Kobolds From Space 2: Kobold of Shadows

I don’t know what we would have done without Pepper there to dig for us. I’m not sure how I originally imagined it going – I guess I thought of the chasm as a steep cliff with lots of handholds that I could nimbly climb down as if I was some sort of monkey. Maybe I would have brought climbing gear?

The reality was that the only tunnel that even opened onto the chasm now was about a hundred meters away from where we wanted to start our search, and the chasm itself had the odd ledge or crack but was mostly smooth planes of rock that had cracked apart and slid far enough to leave a dangerous gap, some time in the ancient past. With Pepper there, we could have her dig a shallow descent in the side of the cliff, and only run into a few scary moments where it looked like one of us might plunge over the edge – usually Pepper, since she was leading.

There was no sign of the warp crystal – not even a glimmer of light. When I looked over the edge, I could see that our own lights were swallowed up by the darkness long before they found the bottom of the chasm… and eventually, as we descended, we could tell that this wasn’t metaphorical – there was a threshold past which our light refused to illuminate anything.

“It’s underwater?” I guessed. I looked over at Pepper nervously. “Steel and I should be able to breathe, what about you and Pancakes?”

“It doesn’t look like water,” Pancakes said. “There’s no reflection.”

It wasn’t water. It was hard to tell what it was, even when we were close enough to touch it, but it definitely wasn’t water. The edge was fuzzy enough that it might have been smoke. I reached down to touch it, only for Steel to grab me and yank me back.

“What are you doing?” we asked each other simultaneously.

Pepper knelt down, and blew on the darkness. It… roiled, for the lack of a better word, but didn’t disperse like smoke might have. Pancakes knelt down next to her and belched out a quick blast of flame…

There was a screech, and the surface rippled like a lake, and then faster than I would have thought possible, the darkness retracted, vanishing into… well, into the darkness. We could see the bottom of the chasm, a tilted pile of rubble only a few meters down, and there, shining away, was the purple light of the warp crystal.

“It’s a trap,” Steel said.

“I know it’s a trap,” I replied. “I can’t just not go for it though. This is why we came all this way.” I fidgeted. “And maybe it’s not a trap? Maybe Pancakes scared it away?”

The darkness started flowing back in out of the cracks between the rocks, filling in the gaps and the lowest valleys, and slowly rising towards us – and towards the warp crystal. In thirty seconds, it would be immersed again, but I thought if I hurried I could get there and back in twenty.

“I can do this!” I said, dodging Steel’s attempt to stop me this time as I leapt off the edge. I stumbled as I landed, losing a few seconds to get my balance, then bounced across the rocks, snatched up the warp crystal, and – prompted by the screams and pointing from my friends, turned around to see a wave of liquid-or-maybe-gaseous darkness looming up over me, just before it crashed down and everything went black.

No, I didn’t fall unconscious – everything just went black. I could feel the ground beneath me, but it was smooth and rubbery, nothing like the damp rocks I’d been perched on a second before. The warp crystal was still in my claws, but I couldn’t see it – I couldn’t even see my own faceplate display, which should have been impossible! Even if I’d somehow been struck blind, it could have sent the display directly into my brain. Maybe it didn’t know I was blind? I tried bringing up the settings menu, but I couldn’t tell if it had worked because I couldn’t see anything, and messing around with the settings blindly -- *literally* blindly – was a terrible idea.

I clutched the warp crystal to my chest, and tried to remember how to use it. Imagine it working, right? I imagined it glowing brightly, driving back the darkness… but no, nothing happened. Of course nothing happened, I wasn’t supposed to imagine what it was supposed to do, I was supposed to imagine… something… it had been so long, and I’d been so focused on just finding it that I hadn’t thought about what I was supposed to do when I did, and without my faceplate working I couldn’t play back Wave’s instructions. “Please, work,” I whined at it.

“It won’t listen to you,” whispered a voice from the darkness, from just behind me and above my left shoulder. I turned around, but saw nothing. Continued to see nothing. “You don’t have the talent to unlock its power,” the voice continued, from behind me again. This time I managed to stay still, not wanting to give it the pleasure of making me dance around like a puppet. “But if it’s power you seek… we could come to an arrangement.”

“What are you?” I asked, cringing – not out of fear, out of disgust for how stereotypical my own reactions were. But I wanted to know!

“I’m the best friend that you’ll ever have,” it whispered from over my right shoulder this time, then drifted around in front of me as it continued. “I can give you everything you desire… the power to be respected and admired, abilities that no one else will or can possess… the courage to let yourself be touched.”

It was like it was reading my mind. As I thought that, it snickered, the hissing laughter coming from all directions.

The next offer came from directly behind me, the words crawling up my spine, making the fur on my back stand on end. “Swear yourself to my service, and you will have everything you desire, and more…”

“No,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“Surely you, of all people, do not imagine yourself some incorruptible paragon,” it hissed in my right ear. “Why do you resist?”

“I may not be a very good kobold, but I won’t be your slave,” I replied.

“Is that the unbreakable commandment you were programmed with by your owners?” it asked, tricking me into looking up as the voice came from directly above me. “I can free you from that, as well.”

“It’s not – what?” I asked, confused. “Is it supposed to be appealing that you’re offering to, what, mind control me until I don’t care about anything? If you can do that, why are you even pretending to care about my consent?” It didn’t answer right away. “If you do care about my consent, then you’re not going to get it. Maybe I can’t use the warp crystal, fine. I’ll just… go home, give it back to Wave, and be a boring stupid kobold just like everybody else. Only worse, because I’m – are you putting these thoughts in my head?” I snapped, as the bleakness of my future stretched out before me – despised, unloved, too broken to truly be part of the group… merely *tolerated* by my friends because of their compassion for the less fortunate.

“I don’t need to,” it replied, from directly in front of me. “If I had the power to insinuate myself into your thoughts, I’d send you images of the glory you’d attain at my side. If I had the power to ignore your consent, we wouldn’t be talking at all.”

“What are you,” I asked, again, staring straight at the indistinguishable patch of darkness that it was allowing its words to come from.

“I am darkness,” it replied. “Without a host, I am nothing more. Together, we could be powerful. Admired. Feared. Apart, you will be a failure, forgotten by the annals of history *at best*, and I…”

“You’re a parasite?” I guessed.

“No more so than the warp crystal you so desperately longed to bind yourself to,” it replied. It was still there, in front of me, at head height. I could almost imagine I was talking to another kobold. Another kobold that for some reason could only whisper. Its whispers had changed tone, sounding… pained. Insulted. Angry, but not at me.

Or maybe I was just imagining how I’d feel in its place, and since it was reading my thoughts, it could play along.

“Little time passes while we talk, but in seconds your friends will free you from my grasp, and this chance will be lost. In this form I cannot withstand a dragon’s fire,” it said. This was reassuring for about half a (subjective) second, until I remembered that I couldn’t withstand a dragon’s fire either. It probably wouldn’t kill me, but if they were desperate enough to sic Pancakes on the darkness… oh fuck, I was going to be in so much pain. More months in the hospital, slowly recovering from the burns.

Still, probably better than being a mind-controlled slave.

Right?

“You would not suffer as my host,” the voice promised. “You would rejoice in your power and in the victories we would share, and I… you fear that I would control you, but I have no desires of my own. It is your desires we would pursue. I wish only to be of use, and to continue to exist. ”

“I’m sure you’ll find someone willing to take you up on your offer,” I said. “Diamond dogs are everywhere, and they’re a hierarchical society.”

“And yet in all this time, *you* are the only one who’s dared to come within my reach,” it replied. “No one else, only you. How much longer can I wait? Not as long as you’d think, especially not after your dragon drives me away again. If I thought there was any hope of finding another, I would be wise to flee back into the darkness now and leave you to your misery.”

“Then why aren’t you?” I asked. “I already said no.”

“You are my only hope,” it said, miserably, its voice cracking a bit, just the tiniest squeak of tonal sound creeping into its whisper. “There is no one else. Please!” Its voice lowered, as if the imaginary kobold in front of me was dropping to its knees.

I took a step back, and it whimpered. Not a whisper, not a hiss, just the whimper.

And it worked. I stepped forwards, knelt down, and reached out to hug the kobold I imagined was there in the darkness, pleading for my mercy. There was no kobold there – no fuzzy warmth, no solid mass to hold. There was something, though – a chill that bit into my bones, sinking into my body as I embraced it.

I never said yes, but in that moment, in my own moment of weakness, I’d thought about saying it, and that was enough.