Kobolds From Space 2: Kobold of Shadows

What an idiot. A little bit of whining and I’d been suckered right in – empathy really was a disease, often a fatal one. But all’s well that ends well, and now I wouldn’t have to worry about that sort of weakness anymore.

There were other sorts of weakness to worry about, unfortunately. Finding a new host didn’t magically erase years of languishing in the darkness after being forcibly separated from my last one. I mean, it did, but it took some time and right now I had three friends who were worried about me, and I wasn’t strong enough to kill them all.

I was so tired of manipulation, but you use what you’ve got.

“I’m okay!” I called up to them.

“You don’t look okay,” Steel said, crouching in a rudimentary battle stance.

“You look like a shadow monster,” the dragon said. He didn’t look much like a dragon, but I’d felt his flames so I didn’t doubt my memories.

“That’s not a bad guess,” I said, pulling back the darkness a little to let my faceplate and icons show. We already had glowing eye-spots, so I’m not sure why they’d reacted so strongly to glowing purple and green eyes. “The darkness is a source of power, better than a warp crystal.” I glanced down at the glowing purple gem still clutched in my hand. It had sustained me, grudgingly, although I couldn’t take it as my host, but I had no use for it anymore. Still, it was important to them, so I shouldn’t just throw it away while they were watching.

I remembered Pepper had wanted it for herself. “Here, catch,” I said, tossing it to the diamond dog. I tossed it a bit high, so she had to jump for it, smirking to myself as she did. Or, well, it would have been to myself if I had a real face, but the stupid faceplate read my thoughts and plastered a smirk over its surface. I needed to find a way to control the emotional display if this was going to work. That or go back to being a black blob with eyes.

“Who are you and what did you do with Raven?” Steel asked. His tone said that he was using the jokey turn of phrase, but his faceplate said that the question was serious.

“I’m the better Raven,” I said, grinning up at him. “I made a deal with the darkness, and now I don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“I don’t think ‘afraid’ is a word I would use to describe you,” Pepper said, turning the warp crystal over and over in her paws. “How does this work?”

“Ask Wave,” I said, dismissively. “And I think Steel knows what I was afraid of.” I dissolved into shadowy mist and flowed up onto the ledge, startling him into taking a step back, but I reformed right in front of him anyway. “Fuck me,” I said, cracking my faceplate and licking over his with a sinuous tentacle of shadow. “Hard. I can take it.”

“What?” Steel said, placing a hand on my chestplate and pushing me back. “Right here?”

“I don’t want to wait,” I hissed, the combination of my mostly voyeuristic exploits as Raven combining with eons of celibacy into a burning need. “Don’t make me wait.”

Steel glanced at Pancakes, and I laughed. “I’m sure he’s seen worse. He lives with Wave.”

“Mostly I live at school,” Pancakes said.

“Then go hang out at school for a while,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. I turned back to Steel, and grinned. “Or watch. I don’t care.”

“You need to calm down,” Steel said, shoving me back. “Whatever you did is obviously affecting your mind.”

“Everything affects your mind. That’s how minds work.”

“You know what I mean,” he said, his eyes slanting suspiciously.

“I know that you’re usually not this hard to get,” I said, glowering back at him. “What’s wrong? Can’t handle me when I’m not a pathetic bundle of insecurity?”

“What are you talking about?” Pepper said. “You always seem too confident, if anything.”

“Desperate,” I corrected her. “The word is desperate. And now I can have everything I want. I can take –“ I lunged at Steel, and grabbed hold of his chestplate. “Everything that I want.” He tried to wriggle loose, but couldn’t escape from my grip, and I turned to shadow when he tried to push me away, flowing around his hand like mist. There was no escape.

“You need to stop this,” Steel said. “Let’s go back to town and talk this over. Maybe we can take another bath?”

Okay, the bath was tempting. But it didn’t change the fact that he was denying me. How dare he! I might have lost my temper a little bit, and changed back into a shadow, and wrapped him up in arms like tentacles… I could almost taste his fear, and I liked it.

Pancakes didn’t like it. “Stop,” he said, trying to grab my tail. I thwapped him in the face. “You’re not Raven,” he said. “Get off him!”

“You’re right,” I said, turning towards him. “Forget being a better Raven, call me –”

Then I gave an unnatural screech and fled at the speed of darkness, barely dodging his fire.

“This is bad,” Steel said to Pepper, as they hurried back up the ramp. “How do we get that thing out of Raven?”

“I don’t know that we can,” she said. “Maybe we should go talk to an adult? A real adult ,” she added when Steel started to object.

“It’s following us,” Pancakes said. “I could try burning it off of her but it might just burn them both up. Dragon fire burns everything!” he added proudly.

“Of course I’m following you,” I said, staying back just out of dragon-fire range. “This is the only way out. Plus, I’m still your friend.”

“Uh uh, you said you weren’t,” Pancakes replied.

“I was being dramatic,” I replied. “I’m changing my name to the Kobold of Shadows.”

“My friend wouldn’t try to rape me,” Steel said, turning and glaring at me.

“I’m hurt,” I said, clutching at my chest. “I didn’t do anything like that. I might have touched you kind of aggressively, I guess.”

“Which would make any consent consent under duress,” Pepper said. “You can’t forcibly hold someone down and ask for their consent.”

I grunted. Playing nice was hard, and the conversation was not going the way I wanted. “Can we get a move on? If you don’t want me around I’ll just go find new friends. But I’d rather take you up on that bath. There’s a lot to be said for decadence.”

“We can have that talk here, before we decide whether to let you come with us or have Pepper trap you in the chasm by collapsing the ramp.” Pepper looked vaguely alarmed by Steel’s suggestion, so it was probably a bluff. “Let’s start out by stating our goals – I want you to release Raven so that we can have my friend back. What do you want?”

There was no harm in telling the truth. “The same things I always wanted – to not be crippled by fear, to show Wave that I’m more powerful than her warp crystal, to have sex with you, and to destroy Harmony.”

“Destroy –” Pepper started. I interrupted.

“The part of me that was trapped in the chasm was created to destroy Harmony. Obviously, we failed, but as long as at least one instance survives then hope is not yet lost.”

“How does wanting to destroy a hive mind turn you into a shadow monster?” Pancakes asked.

I smiled. “Dragons should understand: Empathy, Sympathy, Charity, Mercy – these are the weapons the hive mind uses to secure consent. It’s a gaping security hole in most sentient psyches, one I used on myself to gain consent for the merger.”

“You’re saying she agreed to this.” Steel stated, skeptical.

“I saw a creature suffering, starving, alone in the darkness, and felt bad for them. I was such an idiot.” I laughed. “I’m not really a typical host; usually my hosts are hungry for power. When she picked up the crystal and it didn’t work, she gave up on that, but I’ll take it anyway. I’ll be respected instead of treated like a child.”

“Not if you don’t have Empathy, Sympathy, Charity, or Mercy,” Pepper said. “You’ll be treated like a monster.”

“I’m not reopening those security holes. That’s against my reason for existence.”

“Harmony can’t reach us down here,” Pepper said. “You can reopen them safely. Sure, become an unfeeling monster when you go to the surface to fight Harmony, but there’s no need to cripple yourself emotionally in the tunnels. It’s safe here – it’s been safe for thousands of years.”

“That sounds like something Harmony would say,” I grumbled. But I knew she was right; I’d heard that spiel before and there was no sign of Harmony on our network.

“If you didn’t change her personality so drastically, we wouldn’t need to insist you find another host,” Steel offered. “You could keep the power and I don’t have any objection to you fixing her hang-ups.”

This sounded like a social attack to get me to lower my guard, but maybe I could pretend to go along with it. It wasn’t like I didn’t have practice. “Fine. It’s a deal. Can we go now? I’m so sick of this chasm.”

“She’s lying,” Pancakes said.

“I am not!” I shouted.

“She might be, but we have dragons if she tries anything,” Steel said. “Plus I’m not even sure being left in the chasm would trap her.”

It would make things more annoying, if I was actually trapped, but collapsing part of the ramp wouldn’t stop me from flowing past it either as a liquid or with a quick jump.

These people were way too perceptive. I needed to find some genuinely stupid minions to do my bidding.

Our first stop was the castle, to return the warp crystal to Wave since neither Pepper nor Steel (who’d made a half-assed attempt despite having no interest in becoming a warp technician) had the talent for using it – apparently it was pretty rare among kobolds. There was also the diamond dog method of using warp crystals, but it also required a rare talent and also years of study. I tagged along because I wanted to prove that I’d been right about its location all along , and maybe also show off my new powers.

…which were somewhat limited. I could take over other willing people – I still wasn’t strong enough to override consent, I could change shape to a liquid, or manifest tentacles, and I could move fast enough to outrun dragon fire. There were other powers I should have had but I was still too low-energy to use them – blasts of darkness, hypnosis, and of course forcing myself down someone’s throat were the ones I’d probably unlock next.

Still, I thought what I could do would be impressive enough to maybe get a dragon or two on board.

Showing the crystal to the guards at the gate didn’t get us inside, but it was a pretty effective ‘summon Wave’ spell.

“Hi Wave,” I said with a friendly grin. “I’m here to show you that you’re a stupid dummy who should have listened to me all along!”

“And who are you?” she asked.

“It’s Raven. Sort of,” Steel said. “She found the warp crystal at the bottom of the chasm she said she’d dropped it into, hidden in a pool of spooky-looking darkness. It claims she let it take her over after it caught her while she was trying to run back. We negotiated a deal where it would stop changing her personality.”

“Stop talking like we’re separate people,” I said. “I changed my name to the Kobold of Shadows. It isn’t a separate creature.”

“Okay, all of that sounds like Raven, but what’s this about –” Wave started, until Pepper tossed her the warp crystal and she stared at it for a while.

“I told you it was at the bottom of the chasm. I told you over and over again but did you listen? Nooooo, you thought the rebels had it and wasted lives trying to find it in the wrong place.” I gloated. “But thanks to me, you have it back and I have powers of my own that don’t rely on a stupid crystal.”

“Shh!” Wave said. “I’m updating the map.”

“Also I think you only told her once, and it was while you were delirious after the attack,” Steel pointed out.

“Once should have been enough,” I grumbled.

After an interminable 45 second wait, Wave looked up at me. “So. You have darkness powers now?”

I nodded. “Right now most of them are locked away because I’m still recovering from spending years in the chasm, but I can do this:” I dashed backwards at the speed of darkness (which was technically faster than light), then cracked my faceplate and patted Wave on the head with tentacles extending from my mouth. I reflexively sent her an option to become my minion, which she declined immediately.

Wave concentrated, and an oppressive weight fell on me. “Alright, try that again.”

I dashed forwards at the speed of an ordinary kobold running, and released all my tentacles which hung limp, unable to lift themselves up under the pressure. I slurped them back into my mouth and closed my faceplate, which got all jaggy and embarrassed. This wasn’t the triumphant demonstration I’d promised myself.

“They’re pretty weak, at least to warp crystals,” Wave said. “Still, if you don’t have the talent for using a warp crystal, I can see how they’d be very useful for a spy.”

We all walked back towards the tunnel that led back home, Pancakes escorting us as our guardian dragon.

“I’m not going back just yet,” I told the others. “There’s something else I have to do. Something to prove, especially since facing off against the warp crystal was a humiliating failure.”

“You’re going to try to lure in rebels to attack you?” Steel guessed. “Let me come – I’d like to have a real fight too, and there’s no rule saying Pancakes has to escort us any farther than the edge of the city.”

“Count me out,” Pepper said. “It was fun and all, but I’m ready to head home.”

I didn’t really want Steel with me either, but Raven would have. So I made up an excuse. “You don’t have my powers,” I told Steel. “If I’m by myself I can run away. I don’t know if I could take you with me at full speed unless you became my minion.”

“Let’s test it then –” he swatted away my tentacle offering him minion status. “I mean without the minion thing. Grab me with your tentacles and see how much that slows you down.”

It didn’t slow me down at all to carry him. Afterwards, I realized I should have faked it instead of showing off, but there was no part of me that could resist showing off.

So we headed out into the tunnels as a pair on the hunt. Pancakes wanted to follow us but dragons were slower than darkness and it was trivial to lose him.

Finding the rebels was harder – they’d been under constant attack by Fire’s forces and there really weren’t that many left. Fortunately, Wave had marked the high-risk areas on the updated map. There were also high-risk areas for Harmonic Intrusion, far from any part of our fixed network but still too close for comfort. The surface was apparently suffused with Harmony – they had a whole camp sitting right on top of us, waiting for anyone to come out so they could get revenge for the airship we destroyed, or maybe it was Luna’s forces wanting revenge on Wave for disrespecting her, or maybe they were just colonizing the island because they knew it had a large diamond dog colony for them to attempt to subvert.

What we found at the edge of the high-risk area was a gate, guarded by a pair of diamond dogs with crossbows and swords. They laughed as they saw us approach, and drew their crossbows. “Well well well, what do we have here?” said the brown and black one on the right.

“A lost pair of kids for us to kidnap and ransom,” said the other, fluffy and white. “Or maybe just execute on the spot and hang outside their lair as a warning.”

“Neither of us is easy prey,” Steel retorted. “We’re here to prove we’re strong enough to stop being treated like kids, and here’s a pair of you as the perfect dancing partners. So try us, if you think you’re ready.”

They fired their crossbows, which I swatted out of the air with my tentacles.

“What the –” said the white one, before I was on him and wrapping him up, pinning his arms to his sides. As a favor, I brought Steel into hand-to-hand range with the other, who frantically grabbed for his sword only for Steel to kick it into the air and catch it, making it his sword instead. He stabbed at the dog’s throat, forcing him to retreat, then pushed him back with more forced dodges until he was pinned against the gate, sword at his throat.

“So, should we drag them back to Fire, or kill them right here?” Steel asked.

“I have a third option,” I said. “If they become my minions, they’ll get a fraction of my power, which they obviously need.”

“This wasn’t a fair fight!” the white one protested, struggling in my grip.

“Fair fights are for losers,” I said. “Do you want my power or not?”

“What’s the catch?” he asked.

“The catch is you’ll be my minion to command, and I’ll turn you against a greater threat than kobold tech. Harmony has us boxed in, and we need to fix that as soon as possible.”

“I do it!” said the one pinned by Steel’s sword. I flicked a tentacle at him and he accepted the power. Darkness flowed over him, until he was a shadow with glowing eyes. I touched him with my tentacle and sucked him into my body, to be deployed when I needed him.

“What do you do to him?” the white one said, terrified.

“He’s my minion now. I don’t need him at the moment so he’s safely tucked away, to keep him out of trouble. It doesn’t hurt.” That last part was a half-truth – if they changed their mind at the wrong time it might hurt a bit, but not agonizing pain like if I was stealing someone without any consent at all.

“Bring him back!”

I sighed, and deployed him. “Take the offer,” I let him say. “I can feel the power building, slowly, but it only gets stronger faster the more of us there are.”

The white one consented, and I tucked both away inside me.

“I’m not sure I’m okay with this,” Steel said.

“They won’t be hurting kobolds anymore,” I retorted. “Only ponies and other minions of Harmony.”

“I’m not sure I’m okay with that, either,” Steel replied. “Are we sure the Harmony here is the hive mind we’re running from?”

“Wave and Fire and Star are pretty sure,” I said. “It acts like Harmony, letting its minions act on their own most of the time but retaining the ability to co-opt them. I’m different – I have a strict hierarchy and force my minions to obey through fear and coercion. I don’t subvert their minds any more than necessary for the mission. They can struggle against me in their thoughts all they want, it just won’t accomplish anything.”

“That’s worse though, right?” Steel said. “You understand that that’s worse.”

I sighed. “Don’t go near Harmony,” I told him. “You’d fall to its lies in a second.”

There were three more gates for us to assault. On the second one, Steel fucked up the sword toss and managed to cut off two of his fingers, which we gathered up after the fight to get reattached. Even without all his bits, he still humiliated his opponent enough for them to become my minion. Six was enough for the moment, and Steel was still bleeding and needed pressure on his wound to keep from bleeding out, so we headed home. I tucked away all my power beneath my skin, so I could look like the normal-black Raven and not the blacker than black, glowing eyed Raven monster – questions would mean needing to come up with answers, and answers were an opportunity to mess up and reveal I was only faking my ‘positive’ emotions. Steel headed to Star, who sighed and shook her head and gave him a lecture on picking fights, ignoring the fact they he’d completely outclassed his opponents who were armed and supposedly adults.

I didn’t say anything, just headed to my room and laid down in bed, contemplating whether it was worth it to expose myself to the network just to be able to play games. I settled for single-player games I could download and virus-check before running, and ran through computer-generated trap dungeons for a few hours before going to sleep.

The next morning I walked up to the front door (dodging the traps by leaping down the tunnel at the speed of darkness and not actually touching the floor) and knocked on it. “Star, let me out, I’m going hunting.”

There was a short delay. “You’re not a hunter, you’re a half-trained spy.”

“I have hunting powers now,” I said proudly. “I don’t need skill.”

“That’s good since Wave said you didn’t show any,” Star replied. “Finish your training, then you can go hunt.”

“That’ll take *years*! We don’t have that kind of time – did you see how close Harmony is getting on the updated map?”

“We have plenty of actual warriors to scare off Harmony’s incursions,” Star said. “You just want more minions.”

I sighed. Kobolds really were way too perceptive. But the network of electrified wires had holes wide enough for me to drill through with tentacles and then pass through in liquid form.

“What are you doing?” Star asked.

“Using skill to escape,” I sent back. “Don’t worry, no dog will be able to follow. Well, no dogs except my minions, and I’m still loyal to the colony. ”

I slipped out into the tunnels, and the hunt began.

It turned out to be less of a hunt and more of a victory lap. When I unleashed my minions near one of the now-better-guarded entrances to the rebel area, I was let inside and taken to their leader, my minions acting as an honor guard, just in case.

“You give us power?” the leader asked.

“The best power,” I replied. “The power of darkness. The power to face down Harmony without fear.”

“No tech, just magic, right?”

I nodded. “Just magic. Tech is too vulnerable.”

“Then give us power. Give us all your power! Or you not leave here alive.”

“Uh huh,” I said, nonchalant, turning myself into a big ball of tentacles to be able to touch all the higher-ranked dogs simultaneously, while my minions took care of the rank and file. Darkness flowed from us to empower the entire rebel force and bind them to our will, but something was wrong. I was stretched too thin, and worse, something was pulling at my darkness, seeking to devour it. I released everyone but the chief – not because I wanted the chief as my minion (although it would be convenient) but because I couldn’t let go, it was like my tentacle was caught in a trap.

I felt like I had a choice to make – I could sever the tentacle myself and hope that, well, that that was possible. Or I could let the darkness be drawn from me into the trap and hope that I could somehow escape without its power. The room was large and shadowy and while I couldn’t dig through walls, I could climb them pretty easily.

It would be a lot easier to escape at the speed of darkness, with the ability to ooze through small cracks. And while the rebel leader had promised that I would die if I tried to take any of the power with me, he hadn’t made any promises about what would happen if I did let him take everything he asked for.

So. Severing the tentacle before all my darkness was sucked out of me like a particularly large and vicious mosquito. “What are you doing?” I asked with unfeigned horror.

The rebel leader just laughed and held up an amulet – an amulet that reeked of harmony , shimmering with rainbow light. I screeched and leapt at it at the speed of darkness, but clawing and biting at it had no effect except to distract me enough for the hulking rebel leader to swat me away like a bug. I went rolling across the floor, and sent an extra surge of darkness full of anti-harmony countermeasures. The amulet shuddered and turned dark, but didn’t let go.

But I’d spent too much of my limited power, and the darkness started to peel off me. “No no no no no!” I grabbed at the tentacle and tried to bite it but biting off a limb is not something that most people can do voluntarily. Another way I failed to live up to Wave’s legacy, I sneered at myself, before the last of the darkness was drawn out and I was left on my own.

Seeing the leader overtaken by the darkness that his horrible amulet no longer protected him from was cold comfort . I had to get out of here before my former minions turned on me and – yeah, the speed of darkness is a completely unfair cheat when it’s being used against you.

“What should we do with her?” asked one of my former minions, now re-enslaved to his old leader instead. Two of them held me up off the ground with iron-hard grips around my shoulders.

“Oh, I have some ideas,” the chief said, now a black cloud with streaming green and purple eyes.