*Fox/????*

As I sprinted through the dimly lit corridor, adrenaline and fear- mostly fear- surged through my veins. Each breath labored, and my lungs were desperate for air. My heart pounded with fear, yet I knew they wouldn’t catch me now. Probably. To them, all Kobolds looked alike, and all Kobolds were nobodies. I did not know for sure if any Crocos had even seen me, but it had been close, and stopping to check would have just slowed me down more. If they hadn’t seen me, I might make it outside the walls to safety. I just needed to get around a bunch of other Kobolds. Crocos don’t see so good, and they’re awful at telling us apart.

The small kitten nestled in my tunic let out a faint mewl, putting me at risk of being discovered, and I quickly cupped the tiny thing against my chest to comfort it. Even the idea of having our own kitten was completely off-limits for us. The powers that be, Crocos, reserved such privileges for those the Crocodilians deemed worthy. And like I said, Kobolds were nobodies.

I’m not a nobody, though.

Regardless, this kitten wouldn’t have survived the week with “King” Bigums and his cruel idiot of a spawn, Biggums, and I couldn’t bear to leave the poor thing behind.

As I darted around corners and navigated the labyrinthine passages towards freedom, I could feel the fear abating, and I caught myself grinning like a dry brained fool. I was being deliberately defiant, something we Kobolds don’t even joke about normally. Defiance was incredibly dangerous, one of the most dangerous things someone could ever accuse a Kobold of, but I found myself unable to abandon her to her fate.

Bold Kobolds won’t ever get sold, but they’ll never live to fly.

Cause bold Kobolds get death rolled; they get twisted till they die.

I’d thought it was just part of a nursery rhyme until they tore Grinsy apart for taking water from the Oasis without asking. So, my life really was in danger here.

But she’s worth it.

I did not know why, but I felt a kinship to the tiny creature. She was just like me, tiny and gray. And treated like less than nothing to people who, powerful or not, were too dim to see the value in anything they could physically dominate. I did not have her cute stripes, but I had that same color on the tuft of my long ears, so it was enough for me.

We’re gonna be best friends!

Peeking carefully out the window, I both listened and watched for movement before quietly leaping through it and then began walked normally, trying to catch my breath. Thankfully, the kitten seemed to settle as soon as I was no longer shaking her around by running. The warmth and brightness of the Zwill- tess Oasis surrounded me.

I only knew of three Oases, personally. The Zwill-tess Oasis stood out as the most prosperous and densely populated. In terms of sheer size, though, the primarily Hyena populated Jah-mes and Djinn-ette Oases were nearly identical and collectively called the Bound Oases. Because of their more nomadic tendencies, the Bound Oases rarely reached more than half occupancy.

There were rumors that the magic in the Bound Oases Waysprings was fading, but these rumors had persisted for as long as I could remember.

All species traveled between the three Oases, but Zwill was primarily Crocodilian and stood alone.

I hoped one day to see the Jah or Djinn, as they were called, but if I was ever gonna see them, I would probably have to do so as a slave. Everybody treated us Kobolds like beggars, even though we did most of the work in Zwill. The Djinn was originally named after a species of people by the same name, but I'd never seen one, and there weren't many left. All I knew was they were supposed to have red skin, which sounded neat, but who knows.

I did not know how many Kobolds there were in the Bound Oases, but I hope there aren’t any at all, cause that probably means they’re slaves like me.

I hope that if there are any Kobolds anywhere else in the world that they’re free.

As the kitten nuzzled against my belly, I walked cautiously, keeping my head down. Now was not the time to draw attention to myself. Truthfully, I excelled at these situations, blending into the background effortlessly. While I hadn’t faced stakes like these before, even for a Kobold, I had a talent for being invisible in plain sight. It worked almost like a skill for us Kobolds and usually saved us from the worst of the unpredictable Croco mood swings.

I needed to make my way outside the walls to our cliff-tents or at least to the Clinkers. My people lived in the cliff-tents, but the Clinkers lived just outside the wall. They, like us, were a marginalized group, made up of the poorest among the races. Basically, we were all Nobodies.

Nobodies stick together or everybody dies. But I got a kitten now!

“Stop, stupid,” a voice growled from behind me. “Here, now. You stink weird.”

I froze. My heart fell into my stomach as I slowly turned, ready to puke. An ancient green scaled Croco by the name of Gumbridge leaned her snout outside of her window, sniffing the air in my direction.

She was all but blind yet had a nose better than anybody else in the Oasis. She had been that way all my life and had learned to get by on her other senses to great effect.

Why is she awake? Do the gods hate me? I’m so dead. She’s gonna kill me.

No one would have blinked an eye at a dead Kobold boy, gutted in what remained of the grass.

“What you got, beggar?”

“Honored wise-one, I have one of… uh, Master Biggums’ pets. It unfortunately succumbed to an unknown sickness,” I replied with a slight emphasis on the word “unknown.”

“Oh,” she paused, uncomfortable, but still sneering. She knew as well as anyone who’d spent time with the Chief's family what I meant by unknown sickness. The sickness belonged to Biggums, not his pets.

Biggums’ playthings never lasted long.

I won’t let that happen to her. I’ll run away if I have to… and live in the desert!

But all that bravado deflated when Gumbridge spoke again.

“Let me have. Give. Now,” she said after a moment, holding out her olive-clawed hand.

Every fiber of my being screamed out in panic. Gumbridge might be blind, but she had whatever a photographic memory was with smells, and she’d be able to find me if I ran. She might be the only Croco that could tell Kobolds apart, funny enough.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

They’d round up every Kobold in the oasis over one Kobold’s behavior, and they’d flay me alive in front of my entire tribe as soon as she sniffed me out.

Then they’d kill another and eat them just to remind us they could.

I stalled only a moment; hesitation was an act of defiance for Kobolds. Tears swelled up in my eyes, and as I pulled the small kitten out of my tunic, I sent a desperate prayer to whoever would listen for the kitten to just please, please not make a sound.

I knew it was impossible, but I didn’t know what else to do in that moment. The tiny thing looked up at me with unexpected intelligence… and then fell over in my hand, limp and glassy eyed.

My breath hitched, and I handed the limp cat over to Gumbridge, my paw shaking. The Crocos’ toothless snout wiggled a little as she sniffed the air and then gave the kitten a rough shake. The little kitten was as limp as a rag-doll in her faded claw. Had the kitten died somehow?

Did I kill her?

“Fresh dead. Broken inside, maybe,” she rasped to herself as she gave the kitten another mean shake and then tossed it carelessly back it me, satisfied. I caught the limp form against my chest, and the tears that had started in fear spilled in sadness.

“You can eat. I only like when meat squirms,” she said, her whitened eyes glaring through me. She then, with a stabilizing claw on the window, stepped back inside her home.

I would never!

The thought was bitter, but then again, so was I.

Heartbroken, I turned, not sure what to do with the poor thing.

And then… her beautiful, honey-colored cat eyes suddenly regained life, and she winked at me. Purring, she curled back up into my hand to get comfortable.

I released a long breath of relief and ran, not caring if I looked suspicious. Hopefully, they would assume I was just another Kobold given a task with an impossible time-frame so that they could humiliate me back into my place in society. My panicked face would support such an assumption easily.

When I darted through the South Gate, one guard laughed and threw something wet at my running back. It could have been anything from a rotten berry to a severed Kobold finger. I probably didn’t want to know what it was. Crocos were fond of maiming those Kobolds who made the mistake of showing promise or unusual intelligence.

The big problem with that is that to a Croco, any intelligence was unusual.

That wasn’t quite true, but it made me happy to think it.

Some of the braver Kobolds had made it a game of finding creative ways to look as imbecilic as possible. It was, sadly, one of the most effective ways to curry favor with the ego driven Crocodilian people. It was a razor’s edge of too much attention and favor, though. One wrongly perceived look or tone of voice spelled death.

I need to get her out of here.

This kitten was special, and I’d known it before she’d even winked at me. Now, though, I had proof, even if it wasn’t the kind I could show others. I could feel it.

What I thought I was feeling was the power of adrenaline and defiance, but her look, her presence, was doing something to me I couldn’t explain. I’d felt an instant attachment to her. In fact, bonded might be a better word. Even considering running away from Gumbridge was something I wouldn’t have possibly entertained even two hours ago, sitting in Biggums’ room waiting for him to wake up.

***

I’d been in the room when they’d brought in his new pet. They’d brought pets before, but never, ever a kitten. Biggums would usually play with the poor creatures, tossing them about cruelly, sometimes at me, or throwing things at them as they darted around the room trying to escape, and then eat them when he became bored.

The kitten, though, had been much nimbler than any other pet I ever saw. She had hidden from the idiot and darted from place to place when he wasn’t looking until he’d worn himself flat out, breathing heavily and looking paler than usual.

He’d swore terrible vengeance on the kitten and plopped down on his bed of more cloth than a Kobold family got in their entire lives. Biggums was snoring within minutes. His usual afternoon nap, even if was earlier and much heavier than normal. The kitten had poked its head out from under the very cloth Biggums had fallen asleep on and ran right into my lap, looking up at me.

If Biggums wakes up, he’ll beat me to death.

A cold sweat, followed by a shiver that set my gray fur on end, ran down my spine as I mouthed, “What?”

I panted quietly, but my heart had to have been loud enough to hear. That was probably because I felt a very out of character desire to run away with her. To defy. Something I’d long learned to over-ride and shove down deep into a part of myself that I wasn’t sure existed any longer. But her eyes were pleading. Her eyes, her bright honey-colored eyes, pleaded with me. And for some insane reason, I’d ran.

***

After making it through the south gate and being pelted with who knows what, I was among the Clinkers, a rough but reliable sort. They were a resourceful group and had odd versions of classes that were usually less powerful than the classes Crocos and Hyenas normally received because they focused more on survivability than combat.

Outside the walls, we were all “Us” in the “Us vs Them” world we lived in, and despite the strange mix of species that made up the group, including a few hairless people, almost as small as us. They came in lots of different colors and had to cover up constantly, not made to survive in these conditions. Especially without Wayspring water. I’d heard they sometimes got powerful classes to make up for their frailty, but no one smart talked about their classes.

I still had a basic class: Runner. It gave me a few passive skills in running longer distances, but I rarely got to go far enough for those to matter. I hoped I’d be able to change to a Seeker rather than stay as a Running or Scout class. They weren’t much use to Crocos.

If I could become a Seeker, which is a rare class, I might gain a skill to locate water myself, which is what they called a Douser, and then they would take much better care of me.

They’d treat me like a king if I could help find Wayspring water, and I’d probably get to drink some, too. In a perfect world. This ain’t a perfect world, though.

Like all the Kobolds I knew, I’d grown up on bulb water from the cacti that grew in the desert and had only heard rumors of what Wayspring water could do. Older Kobolds gathered bulb water, or the Clinkers sold and traded it to us.

We needed little, but we all needed some. Even if I could only seek metals, they might use me for exploration parties who went out looking for old tech, buried super deep in the sand. Everyone had Goggles, at least. Even the Crocos were smart enough to allow us those, or we’d all be blind.

Take away a slave’s Goggles, and you might as well take away their eyes. Then we really would be useless, like they call us.

The other races, and even some Clinkers, had Bracers which could connect to the Goggles somehow and offered all sorts of cool things like Gambits, which could reward you with information or Insight to improve yourself.

Whatever that means. I only got Goggles.

Reportedly, the Bracers offered a way to track your physical and mental improvement, too, but I’d never find that out for myself. Especially if I get caught with this kitten. I hugged her closer to me.

I nodded to one of the Hyenaman Clinkers, Zuzz, who cackled a short laugh in my direction, and tossed me a piece of dried fruit!

“Thanks!”

“You mights want to move move down the line, heehee,” he said in the strange way Hyena-people spoke. It often sounded like they were on the verge of a laughing fit. He continued, “You’s playin a dangerous game game.”

I nodded, and he tossed me another small piece of fruit, glancing down at the small kitten that I thought hid in my tunic. Hyenas had good noses, too, and way better eyes than Crocos.

I reconsidered my first thought, which was to hide the kitten in the cliff-tents among my people. Any Kobold caught, and possibly anyone near, might be killed. The Clinkers, who were usually just useful enough to stay out of the Oasis crossfire, had ways of wiggling out of trouble.

There was only one other place I could think of, and so I made my way down towards the tent of the pretty, brown-skinned female who seemed to have a soft spot in her heart for Kobolds. She showed affection, fed, and loved on all the Kobold pups, and she was well-liked.

I fondly remembered spending loads of time in her tent with her daughter and other small Kobolds until I’d gotten old enough to get pulled into work.

My heart was again beating wildly in my chest as I hesitated outside her tent. I watched the thin colored streamers dancing in the wind. If she couldn’t help, I didn’t know what else to do. The cat, however, began purring, still nestled against my belly, my furry gray arm supporting her from the outside of my tunic. I stepped inside the tent.

“Cleo, um…. I need help,” my voice was small, pleading.

She stopped folding the cloth she had just cut and turned towards me.

“What is it, little friend?” She said seriously. I wasn’t offended by her calling me small. I was small. Besides, she’d said it with love. You can say a lot if you love someone.

I opened my tunic and pulled out the small kitten, holding her out carefully. A black-haired little girl with gray eyes poked her head out from behind Cleo’s skirts to look at me after her mother spoke and smiled at the tiny kitten in my hands.

Cleo’s eyes went wide.

“Oh, Little Luth… what have you done?