The trap was a simple counter-weight-pin trigger with a pit. Looking through a tiny hole in the mechanism, Ludmiller could see the spikes at the bottom that were tipped with something nasty-looking. She was, of course, crouched on the trap because she couldn't reach the mechanism without doing so.

Carefully, she slid a metal shim under the trigger and anchored it back so it curled and locked in place. Letting out a sigh, she straightened up and turned to her party. "This one is safe now. One at a time only, though."

The moment Ludmiller stepped off the trap, Wild stepped onto it. He could hear the trap's hinges and retainers protest his mass, but it held as he walked across to the other side. Stopping on the other side, he waited for Ludmiller to advance and signal to him before continuing.

When she waved him up, Wild stepped up side-by-side with her. "Safe?"

Straining her senses, Ludmiller shook her head. "Safe from traps. I can smell them stronger now. They're coming soon."

"Good. Stand back." Not moving forward, Wild slowly drew his axes from his weapon belt and rolled his shoulders. The first goblin came around the corner and ran straight toward him, a tiny, rusty knife held out before it. His axe flashed so fast the goblin didn't know it was dead even after the axe had cleaved it from its left shoulder to its right hip.

Wild had studied a lot of languages, but he only considered himself bilingual. Right now his axes were talking and the language was violence. Wading forward, he kept the blades always in motion, cutting down the goblins more because they simply got in the way of his blades than because he was aiming for them.

"Move up behind Wild. When you see an orc or troll, get up there, Brace." Sojourn's voice spurred Wild on.

The fighting only got harder, Ludmiller stepping out of the way as often as not to let the others move up to support Wild. Her job, as they'd told her when hiring her—was to disarm traps.

She got to relax as they fought their way right up to the heart, then turned around and fought some more encounters on the way back. The real prize here had been the enchanted saplings. Underground trees in a weird verdant goblin dungeon.

"Good work," Wild had told her when they left.

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"You're getting better." Wild couldn't keep himself from purring. Ludmiller was sitting in front of him, her back pressed to his chest, her head resting on his shoulder. "You can smell the traps now, can't you?"

Ludmiller nodded. It was true, she'd gotten far more in touch with her full range of senses since Wild had started instructing her to use them. She could smell the residue of dirty, clever fingers on a trap mechanism; the black powder in an explosive trap, and even the different mixes of chemicals in sludge traps. They were, also, at a different tavern to the rest of the party. "When are we going to tell them?"

"Can't. But they know." Wild nuzzled at Ludmiller's cheek and his purr quietened a little as he wrapped his muscled arms around her possessively. "They won't talk about it."

"That explains why Brace keeps glaring at me and Harry tries to set me up with random guys or girls." Ludmiller stared into the fireplace. "I almost want to tell them both to piss off."

Nibbling at one slightly pointed ear, a sign of Ludmiller's dual heritage of elf and human, Wild sighed. "Find a town. We can quit and work as guards."

"What, really?" Ludmiller squirmed and turned in Wild's arms, looking up at his big feline face. She didn't see what most did—a lack of familiarity—to her his eyes shone with an intelligence he never showed others and his deep voice hid the emotions of a heart that felt too much. "Somewhere with a dungeon?"

"We're going north next. The town there has new dungeons." Sojourn had told Wild about the party's plan. Wild hadn't told Sojourn about his own plans.

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The town had told them about the dungeons they had in the area, and only one stood out as worth delving for their party. Wild had been comfortable with the idea of taking on a young dragon-aligned dungeon, but then they'd gotten their visitor.

"So, you want us to tackle this dungeon for you?" Sojourn asked.

They were outside town, relaxing in a camp beside their wagon. Most parties would probably have headed right in for the tavern, but the smaller towns got odd sometimes, so Sojourn liked to keep the party together and away from alcohol before tackling a dungeon.

Opposite him Porter sat on a log, the big shield and sword user looking angry about something. "Yeah. They got lots of gold down there."

"Bullshit. This is the wrong rock for gold mines." Brace wasn't about to listen to stupidity. "What's the real reason?"

"It's true. The kobolds are sneaking into town and buying stuff with badly copied coins. No one knows where they got them from, but they have tons of them. Gotta be more down there." Rubbing his fingers together, Porter was still furious at his party—at Fife—for stopping him from having a little fun when they'd chased down some of the kobolds. "I'll go in with you. You need a front-line fighter?"

"We have Wild." Sojourner nodded to the other fire where the cooking was happening. Wild was sitting close to the flames with Ludmiller at his side. One of the first rules of dungeon-delving parties was you don't get romantic with anyone else in your party. The problem Sojourner faced was that Wild was the best front-line fighter he'd ever seen and Ludmiller was a great trap-finder. For that he was able to ignore the rule.

Porter snorted derisively. "You can't take on bigger dungeons without an armored fighter. He can get you through a lot, but nothing beats sword and board for taking on tough enemies."

Looking at Brace, Sojourn raised an eyebrow at the dwarf.

Brace grunted. "You know what I think, Soje." When his eyebrow only went up a fraction more, Brace knew he wanted her to tell Porter. "Sod off. We already have a solid party and don't need anyone else trying to goad us into tackling things we aren't ready for. Wild is a good fighter. He should be in a better group than us, but there's one thing he's hanging around for. If you ruin that, we lose our trap-finder and our fighter."

"She's got a good point. So, what do you have to say to that?" Sojourn asked, using his charm to hopefully make up for Brace's lack of filter.

Porter snarled a little, then got himself back under control. "That I'll be the one up front, putting my life on the line, hoping you support me. I'll do that because I've heard about your party. Rock solid, they tell me. Good healering, good support, good damage dealers. I'm not saying you need to replace him with me—we can work well together."

Sojourner looked at Brace, who shrugged, and looked back at Porter. "We'll give you a trial run. Do exactly what we say, fight well, and you're in."

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For a dragon dungeon—any dungeon, really—the place smelled clean. It was throwing Ludmiller off her game and she didn't like it. Paranoid, she was checking the floor of the dungeon extra carefully, even if it looked like the dungeon had just ignored the floor. She didn't care, she'd encountered too many tricky dungeons to risk a mistake.

What was worse, for her, were Porter's comments. She was just about ready to snap, turn, and walk out of the dungeon when she felt Wild's paw on her shoulder. The warmth of his touch relaxed her, bled the anger out and let her get back to her job.

So she kept working, kept listening to Wild's encouragement, and kept finding not a single thing. He was always quieter when they weren't alone.

"Why are we going so slowly? It's clear to the stairs ahead, see?"

Porter was starting to get to Ludmiller again. She started to straighten up, only to hear Harry, their bard, start to speak.

"Hear that, Luddy? Our newest party member just volunteered to take point." It took a lot to really annoy Harry. He could charm the pants off a dragon, if a dragon wore pants, but he was under no obligation to use that charm to sort out party disputes.

Trying hard to hide a giggle, Ludmiller nodded. "Sure. I love watching new meat get impaled by spikes." Done with the square, she moved forward and started prodding, feeling around, and smelling for traps. "Brace, what was it you said, it's easier to just let the newbie ride their talisman than heal them up from traps?"

Brace never let there be any confusion about what she disliked. She disliked Wild and Ludmiller being close, she disliked dungeons that were strange, and she disliked smart-asses. "Yeah. Pull your weight or you're dead meat."

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The words were enough to jerk Ludmiller back to her senses. She lay in the dark of the bedroom she'd been given—not that it was actually dark to her eyes. Even half-elven, she'd had good eyesight, but it was nothing compared to how well kobold eyes could slice through the dark.

This had become her life now, but no matter how much they got her to work, it was always easier than what she knew a town would do. Sitting up on her bed, she reached for the knives she'd left beside it and pulled the belt around her waist twice before fastening it.

It was two days since she'd become a kobold, and she could feel herself enjoying it. It was at once both reassuring and terrifying. How much of the work she was doing was because she actually enjoyed designing traps and planning a dungeon, and how much was being a kobold just getting in her head? She shook herself and stood up to stretch.

The next thing she did was to reach into the little hidden pocket on her belt and pull out the tiny silver trinket. Closing her eyes, Ludmiller tilted her head forward and started to pray silently—words didn't matter, only feelings and intent.

In her scaled hand the small leaf started to grow warm. As the heat built, tears flowed down Ludmiller's cheeks and snout to land on the floor of her sleeping quarters. She took what comfort she could from the Lady Of Nature, but there was only one person she truly aimed her hopes at. "Please let him be alright."

One thing she'd noticed in her two whole days of experience—unless something crazy was going on, Travis left her alone until after she'd left her room. It was a small thing, but it mattered. Using her arm to rub her eyes until they felt dry, she left the room and turned toward the glowing pink light.

"You're awake? It's your first full day off today. Do whatever you'd like." Travis' voice was always like warm honey in her head. Ludmiller would have liked to hate him, to despise him, and tell him where to put his days off. The fact was he was nice, considerate, and determined to make working in the dungeon far more tolerable than she'd expected.

"Day off? What do you mean?" she asked.

"It's a tradition from where I'm from. Workers only work for five days out of every seven."

That was the craziest thing Ludmiller had ever heard, and she'd been hearing a lot of crazy things lately. "But I've only worked two."

"Yeah, and that's my fault. I should have given you that first day off, like I said I would. Anyway, I figure it would be easiest to just let all of you have the same two days."

"So, what do I do? What can I do?" She stopped in the heart room and just paused there to look at Travis. He was huge compared to most hearts she'd seen, which was weird for only having two floors. She'd seen dungeons with five or more be smaller than him.

"Anything!"

Thinking about it, Ludmiller shrugged her shoulders. "I'll go do some digging, then."

Digging, she'd learned, was something a kobold could probably do in their sleep. Swinging a pickaxe was as natural as breathing, and she was actually glad for that. When digging, Ludmiller could just zone out and decouple herself from her situation.

Days seemed to flitter by. After almost two weeks, Ludmiller didn't know if it was better to just immerse herself in digging so she wouldn't dwell on not knowing Wild's fate. She'd helped the dungeon build what she hoped was the most annoying maze ever, complete with explosive traps scattered around it, but it made her feel more hollow than ever.

The others had all been celebrating the ruses and deception of the inspectors in the tavern, and Ludmiller with them mostly out of habit. She'd drunk, but then it was easy to drink when everything was free. After a warm meal to top off the night, she'd fallen asleep on a table and dreamed her usual nightmare.

Oddly, instead of ending in an explosion that had deafened her and killed the only guy she'd ever really loved, there was a fight. Swords clashing, axes ringing, and a tiny voice deep inside shouting that something was wrong.

Lifting her head slowly, thanks to the boxing match her brain had been playing inside it, she noticed that Fife seemed to be squared off with someone tall. Looking up at her big feline opponent, Ludmiller sobered rapidly. "Wild?" And, when he didn't seem to notice, she asked a bit louder, "Hey, Wild, what are you doing?"

It was confusing at first, the pair seemed to be sparring, but after seeing Wild take deadly swings at Fife, she realized something was wrong. He wasn't fighting to train, he was fighting to kill.

"You know this guy, Ludmiller?"

Fife's words snapped her out of her daze and Ludmiller jumped to her feet and started toward Wild. "Wild! Stop fighting! It's me, Luddy!"

"Luddy?" Wild's vision, fixed and furious, snapped briefly toward the kobold proclaiming itself his lost love. There was a lot further to look down at her, but she was unarmed—and an unarmed kobold was no threat. "Trick?"

"It's not a trick. What—"

Pausing in his attacks now, Wild watched as the kobold looked down at itself. He was about to question them further when they continued.

"You taught me that more than sight or sound were useful in a dungeon. Smell was so much more than I ever thought it would be. That's what defeated me in here." It was a defeated sigh that Ludmiller let out. "The smell of that damn solvent in the sludge traps ruined my sense of smell. I didn't notice the metallic twang of the pit trap mechanism." She was standing in front of Wild now, putting herself physically between him and Fife.

Starting to believe, Wild mulled over the words she'd used and found them so similar to his Luddy's that he lowered his axes and slung them into their sheaths. "Luddy lived?"

Stepping all the way up to him, Ludmiller pressed against Wild, even though she barely came to his waist. "Yeah. Kinda. My hearing was shot. They dragged me to town—" She cut herself off with a sigh and tugged on his arm, leading him down the hall and through to the storage room.

When Wild crouched down and put his arms around her, pulling her to his chest. "Oh! You can't fight this dungeon, Wild. It's protected by the crown."

Wild let himself be guided along into the dark, his eyes letting him see despite the almost pitch black. He lowered himself down to the stone floor and sat, pulling Ludmiller against him still. "I don't care about the dungeon so long as I have you."

It was more words from Wild than Ludmiller had heard him say with anyone apart from herself present. She pressed her head against his shoulder and was relieved that she could still cry. "I didn't know what had happened to you. You were—They're really good at building defenses. Everyone here was someone else before they became a kobold."

It was a tough line to understand. Wild asked, "Became a kobold?"

Leaning back until Wild's big paws barely had purchase on her shoulders, Ludmiller looked into Wild's eyes and tilted her head just a little to one side.

"But why?"

"Travis, why do you only use the transformation-thing to make kobolds?" Ludmiller asked.

Hearing the question and no reply, Wild looked around for who Ludmiller might have been talking to. He watched her, though, as she nodded as if hearing something.

"Travis said he can't work out how to make kobolds, but Pen can do something where she puts some of her blood on the heart and then he can turn the next person to touch his heart into a kobold." Ludmiller could still remember it. For all it had changed her forever, it had given her a sense of community—even if she'd wanted to just crawl in a corner and cry.

"Strange. Do they need any other monsters? Maybe a floor boss?" Wild bared his teeth in a smile as he asked, a purr rising in his throat as he started to rub at Ludmiller's back, coaxing her back against his chest.

"I don't know that he can do other creatures. You'd probably have to become a kobold, too." Turning her head to the side, Ludmiller just leaned against Wild and let the sounds and smells of his body calm her down. Muscles she didn't even know were tense relaxed for the first time in weeks, one by one, until it no longer hurt to think about him. "You revived okay?"

"Hurt. Some priests like making it hurt, think. But I live." Wild had already made his mind up—he was going to stay with Ludmiller—but now he had to work out how to do that.

"There's another thing, Wild." Ludmiller wasn't sure how to phrase it exactly, but it was something she'd noticed rather quickly after becoming a kobold. "We, uh, don't have any—There's no way for kobolds to have babies."

The revelation surprised Wild. "None? No—" He made a gesture of a finger going into a hole.

Shaking her head slowly, Ludmiller sighed. "Not that I'm upset, exactly. I don't know if I ever wanted to have children. I like—I like things."

Pressing a paw against Ludmiller's chest, Wild slowly traced it down to her belly, then lower. When he reached the base of her tail, he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Nothing there," she said.

Wild shrugged. "The other males, do they have—?"

"No. Not that I've seen."

It was a lot to consider. Wild had thought about what it would mean to have offspring with a normal sized woman—and it had mostly amounted to they'd probably die. It was part of why he'd always held back from the final commitment with Ludmiller. He smirked a little and started petting her again, tracing her inner thighs, under her tail, and even the little ridges around her back. Some places earned him giggles, others sighs, but most got not much more than a cuddly kobold. "I have no problem with this, with you, and with us."

"Do you need help with anything? Does he?" Travis' voice was laden with concern.

Shaking her head a little, Ludmiller nuzzled her cheek against Wild's chest a little. "You really didn't listen in?"

A little confused at the conversation topic switch, Wild figured it was the dungeon Ludmiller was talking to. He contented himself with just hugging her and reminding himself that she was alive and in his arms.

"I mean, I could have. It takes real effort to not at least be aware of you, but I feel you all deserve private time."

Smiling, Ludmiller closed her eyes and just listened to Wild's purr for a moment. "You never really intended me to be a prisoner, did you? You wanted someone to work, but…" She let out a soft, happy hiss at the feel of Wild's paw kneading her shoulder. "He wants to stay here too. I told him that might mean he'd have to become a kobold."

Perking up a bit more at the topic, Wild added, "One condition." He knew dungeons. He'd been in bigger and better established groups before he'd gotten in the one that'd brought him here. He knew what a deeper dragon dungeon had in it. "Make me a floor boss."

"What's a floor boss?" Travis asked.

Lifting up one hand to carefully set a talon on Wild's lips, Ludmiller replied, "Oh, we haven't got one of those yet, have we? We have Pen, but she's the dungeon boss. You'll probably get the upgrade soon, then. It's basically a monster you dedicated to being the big-bad of a floor. They get huge bonuses when fighting on the floor they're designated to, and they usually have specific rooms just for them." Looking up, she licked along the underside of Wild's jaw and told him, "Travis hasn't got the option for that yet."

Shrugging his shoulder and kissing Ludmiller on the bridge of her snout, Wild was starting to find her new form not as terrible as he would have thought. "Soon. Second floor. I be first floor boss when get." He felt bad for his simplistic speech, but the heritage of his giantess mother hadn't left Wild with a well-populated language center. He nodded, regardless, happy with the plan.

Travis' voice sounded incredulous. "And he's fine with that? I mean, if the option never comes up—"

"If Trav doesn't get a floor boss?" Ludmiller asked.

Wild snorted. "Then I hunt food." He gestured vaguely toward the entrance.

"Okay. I'm fine with this. He loves you, doesn't he?" Travis asked.

Getting to her feet, tugging on Wild's huge form to get him moving too, Ludmiller said, "Y-Yeah. I don't know why, either." A glance back at Wild and a wink was what she hoped told him who she was talking to. "I got him killed."

Wild squeezed her arm as he followed her, but as the darkness grew more complete, he had to slow significantly until a light caught up to them. Penelope and Fife, he realized.

Wild listened to them talk, then Fife asked, "Could I have stood up against the big guy for so long as a kobold?"

With a shake of his head, Wild cut in. "No. Arms too short."

"Exactly! With a shield I'd have held you off, maybe, but if I was lower to the ground and had less reach—you'd have just knocked me off balance and brought a cleaver over the top of my shield."

It was the unabashed truth, so he nodded. He listened to them talk, asked questions about the defenses, and none of them seemed reluctant at all to describe how the dungeon was assembled to divide and destroy attackers. Now, more than ever, he wanted to be part of this with Ludmiller.

The ingenious and uniquely worker-only method of bypassing the traps by digging in earned them a grunt of approval from Wild. It took Penelope only a moment to bring down a wall and let them all through, and even less time to fill it in behind her.

Twists, turns, and a hidden door later and Wild was in the presence of the dungeon heart. He'd seen his fair share of them, though normally deeper dungeons than this, but this was one of the larger ones he'd seen. "How work?" He asked, giving the heart a respectful bow, given no one had asked for him to surrender his weapons.

"Hey, Trav, are you up for making a new friend?" Penelope asked.

Watching her walk up to the heart and stroke it, Wild got the impression they were, somehow, intimate. He watched her, feeling a little like he was intruding on a moment as she seemed to be whispering to the dungeon's heart. Eventually she turned and looked at him.

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"Well, let's get this over with. Big guy, when I press my blood onto the stone, you just need to walk up and touch it. Got it?" When Wild nodded, Penelope cut her hand and pressed it to the heart.

What got Wild's (and Penelope's) attention, though, was Fife walking forward with her eyes fixed on the heart. He just watched her, but Penelope didn't. Slamming into Fife and blocking her, Penelope shouted, "Fife! What the hell?"

Wild had seen warriors like Fife toss dungeon bosses around without an issue, and Fife definitely seemed up to the task. She braced a shoulder and got Penelope off her feet before her target even realized it.

"Fife, stop this!" Penelope shouted.

While they argued, Wild solved the immediate problem by stepping around Fife and taking the few steps over to the heart. Under his breath he muttered, "I hope this works out. Travis, before Fife does something she'll regret." He pressed his paw against the giant crystal heart and felt his being and place in the world tremble.

A strange lack of pain came with the changes as Wild shrank and shed muscle. He stared at his paws as his stout digits became long, thin fingers with sharp talons on the ends of them. It wasn't hard to tell he was shrinking in stature, given that everything around him was growing, but even still he felt a pair of hands support him and looked—now without needing to look down—to see Ludmiller.

"Uh, hi. This is the bit where I introduce myself. I'm Travis, but you can call me Trav. Thanks, Wild, for accepting my offer. I promise to hold up my end of it." The voice sounded more than a little worried, concerned, and above all young.

Wild opened his mouth to reply, ignoring the chatter going on in the room to come up with a reply—but the feel of his changed face reduced his hopes of being understood to zero. Nodding, Wild tilted his head sideways against Ludmiller's shoulder.

It was a new sensation. Being the same physical size as his partner was interesting and let him, for once, do the leaning-on rather than being the leaned-on.

When Ludmiller opened her mouth to ask if Wild was okay, she felt one of his fingers rest upon her lips. Going almost cross-eyed looking at it, she was surprised when he stood up and helped her to rise too.

Wild looked back at Ludmiller and, pulling her close, kissed her. This, of course, resulted in him bumping his snout against hers rather sharply. Their matching bark-hisses of laughter were hidden by the others in the heart room all talking with Fife and Blake.

"Come on, my room's down here." They'd cuddled before, but Ludmiller was acutely aware of the fact that she wanted to do something to show Wild how much she loved him. She paused for just a moment as she led the way down the tunnel toward her room. "Trav, thank you so much for this, but could we—"

"You don't have to ask. I wasn't listening at all until you said my name. Just try to avoid using it when you—when you have fun."

The embarrassment in Travis' tone almost made Wild laugh again, but he held it back as he let himself be pulled into the room Ludmiller had been sleeping in. The moment he was inside and the heavy woven fabric was left to hang over the entrance, she was against him.

Biting down on Wild's shoulder, Ludmiller had one hand around his lower back while the other stroked his hip. She pressed her body against his, sandwiching him against the wall, and letting out a little hiss through her mouth.

The women Wild had been with in his life had never—not a single one—had enough strength or mass to do this to him. He let out a soft growl-bark and pushed back against her. Licking the side of her neck, he reached down past Ludmiller's back, tracing the back of her thigh to get his hand under her tail.

Ludmiller squeaked in surprise at the touch. The spot he was stroking was nowhere near where her vent would be and, from experience, wasn't this sensitive. There was something about Wild touching her there, and her desire being roused, that made it a sensitive spot. Loosening her grip on his shoulder, she asked, "On the bed?"

Pondered how he could reply. For now, he had no language he could use with her but yes, no, maybe, and what he could do with his hands. He looked at those hands briefly, again, studying the claws on them and how the digits moved when he flexed them.

With a speed that shocked her, Ludmiller was grabbed up, carried beside the bed, and set down on it. Wild might have lost the extensive strength he'd cultivated before becoming a kobold, but he made up for that with a new swiftness. Kissed again, she felt one of his hands on her chest while the other roamed over her.

Listening carefully to Ludmiller's breathing, to the sounds she made, and feeling her heartbeat and twitchiness with his hand, Wild explored. Not everywhere around her thighs and tail proved to be a successfully stimulating spot, but when he accidentally twitched one finger too much, and scraped her scales with a claw, he found out sometimes a touch wasn't enough.

Leaning down, Wild started to nuzzle and rub the tip of his snout along her tummy and lower. He had to move his hand from her chest, but found the tip of his nose was far more sensitive than his fingers to movement.

There were more misses than hits, at least so Ludmiller found, but many of the misses were places that made her giggle or squirm still. "What are you doing?" As soon as she asked, she realized her mistake. "Right, can't talk yet. You'll want to practice."

"Prac—" Wild was having fun. He'd narrowed down most of the places he hoped would work, so now focused on those. The first two he took a little to re-find, but when he got to the third he definitely got a reaction he hadn't expected—Ludmiller laughed in great barking jerks of breath. He scrubbed the sides of her knees from his list of erotic places to play with, but started a new list of ticklish sites.

"What—That wasn't—Oh…" Ludmiller squirmed again, but this time it was the kind of squirm she expected Wild wanted from her. She wondered one thing, as she tried to get her limbs back under control—would Wild have the same sensitive places she did?

Making room on the small bed for Ludmiller to shift and turn, Wild wondered what she was up to—then shivered at the first touch of her claws. The soft scales she'd found under his tail, a duplicate of a spot he'd located on her, made him growl softly—at which point she pulled her claws back.

"Sorry." Ludmiller was confused now, until Wild reached his own hand down to close gently around her wrist and return her hand to where she'd pulled it from. "Oh. It was good?" She looked up at his body and watched him slowly nod while flashing his teeth at her. "G-Good."

What Wild discovered was that kobolds don't moan—they bark, but the barks have a very specific timbre to them. It didn't shock him too much that his own had the same depth as Ludmiller's, but every sensation he felt in his new kobold body was just that—new.

After a long time spent exploring Ludmiller's body and she his, though, it became apparent that there would be no finish. Eventually, with nothing else left and no plan on how to stop, he returned to the two places he'd found where Ludmiller was ticklish and practically attacked them.

From squirming, barking, mental fuzz of enjoyment Ludmiller was getting to nose-diving into laughter, she lost all control and just clung to Wild—one of her hands trying to hold her mouth closed from filling the whole dungeon with her barking.

Rolling back, Wild just relaxed on the bed as his own body slowly eased back from the excitement. "Love."

Glaring up at Wild for as long as it took her to realize what he'd said, Ludmiller squirmed around so she was laying in the same direction he was, and snuggled up against him. "I love you too, Wild."

Turning his head to look into Ludmiller's eyes, Wild felt an overwhelming feeling of contentment with how things had gone. It hadn't been at all like before he'd become a kobold, but it was enough because of one thing. He kissed Ludmiller and let himself relax completely.

Her own lethargy rushing upon her, Ludmiller surrendered herself to sleep as she clung to Wild. It wasn't sex—not as she would have called it before—but it was definitely a wonderful way to share her closeness with Wild.

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Ludmiller had spent most of the day planning and working on the dungeon. Digging felt good, and setting traps was more fun still, but Travis was being a stickler for short work days, so here she was relaxing in the taproom. Even then, she had one of her tablets out and was sketching designs for new sections.

"Hey, Luddy, uh…" Penelope sat down at the table and put down two bowls of stew. "Steph made us something tasty."

"Thanks. Is something up?" Picking up a wooden spoon, Ludmiller got some of the thick stew in her mouth and let out an appreciative little bark without meaning to. "This is so good. Where did he learn to cook like this?"

"You know, I've never really asked where he came from?" Looking down at her own stew, Penelope tried to figure out how to ask what she wanted to.

Sitting down at the table beside Penelope, Katelyn narrowed her eyes across at Ludmiller. "Come on, you have to spill."

Blinking a few times in surprise, Ludmiller finished her mouthful of stew and asked, "What do you mean?" The expressions both of them gave her, mixed incredulous and curious, told her everything. "Were we that noisy?"

"There was howling, Luddy. Plural. The question is, how?" Penelope asked.

Ludmiller leaned back a bit, her tail hanging over the back of the stool swished as widely as it could a few times. She grinned at the pair of them. "A lady doesn't kiss and—"

Katelyn could see where Ludmiller was going. "Tell us. Come on, please?"

"It's weird, but there are places that are—nice. You just have to find them." Now blushing a little, Ludmiller leaned forward again and scooped up some more stew. "One thing. Some places are only, uh, fun if you are already excited."

"Wild sounded into it too. There was—Do the same places work on guys?" Reaching to the side, Katelyn took hold of her staff in one hand and dipped a single claw into the stew—causing the meal to heat up to almost simmering again.

"It sounded like you were laughing at one point," Penelope said.

"Hold on. One at a time. There were a few different places on Wild to me, but I don't think there's a difference between male kobolds and females. And the laughing… So, uh, when I had sex before—"

"You think of this as sex?" Katelyn asked.

"Yes, but let me continue. Sex has an ending. There's a moment where it gets too much and you're out of control and everything feels amazing. With this it's more drawn out and there's no sharp ending like that. We kinda fixed that by finding the really ticklish spots on each other and going at them like crazy when we're both ready for an ending."

Both Katelyn and Penelope went quiet. After a few moments Katelyn eventually asked, "Is that why you were both howling?"

Blushing and trying to look anywhere but her friends' faces, Ludmiller nodded. "Yes."

"And it"—stumbling over her words, Penelope was grinning like a fool—"it felt good?"

Slumping back on her stool, Ludmiller nodded. "It wasn't sex, but it felt good." Picking up her mug, she took a long sip of the water and thought about her answer a little. "Actually, with Wild, it was a bit like sex."

Amid her own embarrassment with the topic, Ludmiller hadn't noticed that both Penelope and Katelyn were silent and blushing. She realized they'd been silent, too. "Are you okay?" When both looked like she'd caught them stealing, she rolled her eyes. "Why don't you both take a break? Maybe have a rest and a nap."

"Yes!" Katelyn shouted.

Rolling her eyes, Penelope nodded. "A nap sounds like a good idea, yeah."

Ludmiller tried to ignore the way they ran from the taproom, but when they'd finally dodged around the corner she started to laugh. "Hey, Trav, you might want to avoid looking in on Pen and Kate for a bit."

"Huh? Is something going on?" Travis sounded mildly confused.

"You could say that. I just gave them some advice and they're probably going to be loud sleepers." For Ludmiller, it was strangely easier to talk to Travis about it, despite him sounding like a guy. The fact that he already knew that she and Wild had been intimate meant it wasn't a secret already, but he also didn't register as being sexual in any way.

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It was days later before they all got time alone together again. This time they found a spot in one of the storerooms no one else would go near. Looking between Penelope and Katelyn, Ludmiller had to ask, "Why did you drag me here?"

"Because I'm still having trouble." Penelope, despite being the tallest of the three, slouched against the wall so that she was on eye level with Katelyn and Ludmiller. "I just can't get that into it, you know? I really want to be, but no matter how I—"

"I don't need details." Ludmiller covered her face. "I know it works because that's how Wild and I—"

"What if that's the problem?" Katelyn asked. "I've had the same problems as Pen, but I don't have anyone to join me, either."

"Look, I don't mind helping you with—with general stuff, but I can't help you finding someone else to keep your bed warm." By the time she got to the end, Ludmiller was almost at the point of giggling.

"Yeah, but before I became a kobold I could—" Katelyn froze before saying too much, heard a giggle from Ludmiller, and shrugged. "I could take care of myself. What's changed?"

"You mean besides you turning into a kobold that doesn't have anything down there?" Penelope asked, giving Katelyn a disbelieving stare.

"Maybe that's part of it. Wild and I build off each other's excitement. We want to share something, not—not work out some stress."

"Soooo…" Katelyn looked at a sack of gold sitting on a shelf. "We just have to have some fun with someone?"

"Yes. No. I don't know!" The humor seemed to drain from Ludmiller. She had no idea why it worked so well between her and Wild—it just did. "I don't know enough about this. Any of this. It could have something to do with me and Wild specifically, or that we were already in love before becoming kobolds, or—or anything."

Katelyn slumped her shoulders. "Sorry. I just—I know I'm pushing here, and it might not even be able to be worked out."

"Sorry, Luddy, for pushing," Penelope said. She turned to look at Katelyn. "I think, if we're going to try with other people, we should try to pick people who aren't going to get emotionally attached, you know?"

Katelyn nodded, stretching back out. "Any thoughts for who might do that? I'm not—sorry, it's nothing personal—"

"I know he will get emotionally attached, but go talk to Steph." Standing up, Penelope patted Katelyn on the shoulder. "I've seen the way he looks at you."

"Really?" Katelyn asked, walking after Penelope to the exit of the storage room.

"Yes, really. But be his best friend first, and be sincere."

Letting out a sigh of relief when they were out of earshot, Ludmiller started to walk out herself. "Nothing in my life has prepared me for this."

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It hadn't been a good day for Ludmiller, mostly because it had been a worse one for Wild. "Are you sure—?"

"I won't stay dead, not as long as Brayden and Travis remain alive." Wild reached his arm around Ludmiller to pull her closer and give her a squeeze. He'd been more than a little terrified himself. The first time any kobold in the dungeon had died, and the first time their recovery from such had been tested. Not only had they discovered boss monsters, at least, had a respawn timer, but Brayden had pulled Wild back from the dead with the power of his god.

"I don't want to test it again." With the latest group of undead now dealt with, Ludmiller had let her concern finally have its head. "We need to build better traps up here."

Slipping into the boss room, which had a single cot in one corner, Wild didn't let go of Ludmiller. "You are the trap master, I'm just dumb muscle." He stumbled as Ludmiller jerked on him. "What?"

"You are anything but dumb, and hardly just muscle!" Planting her hands on her hips, Ludmiller glared at Wild. "And, unless you want to start using a shield in your off hand, stop getting the attention of all the magic users in the forest!" She was starting to cry at him, her emotions welling up and reminding her how close things had been. "We don't have talismans now! I—"

Wild pulled Ludmiller into a hug, pinning her to his chest and holding her there. "We both know how this business usually ends. Talismans aren't perfect, but what Travis has is. We keep him safe, he keeps us safe."

Letting her tears flow, Ludmiller clung to Wild and let him overwhelm her senses and remind her that he is alive and well. She cried and cried, staining Wild's chest, until she ran out of tears. Clinging still, Ludmiller felt the need to reaffirm her bond with him. When she tilted her head up, her lips found his and a fire hose of new emotion filled the void left by her fear.

Kissing Ludmiller, Wild used his newfound strength as a dungeon floor boss to pick her up and support her with one arm while he carried her to the makeshift bed they shared. He was able to crouch and get almost onto the bed before he lost balance and they tumbled, together, into a laughing heap on the furs.

Wild was overwhelmed by Ludmiller almost immediately. They'd had a lot of practice now, judging their needs and enjoyment to the point where each could ensure the other reached as much pleasure as their bodies seemed capable of giving.

They worked fast—faster than normal—to reach a peak they could both enjoy. Their lovemaking was extremely tactile, with each touching, stroking, licking, nuzzling, and even biting the places they knew would work for the other.

Panting, just after the third time Ludmiller had driven him to scream her name, Wild slumped and had to hold up his hands in protest. "Please. Please, Luddy, give me a moment."

Instead of giving him space, Ludmiller clung against Wild, feeling how real he was and inhaling the scent of him. "A whole minute?"

"At least. Are you okay?" Wild tilted her chin up from where she'd been nuzzling his chest so he could kiss the tip of her nose.

"You remember that time, at the goblin elite dungeon we took on down in Greater Foolstown?" When Wild nodded to her, his face looking a little grim, Ludmiller continued. "I was like this then, too. I guess death affects me differently."

"Does it make you an unstoppable force of nature in the bedroom?" Wild asked, kissing her again on the nose.

Shrugging her shoulders, Ludmiller leaned forward a bit more and nibbled at the Wild's throat. Pressing her lips to his scales there, she said, "That's one way to put it. Why? Can't you keep up?"

"I can keep up." Wild rolled her to the side and shifted himself to loom above her. "And, by my count, it's your turn to scream my name." Shimmying his way down the bed, he made his words prophetic..

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Finding herself serving drinks in the bar the next day, Ludmiller couldn't stop grinning and wagging her tail a little more than strictly required by her kobold gait. When she set a mug of short beer before Penelope, Ludmiller realized her friend was giving her that look again. "Okay, I know we were noisy this time, but he did die. I was clingy."

"Wild's shouts were louder than yours, Luddy."

Sitting down at the table with Penelope, Ludmiller didn't bother to subdue her smile. "Well, we get along well. I know what works for him and he knows what works for me." Leaning forward, she rested her jaw on her hands and looked at Penelope. Even here, just sitting in the tavern having a drink—she was so much bigger than all of them. "Did you hear that Katelyn and Steph are spending some time together?"

Jerking as if she were shocked, Penelope shook her head. "I didn't. How long?"

"A few days. He'd been making eyes at her for a while, but Katelyn wasn't really—I don't know exactly what her deal was, but she might have been talking up her social abilities a little. Anyway, she finally opened up and I saw them hugging in the library."

Penelope was deep in thought for several minutes, then finally looked across and took notice of Ludmiller's focused—one brow arched—stare. "What?"

"I bet you have someone. Even if you don't, you definitely have a type. Who or what?" Ludmiller almost knocked the stool behind her over with her tail wagging.

Looking around, Penelope sighed. "Come on, let's go for a little walk." Picking up her short beer, she headed for the door with Ludmiller just behind her. When they were outside, and a good few hundred paces away from the dungeon, she finally stopped. "Trav."

"Huh? What abo—" Ludmiller froze, the implications finally percolating down. "You've got a thing for Trav?"

"He saved my life and he's just so—damn—sweet. I've spent more nights than I can count hugging or leaning against his heart, and then there's the whole boss monster thing." Stopping around and grabbing a branch to strip with her talons, Penelope settled down on a stump that Stephan had left. "He cares more for us—all of us, and including me—than I've heard just about anyone ever care before. Being the dungeon boss I can get feelings from him, when I touch the heart. Nothing clear, but he likes it when I touch him."

"That's why you do that thing with his heart?"

"Thing?"

"Where you walk around it, letting your claws and palm just barely touch it as you walk. He can feel that and you can feel him feeling it."

Penelope let out a sigh and slumped a little on her stump. "He just—After what I put up with from Will and Peter, being with someone who won't betray me is—It just feels good to be with him like that. I know he enjoys me touching his heart and I want him to be happy, you know?"

"Will and Peter were your last party members, right? The ones that turned on you?" Ludmiller still didn't like being outside, though Penelope's bossness helped assuage the deep agoraphobia that usually set in when she left the dungeon.

Nodding, Penelope sighed and looked down at the ground. Her feet, she could well recognize, were now very large and had their own talons. "Yeah. Will shot me and Peter told him to let me bleed out. That's when I smeared my bloody hand all over Trav and begged him to use me to get my revenge."

"Seems like pretty good revenge, even if they don't come back."

Lifting her head and looking at Ludmiller, Penelope asked, "How do you figure?"

"They figured you were useless and left you for dead." Ludmiller hated to say it, but it was something she knew Penelope had to face. "You're trading enough gold to run a small city, you have a dedicated group of followers—many of whom would die at your command, and you've found a guy who would kill to protect you. Tell me what girl couldn't find a way to fit their dreams to that?"

Opening her mouth to reply, Penelope found herself with nothing sensible to say. In her own mind the words rang true, but at the same time she felt it would be a measure of fulfillment to have her two idiot former companions try to get into the place, only for Trav to flatten them with boulders. Still, there was a sense of pride and accomplishment in having survived their double-cross and have thrived.

"Is that why only your blood works when it comes to inducting new people?" Ludmiller asked.

The question broke Penelope's reverie. "I really have no idea why I would have any kind of affinity for a dragon du—" It was the thing she'd told Robert so many times, but this time she remembered an old family tale, and the reason they had the surname Bogblood. "When I was younger, my father told me a story about the first Bogblood—my ancestor. She was a canny girl, a bard and an utter flirt.

"Well, legends also speak of monsters and creatures, escaped from dungeons, that learned to live free of the influence of their origin. That's who Angelsong Bogblood found. A dragon, full sized and free of the dungeon that had born it, had fallen for her. Dad would never admit to the logistics of it, but Angelsong had five strong children, all of them carrying dragon blood.

"It's been some few generations since then, and it's probably now so weak—if this tale holds any truth at all—but if it does maybe that's why?" When Penelope realized Ludmiller was staring at her, she asked, "What?"

"One of your ancestors was a dungeon monster—a dragon—and you didn't think that might be it?" Giggling now, and shaking her head, Ludmiller paced around the stump (and Penelope) "Pen, you're a damn smart woman—maybe becoming a boss has made you even smarter—but this was pretty obvious. Why don't you tell Robert about your ancestor?"

"And Trav?" Penelope didn't know why she was asking, but it was the first time she felt able to ask anyone for their advice on the matter.

"You're right. Trav is a great guy. Just be honest with yourself and with him and I don't think you can go wrong. Maybe even ask him if he likes being touched or if he wants more touches." Aiming herself back to the dungeon entrance, Ludmiller looked back at Penelope. "And, if he likes more touches, maybe look for places that he likes being touched. Seems to be working for us."

Watching Ludmiller walk away, Penelope tilted her head back and looked up at the sky through the gaps in the trees. Outside of the dungeon didn't hold any fear for her, like it did for the others, but there was only one place that felt like her home.

"I'll go talk with him. That easy? Ha!" Sliding off the stump, Penelope took a step closer to the dungeon. "And what if I screw it up? What if we can't stand seeing each other every single day?" What was the hardest part about it was her heart still said to try.

The walk back to the dungeon was the hardest she'd ever managed in her life. Once inside the familiar sensation of home wrapped around her. "Trav, can we"—she sucked up a breath—"talk about some stuff?"

She didn't take the back tunnel, instead deciding to wander the full dungeon and just get a feel for the place. It also meant she wouldn't likely be overheard.

"Sure, Pen. What's up?"

Hearing his voice was another aspect of what counted as home to Penelope. She let out a little sigh. "Us, I guess. We haven't ever really discussed it before, have we?"

Travis took a moment to reply, mostly because the conversation had just stolen his full attention and he wanted to make sure he listened as best he could. "We haven't, I guess. Uh, just to clarify, what about us exactly do you want to talk about?"

Walking through what had been called the Bowling Alley, Penelope admired the work spent on concealing the huge boulder traps. She stretched a hand out to the wall and started to run her talons along it. "You and me. I can't keep quiet anymore, Trav. When things started, I was just grateful to be alive.

"I know I got a little carried away with Steph, but to be fair I had a lot of kobold running through my head then and—I'm rambling." Shaking her head, Penelope ambled along the hallway another few steps before finally saying, "I love you."

The silence in the tunnel stretched, and Penelope was almost at the point where she would scream just to hear something when he replied.

"Sorry, I—I love you too, Pen."

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Admitting she loved him, that she felt like Travis was her partner in more than just friendship or even dungeon and monster, was like having all the pressure and worry of her little quirks around him evaporate.

"Am I being too much?" Penelope asked as she sat in the back corner of the library studying a book. "By touching your heart, I mean."

Travis had long since learned to focus his "voice" to a single kobold, and did so now. "No. Definitely not. I—I was confused at first, but now you told me how you feel, I know I wasn't seeing something that wasn't there."

"It was there I just couldn't admit it. You need to thank Luddy and Kate for making me wake up and talk to you about it." Shifting her shoulders, Penelope felt her wings move too. It was so weird to have wings—an entirely new set of limbs she'd never had before—and despite everything that she knew about dragon-based dungeons and their bosses, she'd never thought of herself getting them. "You know Luddy and Wild are—?"

"Pen, I think even Squishy knows. They're kinda loud."

Penelope laughed at that, then covered her snout with her free talon. "Sorry. Guess I'm kinda loud too. So, you're okay with me touching your heart more?"

"More than you already do?" Travis mulled the idea over. If he had a body to smile with, he would be grinning from ear to ear. "As often as you want to."

"Just promise me you'll tell me if it's too much—or not enough." Turning the page on the book she was reading, Penelope tapped the page carefully with a claw. "First time with a girl?"

"What?!" Travis' mind was jerked away from the cozy place their conversation had lulled him to. "When was that?"

"I just want to know more about you. Would it help if I told you about my first time with a guy?" She said it teasingly, but Penelope didn't honestly care and would happily share her past with him—if only to monopolize a little of his time.

"Ugh. No. I don't want to know that but—but what do you like to eat? What do you do to take your mind off things?"

"Down near the capital there's a little place that makes hard little sugar candies. Trav, you wouldn't believe how good those things are. I would—I would spend ten thousand gold for one little bag." Setting the book down, Penelope closed her eyes and imagined those delicious candies. She hadn't realized something could mean so much to her and be lost forever. "As for taking my mind off things, I used to sing."

Travis wished he could take notes that didn't involve recording his every thought in a book. Ten thousand gold was not just possible, but he was sure it wouldn't cost that much. Even if it did, though, he'd buy those candies. "Have you tried singing as a kobold?"

"I can barely talk straight with all these teeth now."

"And I couldn't hold a note even when I was human. Give it a try. I want to hear you sing." Though he wished he could hug her, Travis had to face facts that would never happen. It still hurt to realize let alone acknowledge. "Why don't you try now?"

"Now?!"

"Everyone else is asleep. Give it a try." Everyone, Travis knew, except for Wild and Ludmiller—but that was not a problem he had to deal with. "For me?"

"You're not going to let me say no, are you?" Even saying it, Penelope put down the book of Travis' past in a strange world with stranger customs, and closed her eyes. She'd been living as a kobold for some time now, but each time she'd taken a step along the boss path, everything had changed. Her voice, she knew, had gotten a little deeper, but her lungs were bigger.

Penelope started with humming. It got her to focus on what her throat and mouth were doing without accidentally breathing fire or anything serious. A slow scale up and down the notes, then faster. Next she checked her breath. Going up in notes as far as she could before her throat felt pinched, then back down until she couldn't keep her hum from wobbling a little.

Once more down her current scale to the lowest note she could manage, then back up to the top, and Penelope felt ready. Opening her mouth, she started to sing.

Travis froze. Every automated thing the dungeon did that was in some way connected to him paused and it was like the whole place just collectively held its breath. Though she sang what amounted to a drinking song, it made no less impact on Travis precisely because she was singing it for him.

He listened, enraptured, hearing the song through her ears as she expanded on it and, at last, ended it. When it concluded, he felt the whole dungeon shunt back into motion as lizards threw off their confusion and even Squishy seemed to jiggle with extra excitement.

"That was beautiful," Travis said.

"My voice is so much deeper now. This is crazy and will only get crazier. You know I'll get bigger, right? Another upgrade or three and I'll be a full-sized dragon." What Penelope wasn't saying, of course, was that she didn't actually mind how deep her voice had become. It had more throat to it and she could dig into deeper notes and put a sultry edge into them.

"I'll talk to Tannyr about widening all the tunnels."

It took a moment for Penelope to realize the joke Travis had made. "That's it. If you're going to make jokes about me getting bigger, I'm going to shave some off your crystal so you're a slimmer heart." Standing up, she started for the door and out into the tunnels just before the heart room. Approaching it, she could see the huge expanse of crystal that was his heart.

Travis gasped (or simulated one, at least) when Penelope walked right up to him and spread her arms and wings around his heart. He was extensively aware of how much he could feel her, but when her lips touched the surface of him he almost melted into dungeony bliss. "I love you, Pen."

"Right back at you, big guy," she said, moments after lifting her lips from the heart and just before she kissed him again.

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.