DREADWOLF

◈

A slightly manic looking red-scaled Kobold wandered through a sandy tunnel. His eyes skittered off the walls as though terrified something was stalking him.

The kobold was well armed in a manner of speaking, he held a sword in one claw. What was less obvious was that beneath his newly endowed clothing his wrist was chained to his hip so he was unable to raise it. On his front was a rectangular piece of canvas stretched over a wooden frame that hung down from his neck to his knees. On the canvas was a rather crude charcoal drawing of a Kobold doing lewd things to a female Piscine while a different Piscine looked at the scene and cried. The copulating Kobold and Piscine had a number of poorly drawn hearts floating around their heads.

Unsure of what he was waiting for the Kobold peered down the tunnel. He couldn't see much as a corner blocked his view. Still, he soon quite clearly heard the nearing tramping of many feet and began to back away. A deep growl came from somewhere behind him in the shadows and made him freeze in place out of fear. He could do nothing but watch as what appeared to be a small Piscine army rounded the corner and came into view. 

The front line stared at the Kobold as they kept marching and then as their eyes wandered downward and took in the drawing attached to the front of the Kobold they began to slow and angry muttering broke out, then warbling shouts and pointed fingers. A cry of rage came from a particularly personally offended Piscine at the back. 

“H-hey!” said the Kobold. “I’ve got nothing to do with this! It’s some kind of trap! You’ve got to listen to me!”

The Piscine ignored him and continued to argue and point.

“Please! I’m just a poor slave being made to do this against my will! I’m not your enemy!

A more leaderly looking Piscine with gold scales and carrying a trident in his webbed hands slammed the butt of his weapon into the ground and pointed an accusing finger at the Kobold. He then asked what was probably some kind of important question. Unfortunately it was in the Piscine language and completely unintelligible.

“Oh gods they don’t speak Common, Oh no no nooo.”

The Kobold panicked and not knowing what else to do he shook his head in the negative. 

This seemed to infuriate the leader and he screamed at the poor Kobold and took a step forward. The rest of the Piscine army took a threatening step forward too.

The leader held up a hand and as though to give the Kobold one last chance to explain himself he asked something else, biting off each word as though he was desperately trying to put aside his anger.

The Kobold listened. Paused. Then he turned and ran.

The Piscine looked on in shock. Then their eyes fell on the second different canvas rectangle attached to the Kobold’s back. This one showed a quite clearly pregnant Piscine in the background while in the foreground a cheekily grinning and winking Kobold gave a double thumbs up while taking a large poo in the open mouth of a crying Piscine. The poo was quite detailed and someone had put quite a bit of time into shading it.

As one beast the Piscine army screamed their rage and stampeded down the tunnel. Howls of indignation echoed off the walls, none more so than from the leader Piscine who’s eyes were bulging out of his head out of sheer apoplectic wrath.

The unfortunate Kobold fled like the hounds of hell were on his tail.

Sand flashed by, a newly built wall that diverted the tunnel into a side tunnel, then some slightly odd looking sand, then normal sand again. A flash of green to the side and a hand grabbed his arm and pulled him into a slim crack in the wall. A knife pressed into his side and that one Goblin who seemed to help the terrifying beast that ate everything appeared.

He could only watch with her as the army of Piscine charged forward and over the odd bit of sand. They lasted only a moment before the canvas and tent pole frame collapsed under the strain and a yawning chasm opened up below them. The sheer rage of the Piscine kept those at the back driving forward so those who were at the front and saw the hole coming could only howl in frustration as those behind pushed and shoved forward tipping them into it. 

Opal stepped from the crack as the last few survivors stumbled to a stop and looked down in dismay at the hole that their brethren had fallen in. Not for long though as a long stick prodded one in the back and shoved him into the hole. Then the next. It took a few seconds for the remaining Piscine to realise what was happening and they turned to find Rain prodding them in one by one with an extended pole that easily out ranged their own spears. They gnashed their teeth and screamed at him but could do little as he used his overwhelming strength and range to punt them into the hole one by one.

The Kobold slave shivered. What a ruthless strategy. He feared this pair not just for his own sake but for the rest of Kobold kind.

“I am a genius!” cried Opal.

“I’ll admit that went better than expected.”

“Yes, yes, praise me. That was glorious!”

“Be praised,” Said Rain, bemused.

Rain leapt across the hole in the ground and stood beside Opal to peer down into it, not before staking down the trembling Kobold slave however. 

“Finding this hole really simplified things huh,” said Rain observing the mass of death far below.

“Well it was either dig a hole or pile some rocks up to divert a tunnel. We don’t really have anything useful to dig a hole with so...” She shrugged, “We got lucky this area has a lot of vertical shafts to be honest.”

“Sure sure. Here tie off the rope.”

Opal unwound the rope she had taken from the slavers and tied to a nearby rock and handed it to Rain. He let the coil drop and slung himself down, rappelling down what must have been forty feet of sheer rock face ending in a hard flat stone floor.

His feet hit the bottom and Opal scrambled down soon after.

A huge pile of bodies met his eyes, some still groaning as they had fallen on their comrades and hadn't been quite so fortunate to have a quick death. They wasted no time and Rain ended lives with his teeth as Opal used her rapier to poke holes, though many had holes already as they had fallen upon a number of sharp metal stakes embedded in the ground.

The Goblin then pulled down the bodies one by one and stripped them bare of any clothing and equipment. Mostly loincloths and oddly shaped cuirasses. Soon she had a line of bodies forming. Rain didn't wait for her to finish and tore into it, devouring two at a time, compressing them down inside before needing to stop to digest. 

“Gods, fish is a blessed food. If it weren't for levelers and giant snake I think this would have taken my top spot in my ranking," opined Rain as the growth surge ended. The deep brine buttery saltiness and oily firm texture was something Rain found he could really get his teeth into.

He sighed, then opened his eyes and leapt on the next to be eaten, slavering maw open wide, eyes alight. He gorged on the Piscine from feet to head, scales and webbing all, all of it went into his stomach, great bites letting him tear through the monster with spectacular speed. 

By the time he was a quarter of the way through the army he was beginning to reduce the pauses between eating and he simply moved onto the next mid digestion banking up the growth like he had done with the snake. Opal finished laying out the dead and began happily shovelling them toward his gullet helping him consume the Piscine all the faster, she held them up one by one and literally pushed them toward his mouth letting him focus on fitting as much as possible inside himself as quickly as possible. His stomach was managing to keep up, his ease of handling so many a sign he was growing overall larger.

Rain blitzed his way through the unfortunate Piscine army, halfway through, three quarters, then as he slowed with exhaustion he came to the last, the gold scaled Piscine leader, especially tasty, but he didn’t slow or he was sure he would collapse. The leader was eaten body, limb, and tail and Rain flopped over on his back, distended stomach poking in the air and heaving breaths as the wave of growth caught up to him and crashed into his body. He let out a long mindless groan as his paw pads inched across the ground and his body swelled, claws lengthening, chest enlarging, muscle expanding, bones elongating. Opal leapt on top of him as he grew shoving a hand down her shorts and grinding her hips down into her hand, a line of drool ran from her slightly parted lips as she watched and felt him grow larger beneath her, her breath shaky and arrhythmic.

Finally, it was all over, and Rain slumped on the ground as limp as a wet noodle. Opal lay herself over his chest, her eyes looking up at him half lidded, she bit her lip.

They just lay there, basking in the aftermath for a time, not a worry in the world.

“...Gods I would kill for a bath.”

Stratothrax