“Are you sure this is a good idea, Moru?”
“Come now, Drex. I’ve been working these extracts since I was fresh from the egg. If you actually doubt me, I’m sure I can find someone else who’d like to go to the surface. Maybe Irla, since she-”
“That’s enough,” Drex snorted, taking the bubbling flask from his female companion’s claws. “This is just rather… bold, for us. If anything goes wrong…”
“Then we won’t live long enough to regret it. So stop whining and drink up. Act like you’re actually a warrior for once. You just turned 15. You’re an adult. A full-grown kobold that’s about to grow much, much more. All thanks to me. You’re welcome, by the way.” Moru’s tail swayed slowly as she regarded the flask in her own red-scaled hand. If she was right, they’d have maybe a minute before its effects kicked in. If she was wrong… well, it wouldn’t be the first alchemical mishap she’d had. “To us, Drex. And to the end of those damnable dwarves on the surface.”
“To us,” Drex replied, as he slowly lifted the magical concoction to his lips. As Moru stared, he took a deep breath - taking in the vaguely sulfurous smell of the extract - and simply chugged it down. It felt like liquid fire upon his tongue, one that only his red-dragon ancestry could allow him to tolerate. While he was gagging upon it, Moru casually drank hers down like fine wine, as she’d become used to the strange flavors of magic.
“Let’s go. Quickly.” Moru took Drex by the hand and led him through the tunnels to the surface. Her lab was near enough to the entrance, well away from the depths of the mines. But as they neared the surface, the tunnels they once found spacious became constricting. “It’s working. It’s working!” Moru squealed in delight as she felt her body expand. Having to crawl through the last dozen feet of the tunnel was an awkward and unfamiliar experience, and her clothing started to tear apart from the steady growth, but upon escaping the confines of the mountain, she looked around in awe of the world.
Before, Moru was tall for a kobold at a whopping 3’1”. Now, the tops of trees that towered above were almost at eye level. The entrance to the cave looked more like a large mousehole, one that Drex was struggling to free himself from. The sun beat down upon her bare scales, warming her in a way the fires underground could never replicate. She wasn’t sure exactly how tall she was - 30 feet? 40? - but that wasn’t important now. What mattered is that she had more raw power than any other natural being on this mountain and that her alchemical experiment had been an extraordinary success. Once Drex stood to his full height, as nude as Moru was, she gave him a quick kiss. “I think we have some dwarves just dying to see us, Drex.”
At such sizes, the two red-scaled kobolds were anything but stealthy. Navigating the densely-wooded forest around the mountain was itself a destructive act. They tried to stay on the paths, to some extent, but with every step another tree broke like a flimsy twig. With one step, Moru felt something that was definitely not a tree break beneath her foot, a sensation that made her shiver in delight. If this wasn’t godhood, it was close.
After a few short minutes, the two had gone far enough around the mountain to see a dwarven village laid out on the ground before them. Even the tallest buildings and the stacks of the forge came barely past their knees. A horn sounded a warning but it was already too late. Moru leapt forward and crushed the guardpost in a single, brutal impact, reducing the wooden structure to splinters and the dwarf inside to little more than a red pulp. “So, dwarves…” she said, in heavily accented dwarvish, “I’m Moru. He’s Drex. You’re toys. Got it? Because if you don’t, you’re next.” For emphasis, she twisted her foot on the ruined structure beneath it.
Shock kept the village silent for a few moments .When one of the villagers started to flee out the opposite end of town, Moru just snorted. In draconic, she hissed “Catch him,” to Drex. The male was surprised by the command but obeyed after only a moment’s hesitation. It did, however, require him to trample his way through the main street of town. A street that was just barely wide enough for two wagons to cross was not very accommodating to a towering kobold, either. His tail crashed into the fronts of buildings, leaving them scarred from the impact. A stone well in the center of town was crushed like it was made of dry clay. The fleeing dwarf - a middle-aged woman - was swept up in one scaly hand and hoisted high into the air.
Drex walked slowly back toward Moru, taking enough time for the dwarf to scream herself hoarse. He didn’t understand a word of it, but Moru did, and the female just laughed at the impotent threats the captured dwarf shrieked. For Drex, she translated. “She actually thinks she can hurt us! Isn’t that cute? I bet she hurts herself trying to punch me.” Moru carefully took the dwarf out of Drex’s hand, stood her in the upturned palm of her own, and lifted that paw up to her face. “So,” she said in dwarven, leaning her head in so close to the woman felt her hot, brimstone breath. “You think you can hurt me? You get one punch. Make it count.”
Moru kept her snout right there, just in front of the incredulous dwarf. The dwarf did take her up on the offer. Moru felt the punch, certainly, but through armored dragon-scales it barely stung at all. “I’ve had insects do more damage to me. My turn. I’ll only take one punch too.” The kobold rocked her hand until the dwarf was flat on her back, once again screaming for mercy and shrieking prayers to any gods that could intervene. “Your gods won’t save you now, dwarf.There’s just me. See you in Hell.” With another hearty laugh, Moru balled her hand into a fist and brought it down upon the dwarf. The only mercy is that it was a quick death; the dwarf’s torso simply imploded under the pressure, leaving the head to fall free to the ground. Moru crouched down and wiped the remains off onto the ground, while eyeing the remaining dwarves for her next victim.
“You know, I am getting rather hungry,” Moru teased in draconic, “Aren’t you, Drex?”
“I wasn’t, but now that you mention it, I could use a small snack…”
The dwarves couldn’t understand what the kobolds were saying to each other. They could guess. They could imagine. They tried not to imagine. But when the two kobolds started walking toward the town hall, there was no possible good explanation for it. The two giants stood on either side, blocking the front and rear entrances. Out of the windows, all the condemned dwarves could see were the ruby-scaled reptilian feet. Then, Moru’s right foot moved, kicking down the front door and causing the wall to partially cave in.
With nothing left between her and her snacks, Moru crouched at first to get a closer look, then simply laid down upon the ground, belly-first, to get an even closer look at their panicked faces. She licked at her face, making sure to show off her open maw, the snake-like tongue within it, the glistening of saliva. One foolhardy dwarf threw a torch at the kobold, who simply blinked in surprise as it landed upon her tongue. “You actually threw fire at a red-scaled kobold? You might be even dumber than you look. So let me say this slowly: Walk onto my tongue and I’ll give you a quick death for that.” She opened her mouth again, letting the tongue roll out as if a walkway to the fleshy gates of hell.
The dwarf, predictably, refused to comply with the demand for his own death.
Some of his peers started trying to push him forward, fearing what the giantess might do next if he didn’t. After half a minute of struggle, Moru spat upon the group, leaving them mired in uncomfortably hot saliva. “You know that was the only mercy I was going to show you, right?” Moru reached out with one claw and pulled away the dwarf, dragging him closer to her maw. “Now instead you’re going to find out what a kobold’s stomach is like. Enjoy!” Once more she opened wide, this time to take in that meal.
She picked up the dwarf and laid his head right on her tongue, letting him bask in the foulness of saliva. Though he struggled and pushed against it, she casually ignored that, letting him tire himself out just by futily punching her tongue and snout. Her hand pushed against his feet, slowly shoveling him toward her throat, toward the abyss beyond. The world for the dwarf gradually went dark as he was pressed deeper. His clothing became wet and sticky with drool, clinging to his body as it offered an ever decreasing amount of protection from the kobold’s body. When she swallowed his ears popped and his world went dark, as the tight confines of her throat started to engulf his body. It took some effort for her to gulp down his shoulders, and she choked briefly upon him before getting the rest of his body down. Within a half minute, nothing remained of him but a slowly-descending bulge in her throat.
From the crowd, another dwarf came up and started shouting and sobbing. The snack’s lover, Moru realized. “Aww, here, I wouldn’t want you to live without him…” Her hand reached out, grabbing the female. She looked up at Drex and nodded before tossing him the dwarf. “A snack for you, my love,” Moru teased. The dwarf was consumed just as slowly as her lover, gradually fed upon, savored, and then swallowed whole and alive...
“So, Drex… think we should take this buffet along with us?”