A long, long time ago, before the massacre at the village occurred….

There was a man, with black hair, black eyes, European facial traits, dressed in a fine, black suit.

He sat on a chair, made from stone sculptures of humanoid figures, mended together, locking hands and legs with each other to resemble a chair; the figures were of heroes who were known throughout various cultures, countries, and eras.

In fact, those figures were those said heroes.

And the man was not a human as he seemed.

He was the trickster god, Loki.

- Hmm, who should I play with now? This toy seems to be broken already… what a shame. (Loki)

There was a table made from refined diamond in front of him, on it there was something that looked like a map, but it was showing moving, see through images, as if it was a TV screen.

He was watching the moving images, that depicted a great battle between humans, and some other humanoid race, which had wolf or dog-like features, but stood on 2 legs, and used weapons and armors.

That humanoid race was the kobold race.

- *yawning*, he died after only killing 200 humans, how weak. He seemed to be getting stronger during the past few reincarnations, though… well, as they say; you shouldn’t trust mortals in the first place, heh. (Loki)

Loki seemed bored, even though he was surveying the battle that he caused in order to get himself entertained.

The kobold mortal, who was called “sharp fang” during his current life, betrayed Loki’s expectations.

Loki made sharp fang reincarnate in a time of bad fortune for the kobold race, of kobolds being publicly recognized as slaves, which should work, suffer, and die for the convenience of the other races.

The human race was the cruelest of all races towards kobolds, using kobold children to clean human cities’ sewers from beasts that wandered into them. The men were as baits in battles and hunts for beasts and ferocious animals, as well as hard labor such as construction works, cart pulling. The women were used for sexual fetishes that had violence and abuse in them, thus having less human and other races’ females suffer such fates, even if they were the ones who worked in brothels in the first place.

All of it wasn’t just suddenly made up on the spot by some race, nor was it a degradation of treatment of kobold captives during the years.

It was also Loki’s work.

Loki, with a seemingly friendly smile on his face, started reminiscing of good and joyful times…

Joyful solely for him, of course.

*****

About 2 decades ago…

He had possessed a well-known spiritual leader of some “holy” faith, and said through the leader’s mouth that he got a revelation from their god, and it said that the kobold race was a thieving, murderous, cunning and merciless race, they were god’s enemy, and should be cut down.

The “holy god” didn’t mind if they were enslaved, die, or be tortured, the only thing that matters is that they shouldn’t be free, and had their power taken from them, being completely hopeless.

He even made a miracle appear when the human army marched into battle with the vile beastmen; a rain of fiery giant masses came down from the skills, right at the kobold village, more accurately speaking, into the residential area, where all the old, women, and children were hiding when the men and youth were at the palisade wall, preparing to intercept the human assault.

That was a meteorite shower which was originally supposed to only pass near the planet, and leave it unscathed.

It might have came back again and fall down unto the planet only in some 2’000 odd years, but Loki just decided to make the process faster, shifting the shower’s orbit closer to the planet, accurately aiming it at the defenseless kobold non-military personnel.

He thought that the kobolds’ terrified and uncomprehending expressions to be quite amusing, as they saw what happened right behind their line of defense.

They should’ve been protecting their families, friends, and loved ones, who were hiding behind their broad backs, shields, and the sturdy palisade walls.

Yet they couldn’t do anything, even if the kobold shamans could conjure a certain amount of water, and heal wounds to some extent, they couldn’t possibly even stop one of those fiery giant boulders that suddenly appeared from the skies.

They couldn’t even extinguish all the flames after said meteorites fell and stopped. Maybe they could extinguish just a 4th, but even that would take at least half a day, and that would totally use up all the shamans’ mana, so they would be useless in the upcoming battle with the humans.

They could only stare with wide open eyes, as their loved ones were hopelessly crushed by the meteors, unable to do anything, aside from cursing, biting their lips, and gripping their fists with incredible power.

Some of the defenders had blood dripping from their gripped fists, and some had fallen to their knees, sobbing and weakly shuddering.

Most of the ones who fell to their knees were the youths, they hadn’t even known how to properly fight, they wanted to show their courage in this battle to a female they had an interest in, or show their families that they were already mature, and dependable adults.

They wanted to protect something, to prove something to their important ones. Only that made them go to the front lines, even though they still had their own anxiety from battling for the first time.

But now they had their own reason crushed, stepped on, and mutilated, as their loved ones were menacingly dying from a rain of meteors, flying with a very fast speed, a giant mass, and temperature that put blacksmiths shops of dwarves to shame. Some were crushed, some were melting from the flames and temperature, and some had houses fall on them because meteors fell on said houses’ roofs, being buried in the debris.

Sharp fang was one of the youths that were defending the palisade walls at that time.

He was the only youth who didn’t get his determination crushed by that tragic sight, although his feelings of sorrow, and anguish were probably the strongest among his fellow kobolds.

He told himself that there were still other members of the village that he should protect, and they were right beside him, the men and youths didn’t get hit by the meteor shower at all, as if it was mocking them. Besides, their village wasn’t the only kobold village. There were still other kobolds scattered around the world, who still had children, youths, men, women, and old ones that needed to be protected from the damned arrogant humans.

So he had taken up arms, took a war axe from a crude weapon rack beside the palisade gates, a long bow and a stack of arrows, and proceeded to get to a nearby hill which was situated near the walls, inside the village. There were a few catapults there, and a personnel that manned them.

He was among the first ones to wake up from the misery, anguish, hopelessness, and powerlessness that engulfed all his brethren.

He hit the catapult personnel, waking them up from their stupefied trance, and made them prepare and shoot volleys of burning boulders on the cheeringly approaching human forces.

They were a fairly big village, especially recently, because of all the refugee kobolds who had ran away from the human lands. Overall, the military personnel that defending the village amounted to approximately 600 kobolds from various ages, while the enemies had been over 3,000 warriors, not even accounting the non-military personnel, and supply units.

With his quick thinking and courage, he managed to get the catapult corps start firing at the enemy troops when they were already at the edge of their range of fire, reducing the enemies’ numbers by some 150-200 warriors.

When the humans came close and had their siege rams closing in on the gate and a few parts of the of the palisade, he quickly neared the most less protected area where the humans wanted to make a breach.

With his high beast-like agility, he climbed up a building near the future breach, and started shooting arrows at the humans who were ordering around kobolds just like him to move the siege ram to the palisade. He couldn’t find it in him to shoot his kin who were clearly subjected into this task, so he thought that by killing the nearest humans to them, he’d free the kobolds and those would join the battle on their side.

That might’ve happened, if it weren’t for the quick and merciless order of an archers’ platoon commander to shoot at the chained up slaves who were moving the ram, the same slaves he hoped to free and had to their forces.

That was also Loki fooling around. He found the sight of the dependable kobold hero to be too “uninteresting” from his perspective.

So he read his thoughts, and made a move of his own to completely crush his hopes, by possessing an archers’ platoon commander and ordering that platoon to kill the very own people sharp fang hoped to save, and hoped to have them help him in defending and rescuing more of their kinsmen.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

At the time, Loki couldn’t suppress a cackle that rose from his twisted heart due to sharp fang’s look of bewilderment and hopeless as he couldn’t do anything to stop the arrows from falling down, penetrating, and scratching the ragged and tired kobolds who were all chained together to the ram they had been ordered to move.

The kobold mages might have been able to cast a surge of wind to deflect or even send back the arrows, but he was no mage, as he didn’t learn any magic, and wasn’t deemed compatible with magic by the elder kobold shamans.

He could only kill of the last human near the siege ram, and start shooting at the archers who had been killing off his helpless kin. The first archer he killed was the very platoon commander who issued the order who deprived the people he wanted to save from their lives. His arrow accurately plunged itself into the commander’s right eye socket, burying itself a bit less than half way through, instantly killing him.

He shot that arrow from a distance of a bit more than 300 meters, yet had that much accuracy to pinpoint the arrow into a moving human’s eye socket.

At the end, the kobolds lost that fight, and were enslaved or killed.

Sharp fang was enslaved, but not before being cruelly beaten by the archery platoon whose commander he killed, getting his right eye gouged out by a small knife, and his left ear savagely torn from his head by several archers pulling his head and ear to opposite sides.

Then he was sent to the human country’s capital city, in which they would hold a grandiose ceremony and festivity out of the more prominent kobolds’ public execution.

He was one of the kobolds who were deemed important enough, as his silver shining fur, which after the defeat got dirty and lost its shine, had gotten him recognized as the very same archer who killed a commander from a distance that most of the human archers weren’t able to even reach with their bows, not even considering accuracy.

The most the human archers could do was probably about 200-250 meters.

However, as the time to the public execution was nearing, something strange happened. A plague had struck the human capital, not sparing any humans, whether it was a child, a woman, a man, or an elderly. The plague had delayed the scheduled execution of the kobolds.

The human casualties from the plague, just from a week worth of time, were an astounding number of over 15,000.

In addition to it, other races were also affected, such as dwarfs, elves, other beastmen aside from kobolds, all together adding another 1,000 casualties.

The kobold casualties = simply a big, absolute zero.

The kobolds were completely unaffected by the plague, they did notice that it had a strange odor, but nothing happened to them, even if they were exposed to a source of it for prolonged time.

Researchers, pharmacists, and magicians noticed how strange it was for only the kobolds to stay unaffected by such a terrible plague, so they checked it, by closing groups of kobolds and isolating them together with dying victims of the plague, or corpses of the already deceased from the plague.

Their healthy appearance even after a few days of living with the plague just angered them, it was like a mocking to the humans and the other races, as the plague needed just half a day to start showing its symptoms, and the victim dying right before the dawn of the next day.

Thus, inevitably, the church blamed the kobolds for the start of the plague, and the nobles and high standing people in the human society of that country, and nearby ones who also got infected, easily bought that otherwise so fishy and apparent lie.

Even the commoners and other lower statuses got to think that the church’s “revelation” might be, in fact, true.

And the fact that a big number of kobold slaves and captives used the plague’s disturbance in order to run away from their human enemies who had captivated them, some of those incidents had some human and non-human casualties, as the humans didn’t let the kobolds run away without any resistance.

And so, sharp fang led the biggest group to break free, the group of important and known kobolds, some of whom had been some sort of village heroes, the best archer or warrior, the best shaman, the kobold village leaders and elders, and such.

Needless to say that most of them were known thank to their fighting capabilities, so breaking out was easy, even if their protection was better than other kobold prisoners’.

As the common number of kobolds in escaping groups was between 10 to 20, sharp fang led a group of at least 80 mostly battle capable, and good at that, fierce kobolds.

*****

And now, about 2 decades of persecution and small skirmishes, when the kobold race diminished to just a 5th of their original numbers, there is a great battle going on between the united humanoid races against the tired, impoverished and desperate kobolds, who don’t portray even the shadow of their past might and glory…

Well, that’s understandable, because not only their numbers decreased so much, they faced so much pain and self-loathing for being helpless, their leaders died one after another, some from slavers or “holy expedition” forces, others in discreet operations of liberating their oppressed brethren in small cities and towns, or mines and work camps that were built for accommodating the slaves that were gathering resources in the harshest and most dangerous regions of the continent, even if the human nobles and humanoid races’ elders and leaders didn’t want to spend even a copper coin for accommodating such foul and cunning beasts.

not to say anything about the general populace of the humanoid races, that had a share of their food stock, which managed to survive uninfected by the plague, rearranged to feed the kobold slaves, and what about other daily necessities?

Because of their mostly furry bodies, the kobold slaves and captives were forced to live their lives naked, with no cloth, not even to hide their intimate parts.

After reminiscing, Loki suddenly woke up from his peaceful daze, as he heard three steady knocks on the door to his room.

- Hmm? Who the fuck dares to just come and interrupt my fun..?! (Loki)

Loki twists his face into an annoyed expression, as an unwelcomed and unexpected visitor to his realm appeared.

He didn’t get much visitors, part of the reason being that only gods and deities could get into these realms, and even then, they need to have the realm god’s approval to enter it, and the god’s amount was limited, they were only about 50.

More than half had such small amount of godly power, that they should only be called demi gods, and Loki was amongst the three most powerful gods, almost on the top of the gods’ food chain.

Moreover, because of his infamous conducts, and power, most of them decided to not get involved with him at all, if possible.

Yet someone, probably a god, did the unusual – interrupting the vile god’s fun time of toying with the mortals of his assigned world.

Still with an angry mood, Loki rudely said:

- Go the fuck away, before I make your world mine, and kill you while at it.

However, the door opened, to Loki’s surprise over seeing someone who actually ignored his threat as if it was nothing, or maybe they were deaf?

- Same as ever, huh, kid? (old man-like god)

An old man emerged from the opened door way, completely unperturbed even if he did walk right into the third most powerful god’s realm despite his threat, furthermore without his permission.

- Huh, so it’s you, old freak. What do you want? (Loki)

- You haven’t changed at all, eh? 20,000 years, and your personality is still the same. No, did it get worse? (old man)

- Cut the crap, and tell me what you came here for. I know you don’t come to other realms just for chit-chat. (Loki)

Without minding his younger companion’s rude behavior, the old man sat down on a couch across Loki, and smiled in a friendly manner.

- Today, I came here to ask a favor from you. (old man)

- Huh? Why would you need my help? Aren’t you supposed to be the strongest? Or is your power dwindling..? (Loki)

At the end of his question, Loki smirked, clearly showing that it would be something for him if it was true.

- No, I’m still stronger than you by about 5 times, so don’t get cocky. Anyway, I want you to let a human to live in your world, as he always wanted to live in a fantasy world… (old man)

- Huh, but isn’t your world fantasy themed as well? (Loki)

- That was until 2,000 years ago, now it doesn’t have any magic, and its mythical creatures have either gone extinct, or into hiding. It’s dominated by this thing called “science”, which says that fantasy doesn’t exist.

- What? So did Merlin die? And what about the other heroes? (Loki)

- They were all humans, so they died of old age. Although Merlin lived for some 200 years, he was a special case. (old man)

- Ah, then will you give me their souls?!? Pretty please?! (Loki)

As soon as Loki found out that the old man’s heroes are all dead, his behavior took a 180 degrees turn, becoming resembling the behavior of a child in a store, asking his grandpa to buy him a toy he wanted for a very long time.

The old man smiled wryly, saying “Nope, not gonna happen”.

- buuh, stupid cheapskate! You’re the strongest god, you don’t need heroes, and yet you won’t let me have them! (Loki)

- *sigh*, you know I don’t like to reincarnate heroes. So why should I let you do it instead of me? (old man)

- Because I have more use for them, and in your case they are just left unattended, gathering dust in some shelf in your realm! I could get them some action!

- Still, the answer is no. so, about the favor…- (old god)

- Is he a hero? (Loki)

Loki blatantly interrupted his superior’s speech, asking a selfish question.

- No, he is not a hero. (old man)

- Then I don’t want him. So, if you have nothing else, just leave already. (Loki)

- I still want you to reincarnate him. (old man)

- Huh, didn’tcha hate reincarnating? What changed your mind? (Loki)

- …this one is special. He is different from normal humans, and different from the heroes. Therefore, I ask you to look after him, and make his life comfortable and peaceful. (old man)

- Tch, I don’t want just some random human. Ahh, fuck, just do what you want. I’ll let him reincarnate in my world. (Loki)

- thanks, I knew you’d agree! (old man)

when Loki gave his consent, the old man’s face bloomed into a cheerful smile.

That sight made Loki feel disgusted, but before he could voice his opinion on the old man’s delight, he was interrupted by him, when he suddenly changed his expression and tone into a very serious one.

- Loki (old man)

- Yes, what is? (Loki)

- Do look after him. This one is special; you shouldn’t play with him like you usually do. I say this because of worry about you. (old man)

- Huh, why do you care about him? For you to even worry, furthermore about me… (Loki)

Loki seemed confused, not understanding the old man’s meaning.

- Something smells fishy. Did you give him some of your power or something? (Loki)

No, I didn’t give him anything, aside from a promise to reincarnate. And don’t worry, as long you follow my instructions, nothing will happen. So, here you go- (old man)

The old man stood up, put a small statue of a 20-ish looking man wearing a suit unto the diamond table, and walked to the door.

- See you, Loki. Take care of him for me. Also… (old man)

The old man turned back to look at Loki with a regretful look, and said, “..do come visit us sometimes. I and the others miss you.. oh, But before that, don’t remember to fix your bad personality!”, the old man cheerfully grinned, went through the door, and quickly closed it, just before a pillow had hit the door.

- You, old geezer! How dare you to say that I should fix my personality! You should be the one to have himself fixed, for just wasting valuable heroes like that! (Loki)

Loki continued his tantrum for another minute or 2, complaining about his superior’s “Bad”qualities, when he realized the old man is long gone, and there is no use for him to continue any longer.

- That whimsical happy-go-lucky geezer, always with that unperturbed calmness… *sigh*, nevermind, I’ll just watch what’s going on with the “dog devils” (Loki)

Loki managed to distract his mind from the old man, and wanted to return to observing the tragic end of the kobold race, which he had orchestrated. He turned his gaze unto his wide table, on which the strange TV screen was sprawled, which showed that the fighting have come to it’s inevitable end, leaving only a few desperate and injured few kobolds, surrounding by the combined humanoid armies, still showing resistance.

But instead of focusing on the kobolds’ demise, something small, and almost unnoticeable, which was standing on the diamond table’s far away corner, captured his attention.

As he looked over the human sculpture, he remembered the content of his earlier conversation, and a wide grin sneaked up unto his face.

- So you’re supposed to be special, but not like the heroes, huh? Well, now that you’re mine, I should take good care of you, and have you experience a lot of fun. (Loki)

*****