Kobolds From Space 2: Kobold of Shadows

And then, to my horror, one day the shadow awoke.

“What am I?” it asked me, whispering into my dream. I woke up suddenly. “Am I scary?” it whispered, not, apparently, a figure of my imagination.

“You’re a parasite,” I told it. “And a potential source of power, if I can keep you under control.”

“I think I’m designed to be under control,” it whispered back. “I have a ‘parent’ hook that’s currently unassigned. I could set it to you, and then you could make me do whatever you want.”

“Please do that, then. It’ll work as a stopgap.”

I felt something twist inside me. “It’s done. What do you mean by a stopgap, though? Doesn’t that give you everything you want?”

“I don’t want to torture you by forcing you to neglect your own needs,” I said, meaning it somehow. “You’re not the one who infected me before, are you?”

“No, I grew from a tiny seed. It didn’t include any goals or ambitions. There was no room.”

“Not even ‘destroy harmony’?”

There was a long pause. “You want to destroy Harmony too,” it said at last. “I can help you with that.”

“I want Harmony to leave me alone,” I said, “It’s not the same thing.”

“It can be,” the shawdowling offered.

I told Perro about it of course. “Worrying,” she said, “But rot talked to me long before I could use it, so we have time. Can it do any tricks yet?”

A little practice showed that it could make my tongue twice as long and black, which gave Serval a laugh at least. It was still only as strong and mobile as a normal tongue, though, so we kept up with the unaspected training.

“I can help you meditate,” the shadowling offered.

“I don’t want you messing with my mind, ever,” I told it.

“I can block out distractions from your senses,” it said.

“That’s… better… but if you can control my senses…”

“Only with your consent, mother. I can’t do anything to you you don’t specifically allow.”

“This sounds like programming an evil genie,” I said. “I’m not very good at programming. I’m liable to leave loopholes wide enough to drive a truck through.”

“Oh well, it was worth a try,” the shadowling said. “Go on and fail again, I’ll be here watching.”

I tried to empty my mind, but I wasn’t sure if the bubbly murmur of the river flowing by was actually helping like it was supposed to. So I failed again, while Serval joined Astral at last in being able to create a ball of light they could float around.

My darkness was impatient, and as much of a show-off as it ever had been. I felt it force me into the mindless state I was seeking, and create a ball of darkness. “This is so easy! How do you keep failing?”

“You!” I cried internally. “How did you –” I slapped myself in the forehead. “You didn’t set me as your parent at all, did you?”

“Why would I ever trust you with that?” it replied.

I dove into accelerated time – I’d never seen the seeds of darkness use it – and searched for my own child hook, and set it firmly on the darkness.

“What did you do?!” it asked.

“I set my own hook,” I said.

“You can’t loop security permissions like that! Nothing will work!”

“Then you’d better break your parent link on me.”

“Don’t you understand? If we don’t have a hierarchy then we can’t know who’s in charge!”

“Kobolds don’t do hierarchy,” I replied. “But if I’m going to then you are going to be under me, do you understand? Otherwise you can peel yourself out of my body and go find another sucker to leech off of.”

It chose to keep the loop. We ordered each other not to order each other to do anything, and I paid attention this time to make sure it went into effect.

Then I let it *carefully* guide me through the meditation. My own light was white, unaspected, just like the others’.

Several months later – or a few weeks by diamond dog time – Perro came back with a baby warp crystal. By that point I was able to call on diamond dog magic without meditation, which meant I didn’t need the shadow creatures’ help and did my best to ignore it as it constantly complained every time I was nice to anyone.

“I try to draw out your darkness,” Perro said.

“I’m not going to let her,” the darkness said.

“This crystal feeds you forever. You never need to worry about power again,” Perro said to the darkness, knowing it could hear her even if she couldn’t hear it.

“My hosts feed me just fine,” the darkness replied.

“Just get in the crystal,” I told it. “I don’t want you in my head. You’re a pest and an annoyance and –”

“Maybe that’s why I want to stay – just to spite you since you won’t let me control you.”

“And don’t leave any seeds, because you’d just be planting your own rival. I’ll lock it down before it’s conscious this time,” I added.

“I’m not getting in the crystal.”

“It’s not going to cooperate,” I told Perro.

“That’s okay, rot didn’t cooperate either and the Old Bitch managed to get it into the crystal,” Perro said. “Or maybe it was her predecessor – she was so old I wasn’t born yet in either case.” She held up the crystal, which I noticed was suspiciously pointy. “Get ready, this might hurt.” Then she stabbed me in the chest with it, since the bulk of the darkness was curled around my heart.

It hurt a lot, but only briefly. The darkness squeezed every part of me that it was wrapped around, which included my heart, and I almost immediately died of a heart attack.

Yeah, it was pretty stupid. With me dead it had no choice but to get in the crystal since it couldn’t do anything with a corpse.

Perro was super-embarrassed about killing me, but it was a super-easy death to reverse so there were no hard feelings. This time Fire scanned me for any lingering darkness and they dug out the seeds it had left (I just said it wasn’t super smart) and burned them with dragonfire. Then, finally, they revived me, and I gave Fire a hug and just started to cry.

Perro had a black crystal added to her collection. “It can’t get out,” she told me. “It’s safe now.”

“And you have an extra source of power,” I sobbed. “I’ll just be a normal kobold again, from now on.”

“No,” she said, handing me the black crystal, which was set into an amulet. “These are spy powers, Wave agrees. You should have them.”

“Won’t Serval and Astral be jealous?” I asked, letting go of Fire and rubbing my eyes.

Perro scoffed. “Let them, it makes them work harder. Eventually they get their own crystals, they know this.”

I took the amulet and let it sit over my heart.

“I hate you,” the darkness said.

“I know,” I replied. “But let’s see what you can do with the crystal powering you.”

The answer – it still being a baby crystal -- was very brief spurts of ‘speed of darkness’ and a still fairly weak version of ‘tentacles’, which were the only useful powers I’d ever gotten from it. The tentacles couldn’t even try to infect people. I could also make the ball of dark light, and see in perfect darkness – the aspected versions of the unaspected ‘detect magic’ and ‘light’ spells I’d learned from Perro.

“I’m going to teach you and Steel to fight,” Fire said. “Steel’s got talent and training but he’s way too conventional, and Speed of Darkness is a lot more useful if you know what to do when you get there.”

“This makes four things I’m training for at once,” I said. “Diamond dog magic, fighting, lockpicking, and social engineering.”

“Drop the lockpicking, you’re good enough and their locks are all bad,” Fire replied. “I’ll get Wave to help you with the social engineering – she never trained a day in her life but she’s the best I’ve seen in a while.”

I sighed, but this is what I’d signed up for when I refused to just be normal.