I cast camouflage and wink from his sight just as he looks up to target me again. Then I speed up, watching me feet so I don’t step in that lava stream, and feed him a fist of brass knuckles between the teeth. I half expect it to take his head clean off, but kobolds are as rugged as the mountains they live under. Some of his teeth chip and shatter and he’s definitely knocked senseless, but it doesn’t kill him. Ye can’t handle the heat and pressure of the earth’s crust without being a tough bastard, I guess.
Still, he drops that handful of molten rock and falls backward to the opposite side of the lava flow. Me job’s not done: Bavaria wants these things dead, and I know there have to be more because the quake continues, so I have to figure out how to punch through something with natural defenses like rock. It’s neither practical nor efficient. I hop over the lava flow and stand next to the kobold’s head, kneeling down to take a closer look. His eyes are not impregnable, I see. Deep set and wee, but they’re still eyes made of blood and jelly nestled in a socket with a hole at the back. I take off me clothes, shape-shift into a red kite, and place a taloned, brass-coated foot on his face and squeeze, punching into his brain through his right eye. He twitches a couple of times and goes still again. I shift quickly back to human because the heat’s getting to me feathers. I’m going to need a better way.
I tell Bavaria that’s one down but I need something to help it go faster. I picture what I need and it wells up from the earth at me feet in a matter of seconds: a foot-long spike of smooth, polished stone.
//Lead me to the next// I tell Bavaria as I pick it up. I leave me clothes behind since I may need to shape-shift again soon. The tunnel, I notice, has stabilized quite a bit since I took out the first kobold. But as I continue on and draw closer to the next target, it begins to shift and buck again, and I fall twice because the light is still none too good. I also start drawing power to heal me burnt shoulder because it’s screaming like ten seagulls fighting over one fish.
The tunnel Bavaria’s creating breaks through into a new cavern, and a fresh gust of sulfur fumes slithers down me gob like all the ghosts of me bad ideas. I cough and wheeze and tumble down into a roll as I enter, just in case there’s an ambush waiting for me head. It’s a good thing too, for a few hunks of rock that qualify as boulders sail over me and crash behind. I find the kobold responsible standing in front of a wall of lava. Me face is already baked dry like those fecking nuts they give ye on airplanes with a sad thimbleful of water, but I’m going to have to charge him and that wall to end this. And unlike the first lad, he’s not chucking those boulders with his hand: This is a big boy in the world of kobolds and he’s moving that weight with his own magic. Earth-based blighters, they are. And he knows something has to be here, even if he can’t see me, because otherwise what opened that nice symmetrical hole in the wall down the way? And if he has any sense of the presence or energy of other kobolds, he probably knows one of them abruptly got snuffed a few minutes ago. So he’s not taking any chances. He didn’t hear a death scream or see any blood splatter, so he’s going to throw more at me. I can see him clenching his fingers and the wall of lava bubbling and swelling behind him. This is going to be bad. I put the spike between me teeth and shift to a ram, the brass of me knuckles flowing up to the horns and coating them, making them unbreakable. Then I lower me head and charge straight at the kobold with all I’ve got, just as he sends a wide spray of molten rocks and lava in my direction. There’s no avoiding it or dodging; it’s like a net of fire backed with stone.
Me horns slam into the leading edge, breaking it apart, and that provides a sort of cone of protection, keeping it out of me eyes at least, but that doesn’t mean I pass through unscathed. I get pretty fecking scathed, in fact, especially down me back above the tail; I’m pretty sure it’s just on fire and I’m melting, but I have a target to hit first.
He sees the flare of my passage through his salvo, the fire burning on the outline of something indistinct, but he’s still not sure what I am except coming for him. He tries to move, but I’m both watching and much faster and I adjust me course. I take him in the ribs, launching him off his feet and propelling him right into that wall of lava. Neither my hit nor the lava will kill him, but his advantage is all gone now: He can’t stand there and throw fiery rocks at me.
I skitter to the side, clear of the lava’s edge, and shift back to human, rolling around and away from the fire on me arse. I draw heavily on Bavaria’s energy to heal me burning skin and let the spike drop into me hand, then I wait.
It’s less than a minute before the lava erupts into the cavern, and had I still been standing in front of it I would have been completely coated, beyond the help of healing. The kobold steps forth from the fire, roaring his defiance, and when nothing comes to slap him, he chuckles, assuming me dead. Well, not yet, ye smug shite. I’m hurt and I could be consumed by fire at any moment, but I’m not out of the fight yet.
Except the lava now covering the cavern floor does present a problem. I ask Bavaria for help once more in fashioning something useful far more quickly than I could bind it together meself: makeshift stone sandal platforms that I bind directly to the skin of me soles, which will hopefully allow me to walk across the lava and sneak up on the rogue. That done, I check on the kobold; I’m off to his left, perhaps a tad behind his shoulder. He takes a couple of steps forward, obviously scanning the cavern for some sign of me corpse. The rumble and quake of the earth covers my whispered binding as I target a boulder across the cavern and take me first step onto the lava: hot all around, but the stone holds. All I have to do is not trip and fall over into the slag.
I step with more confidence and complete the binding, yanking that boulder on the far side right toward the lava. It begins to drag itself in that direction and the kobold turns to face it, which means his back is to me. It’s nothing but a distraction. I’m wondering if I should tap him on the shoulder to get him to face me when I realize that the eye sockets are not the only path to the brain. The kobold’s ears are wee, but the left one serves: I stab the spike inside, pierce the eardrum, and scramble his brain but good. He topples over and I back up gingerly, trying not to fall over meself and fail at winning. The shuddering of the cavern subsides, and once I’m on safe ground again I remove the stone shields from my feet and let Bavaria know it’s done.
//No / Three more//
“Fecking hells,” I mutter, and some of that sentiment must have leaked through, because Bavaria adds, //Smaller ones / You will win//
I’m not so sure. The burns are pretty bad, and me lungs feel permanently polluted. I can’t get a proper breath, to be honest.
//Need clean air// I say, and the response comes quickly.
//Follow//
The earth behind me moves, a new tunnel boring through the crust. Once I stagger down it a few steps, Bavaria closes off the cavern, shutting out all that sulfur. The tunnel slopes upward after that until we get near enough to the surface for some sunlight and fresh air to rain down from a hole.
//Rest and heal// Bavaria says, and I give my thanks as I take big lungfuls of fresh air and feel the pain of me burns recede somewhat. The elemental’s pouring huge resources into this, which must mean it stands to lose much more if the kobolds are allowed to continue. And they are continuing; the ground beneath me own feet might be steady, but there’s still shaking going on nearby. And the longer I rest, the worse off this area will be—especially if any of that lava makes it to the surface.
I take one more deep breath and tell Bavaria I’m ready.
//Harmony// comes the reply, and the ground beneath me swells, pushing me up through the hole until I’m on the surface again. There’s a buck standing there, and for a moment I think it might be Siodhachan, but Bavaria puts that notion to rest quickly. //Follow animal to next tunnel site//
The buck turns and bounds through the forest to the south. I can’t keep up as a human, and me wounded shoulder would hamper me if I tried to fly as a kite, so I shape-shift back to a ram and put the stake between my lips, try me best to keep pace, and wince as the burns throb anew.
Makes sense to have me do this if it’s going to be a goodly distance, and it is—it’s miles, in fact, and there’s no use spending energy to create a tunnel for me in that situation. The ground doesn’t stop rumbling the whole time, and I hope Bavaria will be able to recover quickly from all this strain. I also hope no one has been hurt wherever people might be living around here. I don’t think there are any huge cities in the area, but there are probably wee villages and some isolated cabins and farms, things like that, buildings that weren’t designed to withstand earthquakes.