Kobolds From Space 2: Kobold of Shadows

They stripped my visor off, first, then took off my shoulder and hip armor and put it all in a pile – then made me watch as they took turns crushing my rig in the name of destroying technology.

“What are you now, little dog?” asked the leader, sarcastically.

“It’ll take an hour to print a new rig if I ever get home,” I said, trying to be defiant and mostly failing since being without a visor for the first time ever was kind of humiliating. My natural face is a permanent snarl and can’t really change expressions. I could still talk, but my voice sounded strange.

Then they threw me in a cell. Literally. I landed heavily, but leapt to my feet and ran to pull the door shut to keep them out – it was a semi-modern lock that clicked shut as soon as it was closed.

The leader dangled the key. “Don’t think you’re safe.”

One of the minions had followed him into the prison to do the actual throwing, and asked, “Why don’t you just take her over and make her your slave?”

“She has to consent, and I don’t think she would,” the leader admitted.

“Why would I? You didn’t give me *anything* you promised,” I snapped.

“Also, she was the worst host ever,” the leader explained. “I tried to help her but there’s no helping the truly weak. She even fell for the obvious trap of the amulet I was wearing.”

“Where did you get that, anyway?”

“From our friends on the surface, of course. They are eager to give it to us when we complain about your powers.”

“You’re dealing with *Harmony*?!”

The leader shrugged. “It is reasonable at the time , but with the warp crystal back in Wave’s claws it is much less reasonable. Lucky for us because now is the time for stabbing them in the back.”

“Harmony must be destroyed,” the minion replied.

“But without using tech,” I guessed.

“Magic is enough,” the leader said. “Especially this magic. Unstoppable power in the paws of the truly worthy! Now we go and plan our attack.”

“Shouldn’t we torture her a bit or something?” the minion asked.

“Do you want to torture her?” the leader asked back.

“Not really.”

“Do you want to be tortured?” he asked me.

“Definitely not,” I said, leaning against the door to hold it closed, although my weight was nothing compared to either dog and they could both just squeeze through the bars anyway.

“Then that makes zero of us in favor of torture,” the leader said. “There might be a few who want to torture children, but most of us are saner than that. You can be sure that we are using you for your full value, but not like that.”

“Um… okay,” I said, confused. Weren’t these the scum that were terrorizing kobolds into staying in their lair without a dragon escort? Did I attack the wrong place?

After they were gone for a while I backed away from the bars and sat on the surprisingly comfortable mattress, trying to count my blessings before boredom overtook me and I laid down to try to sleep.

So bored…

OMG when will anything happen? I was considering voting ‘yes’ on the ‘torture me’ questionnaire just to relieve the unending sprawl of nothing happening spilling out before me.

I slept a bit, but woke up and nothing was still happening. ARGH! I punched the wall and cursed because the wall was a lot stronger than my fist. But at least the pain was a thing… I focused on it, watching my fingers as they splayed around despite the bruises.

But eventually I got bored of that, too.

Slept a bit more, and woke up bored. Then, couldn’t sleep and stared blankly at the wall, my mind shattered by boredom.

“How long have I been here?” I asked the diamond dog who came down to check on me and offer me food.

“You here about half an hour,” he said. “Don’t get too used to it, we move you soon.”

The food was delicious.

After another interminable wait a dark minion dragged me roughly from my cell to a room where I was fitted with a locking collar, complete with a tiny padlock to keep it on. Then they attached a leash and paraded me brazenly through the tunnels, drawing stares. Most of them were probably staring at me because I was naked and you never see kobolds naked – even during sex we keep our mask and sigils on display.

It didn’t take long before Fire and a security team intercepted them. The entire entourage was made up of dark diamond dog minions, so they dodged the initial attacks long enough for the leader to shout, “Stop! We come in peace. This child of yours – we give back as a sign of good faith.”

“What do we have to talk about?” Fire asked. The diamond dog released my leash and I ran to hide behind him, only for him to grab the leash himself and coil up all the slack so I couldn’t move from his side.

“We done with ponies. With Harmony. Together we can take back the surface and drive the ponies from our island! If you meet our terms.”

“Fine,” Fire said, “Let’s have a discussion.” His security team kept the diamond dogs in their sights, not that a second volley was likely to work better than the first. Speed of Darkness was such a cheat.

“You give up technology, smash your ‘rigs’ and your ‘fabricators’ and –”

“No,” Fire said.

“Fine, you not force anyone to use technology. Our old magic is better, our new magic is better, we don’t need it.”

“We already don’t force anyone,” Fire replied. “There are plenty of anti-technology diamond dogs who didn’t decide they needed to form a militia to defend themselves against a threat that was never real.”

“What about the puppies you poison?”

“The puppies we *teach* are there because they want to be and because their parents want them to be. It’s only a small fraction of the city’s puppies, for now,” Fire replied.

“For now. And for later?” the rebel leader asked.

“Our plan is to convince as many diamond dogs as possible to embrace technology. You don’t have very many children but you respond well to accelerated learning, which makes you acceptable as members of our society. We don’t want to be invaders that breed you out of house and home.”

“Then breed less,” the rebel leader said. “Hold back to diamond dog levels.”

“No,” Fire said. “We can set a percentage of the city being kobolds where we start looking for volunteers to settle elsewhere, though. Hitting this limit would still take years, even for us, and I don’t really know how long this proposed alliance is going to last.”

“I also want a seat on the council of elders.”

“The council structure is determined by the council, and right now it’s strictly ‘eldest’. I can raise the issue of pro and anti-technology seats but I guarantee the motion won’t pass,” Fire said. “Maybe if they were non-voting positions.”

“I want veto power over all new laws.”

Fire shook his head. “Yeah that’s not going to happen. Anything else?”

“You not give me anything!” the rebel leader and/or the darkness complained.

“That’s because you’re asking us to stop doing things that you made up in your head,” Fire replied calmly. “The main thing we’re giving you is a cease fire, and an alliance against harmony. All this other stuff is just –” he waved his hand from side to side, “—just dross weighing down the conversation. But you insisted on it, so let me give you my terms.

“You will stop attacking kobolds. Returning Raven is a good start. Returning her without her rig is less so.

“You will stop smashing our public fabricators – they’re easy to replace but it’s annoying.

“You will not use your shadow powers within 100 meters of our home. If necessary this can be enforced.

“You will disavow anyone who disobeys these rules and not protect them from the Alpha’s justice.”

“And if I say no?” the rebel leader asked. “You say no to our demands.”

“Which one would you say ‘no’ to?” Fire asked. “I only have three demands and two of them are necessary to protect our people.”

“Smashing technology is really satisfying,” one of the minions offered. “It’s our biggest morale boost.”

“Ugh,” Fire said, rubbing his forehead. “I guess it’s not a dealbreaker but it’s not going to win you any goodwill.”

“It does with the right dogs,” the leader said. “Not care so much what wrong dogs think.”

It didn’t end there, even if that’s more or less what the final agreement stated. Fire printed a copy from his visor – apparently the political rig included a printer there – and the rebels scribed a matching agreement with a quill pen, which was archaic even before we came around with modern pens. Then they had to verify that the copies matched. I was so done with this long before it got to that point but Fire wouldn’t let me off my leash and my attempts to remove the clip stealthily only proved that he was much more alert than I was sneaky.

“You’re not running off on you own again,” he hissed. “Do you realize how badly you screwed up?”

“I gave the rebels my useless shadow powers,” I said. “It made them come negotiate with you instead of the ponies.”

“And that’ll last until it builds enough strength to overpower Wave,” Fire replied. “Then we’re up against a force of shadow dogs who can move at the speed of light.”

“Speed of darkness,” I said. “It’s faster than light.”

“Either way it’s too fast to react to,” Fire said. “I could probably still beat him in a fight but it’d be a lot closer than before.”

“Seriously?” the rebel said, overhearing. “You think you could defeat me?”

“I added ‘speed of darkness’ to my training regimen as soon as Raven came back with it,” Fire replied. “Yes, I could beat you. I could also lose. That’s why we’re signing this agreement isn’t it? We’re both strong and want to turn that strength against our common foe instead of each other.”

“Or I can just kill you and take the position of Alpha myself. It is foolish for you to come here in person.”

“You could try,” Fire said.

The Diamond Dog of Darkness lunged forwards faster than eyes could see, and took a swing which Fire blocked with his shoulder armor. Fire responded by drawing a sword somehow made out of fire, and slicing his attacker in half. That stunned him long enough for Fire to swirl his flame sword around in a pre-practiced pattern that left nothing but little lumps of darkness scattered across the floor, each of them slowly burning to death.

As I watched, they rolled over to put out the fires and then started creeping towards each other. Fire incinerated them one by one with his sword, but it took time and enough of them reassembled to flee at the speed of darkness before he finished.

The now half-height rebel leader raised his hands. “Okay, okay, you win this one.”

Fire smirked, but kept his fire-sword lit and at his side – the other side from me, at least. “You broke rule 1,” he said. “That means that you, personally, are not protected by this cease fire. I hope that lets you sleep easy.”

“You can’t blame a diamond dog for going after a fast solution!” the rebel protested. “Besides, the agreement isn’t signed yet.”

Fire sighed. “I really, really hate politics.”

Eventually I was taken home and given a new rig. Star and Fairy had printed it ahead of time, so it was waiting for me when I got there. I immediately went into VR and launched the trap game, but it seemed kind of hollow. I didn’t really need to be any better at finding traps – diamond dogs didn’t use them. I also didn’t need to keep current on the electronic security training since the diamond dogs didn’t use computers. I needed to know how to vanish from sight better, to pick locks and escape from dungeons, maybe even the social engineering tricks.

I also asked Fairy if there was some secret rig I could get so that I wouldn’t have to be so bored if I got captured again.

“Well… it’s not normally recommended,” she said, scratching a hindclaw against the floor. “But maybe we should all get one, just in case. We can implant a net connection – I assume that’s what you want? – under the skin. It should be undetectable but it’ll take a surgery.”

“That sounds great,” I said. “Why don’t we normally do it?”

“It can be hacked as easily as any other rig, and you can’t rip it off if it gets hacked badly,” she said. “But you know how to lock them down, right?”

“I mean I know a way to lock them down,” I said. “Most of it is just – nevermind.” Just using settings, I could turn off remote access if I had to go up against Harmony, which was still the biggest threat as far as getting hacked was concerned. Unless I counted Fire, but he was on my side harder than I ever would have wanted someone to be.

Fairy laughed. “It’s fine, keep your secrets.”

The surgery was pretty unpleasant. We didn’t have a real doctor so Star and Fairy stumbled through the process using local anesthetic which technically worked but they were still drilling holes in my skull to put little nano-dots on my brain. There was probably a better way.

I told myself that boring into my skull was worth it to never be bored out my skull again. Also, it was secret spy gear even if the secret was held by the fabber operators instead of the spies. After it was in, I tested it out to make sure it worked, downloaded a few games that worked offline, then locked it down as hard as I could manage so that it would do nothing until I manually changed the settings back.

If I just wanted to avert boredom I wouldn’t even need to turn on the net connection, at least for as long as single player games could keep me sane, which was days or hours at least instead of the ‘minutes’ I managed unassisted.

“Thank you so much,” I said, that one worry taken off my mind at least. “What do I owe you?”

“To make our work useless, and not get captured again,” Star said. “Finish your training before you start going on real missions.”

My ears flattened, but, “I guess that’s fair. I’ll have the teacher switch to things that would have been useful.”

I was a grumpy loner for a while after that, my nagging software complaining about my ever-increasing solo game time. Steel came by to spar with me sometimes, with me able to give myself the speed of darkness and tentacles in VR for him to practice against ‘Just in case’.

The good news was that he was kept in the loop about the war against Harmony, since he was training for it. “So far the alliance has driven the ponies out of the underground entirely, but they’re really dug in in their main camp. There are at least three airships hovering overhead at any time, and they’re not always the same ones.”

“I don’t really know why we’re fighting them anyway,” I said. “The ponies are just victims of Harmony, and we’re risking exposing ourselves just to punish them.”

“They were going to plant gas bombs in the underground and put us all to sleep,” Steel said. “They’re not here for innocent reasons.”

“Let me check something,” I said, marshalling all the scanning and antivirus software I’d found in our records. It wasn’t anything like the darkness’ anti-harmony countermeasures, but it still might at least find out if Steel was infected by darkness.

He wasn’t.

I was.

“Oh crap,” I said.

“What? What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. It’s me. I’ve got traces of the creepy darkness thing all through my rig,” I said. “Antivirus does nothing to them; they’re several generations ahead of us in network architecture.”

“So… replace your rig?” he suggested.

“I did. It’s a new rig – the rebels smashed my old one. The source of darkness is probably in my brain somewhere, and I’m not willing to destroy and replace my brain. It probably wouldn’t even work.”

I paced back and forth in VR. “I think my only hope is Wave or maybe Perro.”

“That’s two only hopes,” Steel said. “More than most people get.”

“Yeah yeah, count my blessings. Blah.”

Wave couldn’t do anything about it. “I still don’t understand their powers well enough. I can suppress the power but I don’t know if that would stop the spread. May Perro can find out more?”

“Can you give me a baby warp crystal to shadow aspect?” I asked.

“That’s not a small request,” Wave said. “I’ll do it if Perro thinks it would help.”

Perro at least showed up in person, instead of just messaging me back. She examined me, walking around and staring at me though her glowing purple and green goggles, and hummed a lot.

“I can see the darkness. It’s clinging to your heart, but there are bits of it all through you. I don’t think cutting out the affected places is manageable.”

“Can I learn to use it, instead of having it use me?” I asked. “I notice you have the rot crystal – rot can’t be a pleasant personality.”

“Yeah, rot wants to destroy everything. I might be able to teach you to control the spirits in the diamond dog style, if you have the talent. It’s a lot more common than warp crystal talent, but –”

“I did get the warp crystal to respond!” I protested. “It just bit me instead of obeying me, which apparently doesn’t count.”

“I don’t know much about warp technician things, although I’m learning as I raise this crystal.” Perro didn’t regularly accelerate her time by going on the net, so for her this whole situation had only been going on for a few weeks. “But I can test you to see if you can be taught. I already have two apprentices, but there’s no hard limit. Come meet us at our next training session, and we can see if diamond dog magic is something you can use.”

Pancakes escorted me to Perro’s teaching room. He kept a close eye on me, closer than on the people around us, but the threat of a guardian dragon still kept anyone from bothering us.

Perro’s other apprentices eyed me just as suspiciously. They at least introduced themselves as ‘Serval’ (the fluffy brown one) and ‘Astral’ (shorter furred but black like me, with little purple spots here and there). “Raven,” I said in response, bumping their paws. “At least for now. If I start calling myself the Kobold of Shadows you should be worried.”

Perro closed the door, set a rock on a pedestal in the middle of the room, and gingerly handed me her goggles. “Use the purple one to turn the rock into cake,” she said. “I know it sounds like the same test, but it’s trained to do that so it should be much easier. You also don’t have to imagine its form, just draw on its power.”

I remembered how it felt to move at the speed of darkness, and to form tentacles, and tried the same thing with the purple stone on the pedestal rock. I lifted it into the air and spun it around, then set it down, thinking ‘turn into cake please?’ Getting off on the wrong foot with the warp stone was probably what had torpedoed my attempt then.

“Well, you get it to do something, which means you pass,” Perro said, then cut into the rock with a cake knife. The cake was full of gravel, but edible for diamond dogs. I declined my slice since I couldn’t eat rocks. “This is terrible cake. Normally I pick better candidates to teach, but your situation is unique, so I can train you.”

“Yaaay,” Astral said, unenthused.

“This is going to take up all my free time in the real world, isn’t it,” I said.

“Probably,” Perro admitted. “But you just accelerate the rest and get the time back, so I don’t see why you complain.”

Which was fair enough.

Meanwhile, my real training proceeded apace with the lockpicking and social engineering modules. Lockpicking was sort of like disarming traps, and served as a nice palette cleanser after I failed time and time again to trick the social engineering targets. I had no talent whatsoever for it, but I was slooowly getting better, at least.

I really preferred picking the locks, even if the harder ones needed more and more specialized tools that I’d have to conceal somewhere. Most locks – like if you just asked a fabricator for a generic padlock – just needed slightly bent pieces of metal in a few different sizes and shapes and were essentially trivial. A hairpin already had the right shape for one of the most common rakes if you broke it in the right place. Not that anyone wore hairpins. Except for me, now, and I made sure they weren’t easily visible.

Steel and I experimented with sex, to see if the kobold of darkness had actually done anything to fix me instead of just turning me into a sex pest. I was able to do it with me on top, even if he grabbed me harshly , but being on the bottom still made me freeze up, which I suppose was a better response than shoving him off and running.

“It didn’t give me anything I asked for,” I complained, after that experiment.

“It gave you a little, but yeah,” Steel said.

“I hate it,” I scowled. “I hate that I ever felt pity for it. I’m going to learn how to control it, scrape it off my body and trap it in a gem and not feel sorry.”

“I hope that works,” Steel said. “I’d hate to see you overshadowed again.”

I laughed. “I like that. ‘Overshadowed’.”

My diamond dog training went more slowly, since it was all in the real world instead of accelerated time, but Perro managed to convince Serval and Astral to learn unaspected diamond dog magic alongside me instead of having them play around with her pre-trained gems. Unaspected magic used yourself as the power source, so I could see why it was more relevant to my interests.

“I don’t suppose you can just scrape all the darkness off me and put it in a baby warp crystal?” I asked.

“Maybe you can, when you learn this lesson,” Perro said.

I sighed and went back to the meditation exercise. I was *not* good at meditating.