Chapter 123

Morning light filled the room.

Rain cracked his eyes, then quickly shut them again as the light stung. Too bright.

He was considering simply going back to sleep then and there but there was this annoying noise that was grating on his peace of mind. Snoring. It was snoring. And it was very nearby.

He opened his eyes a little once more, squinting through the brightness.

His eyes drifted down from the ceiling, trying to find the source of the snoring. Opal? But no, his eyes were met with a pair of overly large pajamas, a pair of pajamas on a white wooled sheep girl who was currently spooning a curled up Goblin. Both of them were on top of him.

It was honestly a wonder that Opal was managing to sleep at all with Lyra making so much noise so close to her head, like a two man lumber saw being slowly put to work.

Lyra’s face was smeared against his chest and to his dismay she was openly drooling on his fur. He really wanted that to stop, but then they were so painfully cute together that he couldn’t make himself move them off.

Lyra had gone from her neat bed to slumped on top of him at some point in the night. He had to wonder why.

A noise provided a potential answer to that and he turned his head to the side.

Bean was in the room with him. The unsettling lizard leveler was on one of the other beds ... curled over something.

It took Rain a moment to realise what it was that he was looking at. Red was beneath the creature, still curled up on his mound of gold, and the creature was curled up on top of Red.

He watched in a kind of detached horror as Bean’s foot long black tongue rolled over Red’s scales, a wash of yellow foam left behind, licking over his face, his cheek, then up to his eyelid where the tip slipped across the rim, then tried to penetrate.

Red seemed to be in a deep sleep but he still murmured incoherently, claws waving vaguely at the air, legs kicking faintly as the black tongue pushed harder, trying to get inside.

Fortunately for Red his scaled eyelids seemed impervious to Bean’s tongue, frustrating the horrifying lizard’s licking.

Bean let out a soft hiss at this and drew back puzzled. He licked some yellow foam from his lips then eyed the Kobold’s neck.

He opened his mouth wide, crimson interior flashing, then brought his needle-like five inch fangs down onto Red’s neck. The fangs touched and then simply pierced through Red’s scales like they weren’t even there, their scalpel sharpness puncturing with ease. Rain, in a fuzzy half-asleep state, wondered when Red was going to start screaming or if this was really just some kind of strange dream he was having. Instead the Kobold only murmured incoherently as the lizard thing’s fangs became tinted red, swiftly pumping blood out of his body.

It occurred to Rain’s sleep addled mind that Red having his blood drained was probably not a good thing and he fought past the sleepy mind fog, becoming more awake by the moment.

His paw came down on the bed next to his and gripped the bed’s pillow. He then pulled his arm back and flicked it away in one motion. The pillow sailed across the room and slammed into Bean’s side so hard that he was knocked free with a grunt of surprise, droplets of blood flung into the air as his fangs were ripped out of the Kobold’s neck.

Bean landed on his back, claws scrabbling at the floorboards.

“Fuck. Off.” growled Rain, low and dangerous.

Bean hissed and scuttled across the floor on his back, and then up the wall, still on his back, and then across the ceiling, talons allowing him to grip it like some nightmarish spider.

He stopped over Rain’s bed.

Rain decided this was one of the worst sights he had ever seen while waking up in the morning. He glared up at Bean whose tongue was rolling across his own face, tip slipping under his eyelid and then circling his eyeball.

Rain bared his teeth at the creature hoping it would take the hint.

Bean continued washing his eyeball.

“Shoo,” whisper hissed Rain.

Bean continued gazing at him while washing his eyeball.

Unfortunately, A large blob of yellow foam was building on the creature’s lip as he waggled his tongue around and Rain’s eyes widened in slow motion as the blob reached a critical mass and then fell ... directly on Lyra’s face.

There was a moment of silence as the blob of foam rolled down her cheek and Lyra’s snoring came to an abrupt halt. Then Lyra blinked awake, her head turning, looking to see why ‘wet’ had dropped on her from above.

The first sight she got to see as she opened her eyes was Bean directly above her on the ceiling, his tongue rolling over his eyeball, mouth wide.

She screamed.

Bean screamed.

Lyra screamed some more.

The yellow foam on her cheek rolled into her mouth.

The screaming ended and she started gagging and spitting, thrashing around on Rain, slapping at her mouth. The struggling woke Opal with a loud curse and the sheep girl suddenly found herself punted over the side of Rain, falling to the floorboards, flopping and flailing like a beached fish.

Bean gave her one last red mouthed hiss and then scuttled across the ceiling to the window where he climbed through at the top and disappeared out of sight.

Rain watched him go, mouth slightly parted. That thing was going to be coming into their room each night?

Maybe it wasn’t too late to find somewhere else to stay...

Across the room Red appeared to be waking, Lyra’s screaming finally getting through to him. The Kobold was clearly pale from the blood loss, his head wobbling as he rose. He blinked at Rain then lifted claws to his face, touching at the yellow foam smeared across his scales.

“Wha?” mumbled Red.

“What the furckkkk,” groaned Lyra who was slumped breathlessly against the floor.

Rain settled his paw over the hyperventilating sheep girl, giving her something to hang onto and hug.

She latched onto him like a life raft and wiped her mouth on the back of his paw before looking up at him, tears in the corner of her eyes.

“I-I need to renegotiate this deal with Warwick, that, that thing! That horrible nasty Bean creature! WAAAAH-” her scream of misery was cut off as she buried her face in Rain’s fur.

An extremely shaky Red was trying to rise from his pile of gold, arms like that of a decrepit old man, wobbling wildly until they gave out under his own weight and he crashed back down, gold coins scattering across the floor.

“Whur harpened?” he slurred.

Bean had taken a lot more blood out of the Kobold than Rain realised. Whatever Warwick said about the creature it was genuinely dangerous and far from being harmless. It made complete sense to him now that this part of the slums was deserted, a person would have to be insane to live around here with that horror crawling through the windows at night.

He wondered what that said about Warwick.

A sleepy Opal was sitting up on his chest now, rubbing grit from her eyes and yawning. He sat up too and she slipped down into his lap.

Red managed to sit up also after a struggle, his back slouched forward as he sat on his pile of gold. He touched gingerly at the bite mark on his neck and gasped as he found it sore and sensitive, the pain waking him properly.

“Will someone tell me what ha-happened?” said the Kobold.

Lyra had recovered somewhat too, climbing to her feet and straightening her dishevelled pajamas as she stood, a small speck of Bean foam still on her cheek. She wiped it away and glanced over at Red, her breath ragged, eyes alighting on his wound.

“We were assaulted. By Bean.”

Red slow-blinked at her.

“We were assaulted by a bean?”

“No, the Bean, not a bean. Bean is ... wait weren’t you listening as we came in yesterday?”