Chapter 87

Consciousness returned slowly.

Rain blinked the crust from his eyes and gradually drifted from a murky half-remembered dream of his mother and father. Unfortunately, as he awoke the memory of the dream slipped through his claws like so much intangible sand and he soon found he couldn’t recall any of it. Feeling a little annoyed he managed to focus and found himself in a room, a shadowy room with the curtains closed. He was laid out on a fluffy carpet in front of a low flickering fire in a fireplace. Strange, this was hardly what he expected to wake up to. He shifted and found Opal atop him, asleep. Then, more surprising, he found Lyra was slumped against him, also asleep. A long thin line of drool hung from the sheep girl’s lip and she was rather loudly snoring. Rain squinted at that, those noises did not belong on such a small girl, he could feel her rumbling snore through his body for gods sake!

After a few failed attempts he managed to struggle up, Opal rolled off him and fell on the carpet with a thump and a grunt followed up by a long noise of complaint. She wiped hair from her eyes and let out a long yawn.

“Hey, I was wondering if you were ever gonna wake. I think you kinda overdid it after- you know.”

“The-- Wait,” said Rain, suddenly panicked, “What happened? What happened to the Ranker?”

Opal scratched her neck and yawned again. “Oh he’s still there, hasn’t moved or done shit, how could he, he’s near dead and he hasn’t got any legs.”

“ ... Oh. But how do you know?”

“Red’s watching him, we’ve been taking it in shifts.”

Lyra snorted suddenly and the line of drool snapped before splatting on the carpet below.

Groggily she turned eyes on Rain. “Whassah?” she mumbled.

Rain’s eyes moved to her shoulder, it was healed, smooth blemish free skin where once had been a fairly savage injury. Potion healed he assumed. He recalled very vividly the Hellhound mauling her, he had failed her in that moment, again, so soon after being taken by the council. He couldn’t say he liked that feeling.

He put a paw to his face and touched at his muzzle, he almost expected to find exposed bone, but no, there was only normal flesh and regrown teeth, it was like the damage had never happened, everything as it should be, it appeared he had been healed. That said, he didn’t feel particularly great, a lot of low harsh aches seemed to fill his body.

“Mmm, I dug up a bunch more potions, fixed up everyone but I ran out when healing you. You’re just too big and had too many holes in you.”

“Yeah, I can feel it, I’m still sore all over.” He stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles letting out a deep yawn of his own. “I need to see the Ranker, I really shouldn’t have fallen asleep like that.”

“Asleep? You passed out and nearly died! Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it was to drag you in here?”

“Uh-”

“Do you even know how much you weigh! It took all four of us to move you and that was with putting your leg in the weird bag to make you weigh less! I felt like my arms were going to fall off by the time we got you inside!”

Rain scratched his cheek with a claw, slightly abashed. “I didn’t expect to fall unconscious like that, I ... went too far, I was only moving by riding the rush of ... whatever happened to me. You saw some of it, the paw.”

Opal let out a breath, “Yeah, that was something.” she suddenly squinted at him. “Did you ... evolve? Is this an evolution thing?”

“No, at least, I don’t think so, I feel like this was something being freed within me rather than an evolution, it was always there, growing, it just couldn’t get out until I changed.”

“Hmm.”

Rain clambered to his feet, letting out a groan as his muscles twinged. He needed more time to recover really but he had to see the Ranker, he hated that his eyes were off him for even a moment, he didn’t trust that creature in the slightest, god knows what he could get up to! He lumbered toward the door but then paused, his brow furrowing. He looked back at Opal.

“Wait, all four of you moved me? How does that work when Vaush is just a skull?”

A cry of fright came from behind him and Opal raised an eyebrow.

Rain turned back to the door and found a human woman standing outside staring up at him, a woman with long black hair and a corset. It took him a moment to realise he recognised the woman, it was the person that Adlen had been dragging through the market, the low leveler he’d taken from the low leveler quarter and tried to make his own by dint of being far more powerful than her. She looked significantly better than when he had last seen her, her face no longer quite as swollen and bruised.

“You helped move me?”

The woman trembled and then made a wobbly attempt at a curtsey.

“Y-yes- I saw the others- a-and I knew them from the market, I thought it was the least I could do after what happened!”

Rain blinked, Processing what she was saying. She wanted to pay them back for removing Adlen from her life? She was grateful to him? Now that was a strange feeling. He couldn’t recall ever being in a position to help strangers in any serious way in his previous life, it had just never been part of his survival, or something he could afford to do, yet now he had seemingly changed the course of this person’s life. He couldn’t say he hated the feeling, it wasn’t bad.

A flash of red caught his eye and he looked past the extremely nervous woman into the room beyond, or what remained of it. Most of the walls had fallen down leaving it exposed to the air. It was light out and he quickly recognised where he was. It was one of the buildings that rimmed the square, or at least part of the building; it had had a second floor at one point but that was gone now. He found the red that had caught his eye, it was Red, sitting upon a piece of wall, his tail waving gently back and forth below him.

He passed by the wide eyed woman and stepped up behind the Kobold. The cowardly Kobold? The slave Kobold? Food?

Somehow none of that seemed to fit anymore. It hadn’t really fit for a while, but now, after what the Kobold did, he couldn’t make it fit in his head at all. Red put his life on the line for them, saving Opal and Lyra and allowing him to fight and eventually beat the Ranker.

He paused to organize his thoughts. “You ... don’t have to stay if you wish Red. I won’t go after you or anything if you leave. You don’t wear a collar or chain anymore and I won’t put you in one ... Thank you for what you did.”

The Kobold remained silent, his tail swaying. Then he turned and gave Rain a sour look.

“How am I supposed to leave and just leave behind all the gold? That’s so not worth it.”

Rain felt a little bemused by that reaction. The Kobold had wanted to escape for a long time but now it seemed his greedy avarice was acting like his own personal golden ball and chain. He wasn’t against working with that, he could think of a compromise.

“Then become my treasurer, Red the Kobold Treasurer. You look after all the gold, count it, keep it, care for it.”

The Kobold’s tail wagged a little faster.

“What does that mean? Can I sleep in the gold?”

“As much as you want, and any more gold we get goes to your care. We seem to stumble upon the stuff everywhere we go so I imagine the pile will increase significantly over time.”

The tail wagged even faster.

“Filling the hoard bag? To the brim?!?”

“Uuhh, Yes?”

Rain suspected the Kobold’s tail was going to detach and go flying off into the air if it wagged much faster.

“Fine, you drive a hard bargain, but I can see a reasonable deal when it is offered. I reluctantly accept. Very reluctantly.”

It was difficult to take the Kobold’s words seriously as every other word was punctuated with the happy fwapping of his tail against stone.