and… spell? What kind of spell”

“A sleep one,” Another said, this one being a guy. I think the telling bit is that chicks had some pieces of cloth around their breasts and the males were ‘slender’ in some curves. “The Dark Lord put us in a spell so that then we would become part of his army once he was done fighting the pesky heroes!”

First, Dark Lord… what? What is going on? I mean, I know this is getting into fantasy territory but this Dark Lord/Demon Lord vibes were giving me some JRPG PTSD at the moment. Then, I realized what was up due to the current situation we were in.

…Oh. I think I know what is going on. And I don’t like it a single bit.

The desolate place, the lack of potential life around beyond the Kobolds and the fact that there was a supposed spell that put us in a stasis now no longer active- How long have we been left in here?!

“I think the opposite happened,” I dashed that hope away with a blunt tone, drawing everyone’s attention. “I just woke up and spit some fire to light up the torches.”

“And?” The excited girl demanded, almost annoyed by this party pooping I was being responsible for.

“And I see a skeleton,” Another Kobold remarked, looking from a big hole through the only door to this room. “And it is wearing… the same stuff that Mistress Calessa used to wear.”

The name didn’t feel familiar, but everyone bolted to confirm this matter and I tagged along to see what it was all about. From the hole I could see a proper skeleton wearing what appeared to be a rather cloaked outfit, all dusted up but clearly the thing a Necromancer would put on with the various skull-symbols all over it.

There was a lot of awkward silence at this, and I could tell the skeleton had been there for a very long time. Which further confirmed what I have been thinking up to this point. The Demon Lord was dead, and we were the only living survivors of what kind of mess the big bad was doing before I got inserted in this predicament.

“Oh shit, it’s Mistress Calessa!” One of the female Kobolds erupted in pure shock, with the others catching up to her realization.

“But then this mean-”

“That we have lost!”

The crowd exploded in panic, no one having the common sense or backbone to just stop a moment and realize that… we were in big trouble and having a panic attack was literally begging for more troubles.

“Hey all, stop-” I tried to talk.

“We are doomed!”

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“I said that-”

“Mistress! Mistress!”

It just pissed me off when I couldn’t just have them calm down by raising my voice. The irritation swelled in a familiar sensation which gave me an… idea. I raised my mouth up and then spouted some flames that splashed against the ceiling of the room.

Silence was back and many wide eyes were now directed at me.

“Quit yapping!” I exclaimed angrily, knowing that speaking too softly would let them back to blabbering. “We are not in a safe place right now and we need to find somewhere else to have these stupid panic attacks!”

“But the mistress-”

“I don’t care! We are in trouble if some bad monsters find us!”

Some gasped at the interruption. “B-Bad Monsters? But we are in the Demon Lord’s Castle!”

“It ‘was’ the Demon Lord’s Castle. The Demon Lord has to be dead at this point and has been dead for a long time,” I rebuked flatly, offering no concession to the terrifying morons. “Right now, this is home to some of the most dangerous things this world has. Which means that the more you scream and shout, the more we will have bad things coming our way.”

They all nodded, seeing my point, but before leaving, there was one thing I wanted to get done with.

“Before we leave, I want you all to form a line- Like this and- no, I said like this!” I snapped, getting them all to stand beside one another. “Okay, do you have any names and if so, introduce yourselves.”

I expected a quick introduction and be done with this and… I got no answer as everyone looked confused.

“We weren’t given a name. Mistress Calessa said we needed to be perfect to receive one."

I sighed, now well aware that was not going to be as easy as I wanted this to be. I walked up from one side to the other, giving them names because, let’s be honest, I can’t just go with the classic ‘point and call them you and you’ kind of tactic.

Mellow-orange scales. “Your name from now on is Caramel, shortened to Carrie for convenience.”

She beamed and nodded.

Next up was a lil’ guy with light-green scales. Lime or Limmy.

Blue scales, female. Aqua.

Brown scales, male. Rocky.

Light-purple scales, female. Viola.

White scales, male. Cloud.

Soft-pink scales, female. Rosa.

Gray scales, male. Grise.

In the end, I could list up to four males and four females under my command and I had to come up with a name. Why? Well, when Rocky asked me what my name would be, I actually failed to remember what my name was.

I knew where I lived as a human and how society worked, but I couldn’t remember my own damn name. So, for the sake of the situation, I had to come up with a new one to use for the time being.

Which is why for the sake of simplicity and importance, I named myself Pyrrhus Magnus Koboldus- shortened to Pyro because I spit fire and the others can’t. As anyone can tell by my chosen name, I am not losing my mind. Not at all.

With that out of the way, it was time to start leaving the cell and get going. The more we lingered in the castle, the higher the chances of running into dangerous threats were going to be.

I took the lead, checking the laboratory that was connected to the cell, which I identified as this Mistress’ magical workshop.

Most of the stuff there was either broken, spoiled by time or just irrelevant to what we may need to escape, but I did spot a particularly untouched book which held some arcane might… and I proceeded to yoink it so it could be used at a later time.

The others followed suit and we were all soon making our way towards the main entrance of the castle. Since we were somewhere in the lower floors of the massive building, it should have been easy to find a staircase connected to the core hall of this big ass fortress.

Turns out I was right and… I was also correct about there being potential monsters around. In this case, we were soon facing a few tough looking zombie soldiers. They all spotted us, but rather than seeing at least a few kobolds tagging along for some fighting, they all cuddled up in a big stupid group-hug.

I sighed, their attention on me as I didn’t do the same as they did.

“Watch and learn,” I told them as I rushed towards the undead foes.

Now, that sounds risky and, truth be told, it wasn’t as terrible as it sounded. While many would imagine these to be quite fast, the toll time put on their body couldn’t be fixed by the magic keeping them alive. Their limbs were mostly bones and…

The undead soldiers were all shivering, clearly unable to properly sustain their bodies in that weakened state while they were attacking me.

Without wasting the chance, I let the closest of the bunch slam its sword forward, the blade piercing the ground but remaining stuck as I proceeded to stomp the zombie’s hand with my thicker and stronger left leg.

A single stomp was enough to rip apart around near his elbow, the punch I also delivered quickly after that pushed it away from me as I retrieved its… broken sword. It was literally half of what a normal sword would be and while it would have been bad had I been in my old human body, it was perfect for my reduced form.

I didn’t hesitate in pressing to end this battle for good, using what was left of the advantage I got on this first opponent and stabbing his head from the side. The hit was deadly and the monster soon fell lifelessly on the ground, defeated.

The other zombies didn’t seem to care for this, moving closer to me but… ending up being subjected to my third unconscious fire-breathing eruption. A blast of flames burned through the upper bodies of both, sparing their weapons as they could be reused.

“You did it!” Rocky exclaimed.

“Of course he did it,” Carrie retorted giddily. “That’s our boss!”

The rest tagged along chanting me as their boss and all. It was a very nice way to rub my ego.

After enjoying this moment, I had those that were willing to handle melee weapons to take the broken swords and daggers used by the undead and, soon enough, we managed to find the exit of the place.

The entire ground had collapsed so it was easy to make it through without facing any mob as most had set their nests in far corners from the entrance. We were finally free but, also, facing a bit of dreadful foliage between us and our path out of the castle’s perimeter.

And as we worked our way into freedom, I could already tell that this whole mess would soon turn confusing to me. I was already rolling with being the boss of this group for the time being, but I needed answers on how I ended up here and why I was the only one capable of breathing fire.

Something just told me things were only going to get very complicated from this point onward.