Tiny Dungeon

POV Drake Brothers

There wasn’t a need for any words. The two [Lesser Drakes] turned their whole attention to the insect that had dared to kill their youngest brother. Rising from where he had been mourning their brother, Jaak opened his mouth and belched flame toward the creature. Siirnaak joined him, roaring in rage, his jaw shifting partially into its more animalistic form. The screech of the large insect was like music to their ears but it wasn’t enough.

Both brothers acted on instinct and shifted into their true forms, their bodies crackling into living flame before hardening into rigid scales carved from the fire. Frills of flame formed around their lizard-like jaws before a sail of flame ignited down their backs. There was no more playing as they leaped to rip the bug in half. Their rage blinded them to all other things as they tore into the insect savagely, only to stagger back as black tendrils reached out of the shadows to grab them. They fought their bonds, breathing fire in great curtains to burn them away. Even as they did so, more flickered forth to snag limbs.

In their panic, they lost sight of the insect and when they looked again, they found it gone; in its place, they saw a sight that caused their flames to flicker in abject fear and terror.

POV Fomorian Stalker

The Fomorian Stalker soaked up the fear of the [Lesser Drakes] like it was the richest of vintages. His new Master was going to be a delight to serve. He and his brother and sister were summoned occasionally by High Priests but their assignments were so temporary and fleeting. All three of them had felt the difference in this assignment. Their new Master was a divinity but a small one and their new forms were a change to get used to but the flood of Aether provided to them meant they could stay indefinitely. That meant that they were all too ready to do whatever it took to get into their Master’s good graces.

He snarled in satisfaction and felt his fangs elongate in anticipation. He was utterly dwarfed by the larger drakes but he didn’t mind. Even on his normal assignments he and his brother and sister were smaller than their targets. He leaped forward and jumped, evading a fan of flame that gushed forth from the leftmost drake. Using a lasso of shadows the Stalker encircled the drake’s snout and pulled himself toward it. As it tried to recover, he kicked off a flat plane of shadow, slammed his foot, empowered by darkness, into the fairy creature, and sent it hurtling into the wall.

His brother and sister took on the other drake, his seniority allowing him to blow off some steam with the other. Truly, it had been too long since he had had this much Aether to work with. An actual body. He took off, just as the drake shook itself as it emerged from the ruin of the wall. He slammed into it again causing its midriff to concave and air to whoosh out of its lungs in a plume of smoke.

He cackled madly giving his kind’s screech of victory as he pummeled the invader into the ground and walls. It wasn’t even a contest. Oh, he got scorched a couple of times but each time he simply dug his fangs into the drake and let its Aether-rich blood heal his wounds. It ended abruptly as it always did in such a brawl. The drake got weaker and the Stalker got stronger. It took only one mistake but the Stalker was not one for mercy.

The drake snapped its head forward to take a bite out of him but was slow to retract its head when it missed. The Stalker didn’t hesitate as it slammed a spike of shadow straight through the invader’s eye into its brain. Even then the creature didn’t immediately die, its remaining Aether reserves in its blood trying to heal it. It clawed at the spike, dealing more damage to itself in the process. Even as it succeeded in ripping out the spike the Stalker simply expanded spikes from the end and the invader lobotomized itself, pulling its own brain out of its eye sockets.

The Stalker smirked and turned to find that its siblings had succeeded in their kill as well, not that there had been any doubt. He greeted them with a screech of victory and they responded. He gave them a fanged, wolfen grin only to whirl when a similar roar to their own answered their screeches. Barreling toward them were figures much like their own but wrong somehow. They moved similarly and had similar forms but they did not hop from shadow to shadow like a Stalker. They were also too large, loping toward them at a height of around nine inches. The form in front was even larger and moved with a grace the others didn’t have.

They smelled wrong, like a drink gone sour. The Aether around them twisted in odd ways and the Stalker snarled at them as their Master commanded them to engage. They were invaders and they would meet their end here.