April Vignette

A week ago an invasion began within the capital. City walls and siege-resistant gates were designed to keep enemies out, long enough to thin their numbers with musket-fire, hideous alchemical weapons like acid-magic bombs and blankets of sulfur-gas delivered by airships. When the enemy breached the walls or surfaced from sewers, as was the case here, Ettermire's citizens were trapped by the very walls intended to safeguard them. The military was unwilling to resort to their go-to tactics when their own families were on the firing line.

Kobold regiments had run amok throughout the districts. This war required a subtle approach, but subtlety was a quality that diminished from the dark elves over time, beginning when they distanced themselves from the high elves. Sel Darthirii had spread across the land, creating borders that comprised one of the largest nations in the known world - they fought gladly on the lands of others, of dwarves and humans. Fighting right here at home, on their own turf wasn't an eventuality they had prepared for.

The hesitant response from the military was rewarded with death on a grand scale. A butchering of innocent people. There were rifle-equipped guards posted at strategic locations, but the kobolds moved in the shadows and the sewers, not by trains and major roads where they risked being gunned down. Elves with guns wasn't enough to protect the Aleran way of life. With blood in the water sharks went to frenzy, cutting a swathe through demi-human and human life like a scythe through a field of wheat. House to house, business to business, farm to farm; the kobolds invaded Ettermire and knew how to make her bleed.

Who would oppose them?

Alerar's morning plains were a haze of smoke and chaos. One would have presumed it best to leave the city for a time, but the farmlands and forests were swarming with the little blighters as well. Kobolds grew hungry just as dark elves, dwarves and humans did and it was easier to pillage what was already grown and available for the taking. When the farms had been ravaged, when they no longer bore fruit they turned to the woodlands to hunt the wildlife. War was ravenous work.

White, fluffy, adorable ears perked up, listening, listening again for dangers. Nothing. Hopped once, hopped twice, getting closer to a delicious, tasty lettuce. Ears drooped back, nose up to the wind, sniff sniff, checking, checking again for dangers. Lettuce. Yummy lettuce. Hopped a third time, fourth time. Bounding closer to the green feast, whiskers sensing the breeze, no predators. Safe, safe. Lettuce. Hop, hop, bounced right next to the vegetable, one last sniff, one sniff more. Safe. Smell lettuce. Delicious lettuce. The white rabbit bared his buckteeth and lower incisors, nibbling delicately.

A bear trap snapped shut. Blood sprayed in multiple directions. The rabbit gave a high-pitched squeal, spasmed, kicked to try to free itself. He couldn't. Spasmed again from pain.

The metal jaws of the trap lay hidden beneath wet blades of grass, concealed, deadly. Baited with crisp, tasty lettuce leaves which begged to be eaten. The only ask a trigger, pressure of some kind. That ask had been answered with weight of two large rabbit feet and leaning pressure as he attempted his first bite. Finding himself bitten, no escape, overwhelmed with excruciating pain, he made not another sound. Only drifted into darkness and sleep.

More than one pair of ears heard the rabbit's squeal. The kobold trapper themselves had more so felt the death of his prey, pressing his ear to the ground and listening but simultaneously heeding the vibrations of the earth - the hopping, bouncing and finally frightened thrashing reverberations told him a story he'd been waiting to hear. It was the resolution his starving stomach needed. The lizard-like humanoid slithered back to the original location of the trap.

Another pair of ears had detected a squeal on the wind the good old-fashioned way, with a keen sense of elven hearing which evolved over millennia. She was further out than the kobold was, and diverged from her current path from the opposite direction. The enabler allowing her to close the gap between her position and the squeal-source was a mount. A horse, chestnut brown in coat, warm red in mane - the rider narrowed a longer distance faster than the creeping lizard, both arriving in the clearing at the same time.

The kobold could feel the three-beat gait of a cantering horse, knew the sound meant trouble as his kind didn't ride surface beasts. Unnatural, sslothful practice. What kind of species would straddle another species entirely, with their inner thighs rubbing against the submissive creature's fur? Dissgusting practice. His disdain for the horseback rider, his gurgling stomach or a combination of both made him bold. He crept out into the open, his scales a lustrous blue, tending to the jaws of the bear trap and prying them apart. This bloody rabbit was a feed he was not going to share.

The canter eased to a trot, slowed to a walk and then stopped altogether. Mead - the horse - gave a concerned whinny. He turned his head to eyeball the snakelike humanoid ahead of him, at once questioning whether his master really wanted to stop them here, when that thing was so close by. A comforting black hand stroked his neck and mane, gave him reassurance, soothed his fear for the moment. Holding his head high he exhaled through his nose, snorting defiantly. Not happy master.

Yvonne remained in her saddle. Foregoing descent to the ground gave her an advantage she never, ever had otherwise - the higher ground and an air of superiority. Her dwarven form had always stripped her of these favourable positions, and now that she had one she loathed relinquishing it. No, sitting up here and peering down at the kobold was just dandy, thank you very much.

"We need ta have a chat, ye and I," Yvonne established. "I don't want any trouble, only ta learn more about yer kind." The dwarven hybrid would find out swiftly whether a discussion was a possibility or not. She could clearly see the lizard was armed and many of these monsters were unintelligent brutes, cut you down and take your stuff, get to know you that way. His body language was defensive over his food, but so long as she kept her distance he didn't seem threatening.

"You have... questionss, ssurfacer?" The kobold had freed the rabbit carcass from the jaws of death, setting the device aside harmlessly - focusing on his meal. He bit into the bloodstained flesh in his claws, biting off a mouthful of torso fur and all. He ate it as it was - raw, still bleeding, still warm. The trapper said nothing further, shredding the flesh with his razorsharp front teeth and grinding the bones of rabbit rib cage with his back teeth.

Yvonne paused, obscuring her rising inclination to vomit beside Mead's flank. She was raised in the underground caverns of Kachuck, a sunless city of toiling dwarves that worked day and night as they were both the same there. You rested when you were tired, and there wasn't a great deal of meat to catch underground - fish, for the most part - so meat was imported, heavily preserved or precooked. The closest comparison a dwarf ate to raw meat was jerky.

That wasn't even close to jerky. That dripping, furry corpse, entering his mouth - the sounds of squelching and squishing, was downright vile. She'd not seen its like before and had half a mind to tug at the reins and turn away from this conversation... but the capital was burning on the horizon, and she reminded herself that she had to do something. She was no warrior but still, she had the willpower to look this gruesome creature in the eyes while his mouth dribbled globs of blood, flecks of fur and bits of tendon down his chin. She had the willpower to help her progenitor races, somehow.

"Why do ye come here ta tha surface? Don't kobolds like being underground?" Yvonne had to start asking questions, take her mind off it or she would be sick. "Tha race that raised me, dwarves, want nothing more than ta live below tha earth. Mayhap yer race likes it there too?"

"No," the sapphire-scaled trapper declared flatly, shaking his head. "The underworld iss a cold, damp place we never wanted to live in. The overworld was ourss long ago. You soft-skinss seized it from uss. You and your black-skinned brethren murdered us and sstole our ssun!" The last word he screeched in anger, his throat hoarse with emotion.

Yvonne didn't know what to say. It was a revelation. She had finally learned something useful. Now she was getting somewhere, but... what to do with this newfound knowledge? What could she say to this reptilian creature to make it feel better, to begin to set things right? Nothing. Her mind frantically scoured for something to say, something the kobold wouldn't reject immediately, but came up empty. She felt a great deal of guilt and empathy for their species, knowing all too well the hearts of dark elves.

An arrow aflame pierced the scaled hide of the creature's back. He shrieked in pain, dropping the rabbit remnants in shock. The kobold tried to turn, to reach for the arrow shaft but the impact had spattered flammable liquid over the wound and it exploded, engulfing the reptile in a blaze. He turned back to Yvonne, his golden eyes pleading for help but she was so horrified she froze, staring wide-eyed. There was nothing she could do as he boiled and blistered in his own skin, incinerated within his own scaly hide, struggling to reach a wooden shaft in his back that had quickly burnt up. He croaked a long, agonized moan and closed his eyes with a miserable hiss. Crackling embers and spitting flames were the only sounds from him thereafter.

"TRAITOR! One-Who-Catches-Keeps speakss with a surfacer! Tells them our secretss! BETRAYAL! KILL that black-skin before she escapess!" The general of the trapper's regiment had overheard their conversation, cutting it short, the rest of his kobold minions in tow attempting to surround her as fast as they could slither.

Yvonne yanked on Mead's reins in a sudden panic, squeezing his sides with her thighs with much of her leg-strength, trying to turn him a full one hundred and eighty degrees. More flaming arrows sailed overhead, an archer's shot missing her mounted height by an inch. She didn't have long - the next arrow would bury into her back and she'd share the same fate as One-Who-Catches-Keeps. She shortened her grip on the reins and lightened her weight in the saddle, standing into the stirrups.

Mead galloped away like a comet burning a trail across the sky, crossing the open plains.