Merdon returned to consciousness slowly. It was warm, pleasantly warm, but he found it hard to focus. He tried to remember what happened before he passed out. The arrow. His eyes flew open and came face to face with a pair of bright blue eyes surrounded by white scales and golden lines that trailed down the kobold's cheeks. Like rays of sunshine. However, he didn't recognize this kobold and so he tried to pull away, promptly smacking his head against the hard stone wall of the ruined home they were holding up in.
“Ouch!”
“Lay still,” Skyeyes told him, extending his hands again and healing the knot Merdon just made on the wall. “Your verakt was very concerned.”
“Sarel,” Merdon muttered, forgetting to keep that name a secret. “Where is she?”
The cleric gave no indication that Merdon made a mistake. “Hunting. She will return soon.”
Merdon grunted approval and sat up. “Who are you?” he asked next, cautiously taking stock of the room. A fire was burning across from him, near the door, and the other two humans were nowhere to be found.
“I am Skyeyes,” the white kobold introduced himself. “A kobold cleric.”
That got a raised brow. “I've never heard of a kobold cleric.”
Skyeyes smirked, “We are uncommon, but not unheard of. You were put through your paces here.” He touched the human's exposed stomach, which was no longer wounded.
“How long was I out?” Merdon asked while rubbing the formerly wounded area himself.
“Three days since we arrived. Quickclaw expects the other humans to return soon.”
That got Merdon out of bed as quick as lightning, in spite of Skyeyes' instance to lay down. Merdon didn't care, not right now. The other humans were coming back and now there were two kobolds around. He had to speak with Sarel as soon as possible. As he reached the door, the timing impeccable, Quickclaw returned, opening it from her side and stopping dead at the sight of Merdon standing. She had a slightly gory sack on her back, filled with meat she had cleaned off a deer, which she dropped onto the ground as she quite literally leaped into Merdon's arms. Luckily he was healed enough to catch her, and only stumble back a little bit in surprise.
After just a moment of joy, Sarel hopped off and crossed her arms. “You should be laying down,” she suddenly accused Merdon.
“With the others due to arrive any day?” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “And another kobold running around. Where did you even find him?”
“A village,” she said vaguely. It was definitely against her rules to tell him where exactly.
Merdon blinked. “There's a kobold village near here?”
Sarel nodded but said no more about its location. “It was a shorter distance than Bereth, so Quickclaw got you aid from there instead.”
“I guess I owe the kobolds a thank you then.”
Skyeyes interjected, “The elder of the village refused Quickclaw's plea. I am unaffiliated with any kobold settlements.”
Again, Merdon looked surprised. “Is that why you sound different? Or, is Quickclaw's third-person thing a quirk of her own?”
Sarel sighed. “Skyeyes is the odd one,” she confirmed. “He speaks like a hume.”
The white kobold smiled. “I take that as a compliment; that I have adjusted well to the mannerisms of the human race.”
Merdon hummed curiously at that, but let it lie. He wasn't familiar with this new kobold and didn't know if he would be staying. There was no need to pry into the life of someone that saved him, seemingly out of the kindness of their heart. Rather an odd, good-natured kobold than an evil one. Instead, he asked Sarel about the time he spent incapacitated.
His little verakt told him about her use of the ring to summon a wolf to aid her in reaching the village swiftly, which she demonstrated for him with ease. She then told him of Skyeyes' uncertainty with his condition and how grim things seemed for the first night. How she took up hunting for them to keep them fed, and she showed off the bow she had carved from a nearby tree and strung herself. It impressed him greatly all of the burdens she carried while he was unconscious. Not just the revelation that she was a good archer, the way she figured out the ring, used it to get him help and hunt, but how she stared tragedy in the face and stood strong.
Merdon knelt down and hugged Sarel tightly, whispering a deep and true, “Thank you” into her ear, or rather the small section of her head where she heard things. The kobold blushed but hugged him back and took that thanks in silence. He was well, alive, recovered even, that was all she could have asked for. Even Skyeyes looked embarrassed and turned around, his tail making an awkward sweeping motion on the floor as he averted his gaze from the couple. It was expected of them, but embarrassing for him to witness.
They continued to catch up, Sarel demonstrating her ability to ride her wolf and fire a bow at the same time while Merdon polished and fixed his armor. The arrow had punched clean through his steel, either through magic or great force it didn't matter. What did matter was that he needed to essentially turn a small fire into a temporary forge. Merdon had tracked down a building that looked like an old smithy to find some of the materials he would need. Though worn out, the heat source was the thing he needed most. Both kobolds watched with great interest as he heated coals and then roughly hammered the hole closed, a much larger area of the armor turning bright red and orange as he did. It was thinner now where his amateur hammering had pushed the metal away, which concerned him, but it would look imposing enough as they walked back to Bereth. With his cut of the money from the quest, he could get it repaired properly. With all the arrows he kept taking, he might think about getting it reinforced against such things as well.
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Around noon, the sound of horse hooves caught all of their attention. Merdon put out his armor flame and the group retreated to the little stone house they'd been hiding out in. Sarel winked at Merdon, summoned her wolf, and the creature sprinted out silently around another ruin in front of them. Something she had forgotten to tell him was the connection she shared with the wolf. It had her eyes, quite literally.
The kobold focused and saw the main road through the ruins with the eyes of her familiar. Three horses, each carrying a man. A mage, a warrior, and a priest. Of course, the other humes.
“It's our 'rescuers',” she said with a snicker.
Merdon frowned. “How do you know that?”
“I can see through the wolf's eyes,” she told him in a casual tone, but with a smirk.
The knight shook his head and relaxed. “All right, let's go let them know that I'm fine,” he said, standing up and stepping out of their hiding place. He was just in time for the trio on horseback to come around and stare at him.
Their priest was the first to speak up with a confused, “He seems fine.”
“He wasn't,” their brusque knight replied.
Skyeyes hesitantly stepped out behind Merdon. “That would be because of me, yes.”
The human cleric stared, slack-jawed. “A kobold in a healer's robe?” he half-shouted.
“Yeah, I had a pretty nasty arrow wound,” Merdon confirmed. “Apparently it got infected even, but Skyeyes here fixed me up while you were gone.”
The adventurers muttered, upset they had wasted money on the horses and healer for naught. Their healer wasn't done though.
“You didn't say anything about a healing kobold,” he accused the two.
“We didn't know.” Again, the knight was short on his words.
“There was only the thief when we left,” the mage added.
Quickclaw, at that moment, hauled out the contents of the chest in a sack for the three humans. “By Quickclaw's guess there should be more than enough to cover your time, once it is sold,” she told them. Naturally, she waited for the two adventurers to open the bag and check the contents themselves. The right schools would pay quite a sum for these items.
“Quickclaw thinks, as compensation, we will just take the modest silvers,” the kobold added. “This will mean more share for you, for the inconvenience.”
The knight and mage had already planned on splitting it three ways. Getting even more? They tied up the sack, thanked the kobold in a more earnest way than most humans would, and turned their horses around. Their new priest sat and looked at Skyeyes for a moment longer before huffing and trotting his horse off after them. His look was one that made Merdon curious. Was there something wrong with a kobold cleric? Or perhaps there was something about Skyeyes himself, rather than his profession.
In any event, the trio were clear to relax now. They could set off for Bereth at their own pace when Merdon wasn't so sore from lying unconscious for several days. While he started moving around, getting the knots out of his muscles, he noticed that things around the ruined house seemed a little clearer. It looked like Sarel, since Skyeyes had been healing him, had been working on more than just hunting. Sure, there was moss growing between the stones of the house, that would take weeks to clear away, but the grass wasn't as overgrown around the building. Inside things were much better, from what he could see. It almost looked livable. Looking at it all made him wonder about actually having a house of his own. He didn't really think beyond each contract, nothing permanent. Sarel was in the picture now though, she was certainly permanent, at least he felt she was.
“Gonna feel weird going back to sleeping at the inn every night,” he joked with Quickclaw.
The kobold giggled in response. “Would verakt rather walk two days to Bereth for a job?” she retorted.
Merdon shook his head. “Not at all. I just mean … this place feels almost like a home.”
Skyeyes chimed in. “It most likely was. The upstairs has what seems to be a pair of bedrooms, without the beds, and beyond the rubble in the doorway in the back is a kitchen and possibly more.”
“That's not quite what I meant,” Merdon said slowly. “I mean it feels less like a ruined home and more like-”
“Like a place to live,” Sarel finished with a smirk. “Yes, when one is used to traveling a lot, even a short stop in one place brings feelings of attachment. It's best to move on before those get too strong.”
Merdon paused. “One more night won't hurt,” he insisted. “A night of rest where I'm not wounded, a good meal before and after, then we can set off.”
Sarel sighed. “Fine, Quickclaw brought a lot of meat from her hunt. It would be good to lighten our packs before traveling.”
Merdon gave her a smile, and then leaned down and kissed her cheek. The kobold reddened over her blue scales and muttered something about getting dinner ready before padding off. She wasn't entirely used to the romantic stuff yet. This, however, gave Merdon the perfect time to investigate Skyeyes. He knew things were dangerous as an adventurer. Many groups incorporated some cleric into their mix. It was a sound idea, though he worried if he alone could stand up to the dangers they would need to face with a more complete group. Rather than ponder the white kobold's intentions, he approached the cleric.
Skyeyes was sitting with his back against an interior wall that supported the stairs that went up to the bedrooms he mentioned. He seemed, overall, to be in better health than the impostor cleric Sarel had killed days ago, whose body seemed to have been dragged off in the interim. Merdon sat next to him, making eye contact as he did. The kobold eyed him a little and made some room. Apparently, he wasn't one for unnecessary closeness. Not that Merdon would complain. He wasn't trying to overstep any bounds after all.
“So,” Merdon said, carefully picking his words. “What will you do after this?”
Skyeyes looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”
“I'm just curious if you'd planned on going back to whatever you were doing before I got injured, or if maybe you'd come along,” the knight replied, his last few words spoken slower. He realized a bit late that it sounded more like an invitation to come along rather than a question.
The cleric kobold chuckled. “I had thought about asking myself,” he admitted. “You and Quickclaw are something I find to be enviable.” Merdon's raised brow coaxed the boy kobold to continue. “I believe that humans and kobolds can coexist, peacefully, but first we must spend more time with each other. We must prove to the humans that we're not stupid, under civilized monsters. That requires more interaction, more learning from both sides. Too much work for those set in their ways.”
Merdon nodded. “You know, between you and Quickclaw, I've gotten the impression that kobolds are ridiculously smart. You're both very well-spoken, even if she's more crude about some things.”
Skyeyes smiled at him. “Rest assured, we are not the normal ones. Quickclaw is a thief among your kind, she makes her ways through your world intentionally blasphemous of its laws. I, on the other claw, have studied your ways and wish to emulate them. Both of us, in different but similar ways, have experienced more freedom in human culture than most of our kind. We are molded by it.” The kobold spoke with a certain conviction and a familiar cadence to his voice.
Merdon smiled back. “I think you make more than a good cleric,” he said. “You'd make quite the convincing priest too.” In the kobold's tone, Merdon heard the pace of a preacher. A compliment, apparently, that made the kobold's cheeks redden further.
Sarel came back in, throwing two large slabs of meat into a pan and making them sizzle over the fire in the house deliberately. She looked at the two and said, “Stop flirting and help me cook.” Merdon coughed nervously and got up. He really hoped she didn't mean that seriously. It may have taken some convincing, but just because he fell for one kobold didn't mean he was interested in boy kobolds too.
Skyeyes' response was to half retreat into his cloak and look away. He was more nervous about his plans than he'd let on talking to Merdon. Still, he was convinced they were a step in the right direction for both of their races. Someone had to make sure they didn't get into any more trouble. Or at least not die before making more of an impact in the world.