You may know of kobolds, lizards famed for their draconic blood.
Kobels were what happened when that blood dried up.
Beasts bearing shame, their heritage denied, they lost their scales for a short fur and were no better than rodents. Too weak to stand, too proud to bend, their tribes stopped only to forage, to pillage if lucky before growing threats forced them back to their nomadic life.
Those were kobels and Tunu was one of them.
Childhood was short for those furry lizards, from nature and hardship, yet Tunu still played around during his chores no matter how many times it got him beaten.
He was carrying water back from the stream, in two dozen leather canteens strapped to a pole on his shoulders. The woods around him were clear and quiet but he pretended to be tracked by foul beasts and, despite the weight, rushed here or there with excitement.
And when he felt like it the child dropped the pole down to face those empty threats.
He was scruffy, dirty, short and not even that strong. No horns, no scales, only the lengthy tail truly betrayed the reptilian nature of his kind. A short leather cape covered that rough, pitiful coat of red fur from the neck to his lower arms.
Tunu used that cape to pretend he had wings, flapped and roared to chase his imagination away.
Then they would attack and he would strike them, hit with the mighty claws at his wings, bite hard, strike with his legs until a whole horde of nothing lay at his feet. He had been hopping and spinning all by himself on the muddy path, among the bushes.
"There you are!"
With another kobel approaching Tunu quickly folded his cape back on his shoulders. He stood there to see Elua emerge further ahead.
"What's the water doing on the ground?!"
She was about his age, still not quite an adult. Having had a warrior as parent, her lighter fur on the shoulder had been decorated with three jade plates burned into the skin itself. It was a prestige that helped with an otherwise unremarkable silhouette made harsh by labor.
Her bitterness lashed out at her every word.
"You left the water for fruits, you glutton?"
"No! I was just playing!" Tunu protested.
"Well stop! You're a grown-up, pick up the water and come!"
He pouted.
"What's the hurry? I'm fine here!"
"You won't be! The tribe is packing, there is a wyvern in the mountain."
His eyes opened wide with excitement.
"A wyvern? For real?!"
"Yes! Now hurry!" She ordered him. "Or we'll be left behind!"
Of course she was the one being childish here, as the tribe could not depart so quickly. But her fear was genuine, just as much as his joy.
He looked around as if he could see, through those trees, the high rocky hill they called a mountain. His heart had never beaten so hard in his life.
"We've got to find it! Elua, we could see a wyvern for real!"
"You want to die?"
"Come on! It's not far, let's take a look!"
She groaned, approached and picked the pole to put it on her shoulders. The weight was a lot for her but she was used to it.
"Just shut up and follow me! If you wake up that beast and we all die, it will all be your fault!"
"But it's a wyvern!"
"Hurry up!"
The kobel left him there to hurry back to the camp, carrying the canteens away. She was not waiting on him anymore. He could catch up if he wanted.
He stood there, shocked, then got angry.
"Well fine!" He shouted! "I'll go alone then! So much for your pretty scales!"
It was more than anger that had him yelling.
All kobels dreamed of becoming a wyvern.
All kobels knew the stories of their past lineage, how they should wear scales and grow wings, all kobels lived for that dream. So naturally he could only feel mad whenever it seemed he was the only one remembering that anymore.
He was young, but he wasn't stupid. Tunu knew just as anyone else how dangerous a wyvern would be. But to leave, to not even take a look felt like... giving up.
And he could not take it!
He would not take it!
So despite the fear building up he pushed himself through the woods, towards the hill. Then he climbed it, still not sure if really there would be a beast to be found. The hill was tall and vast, and he didn't know where the wyvern would be.
Then he found it.
Close to the top a short plateau led to the entrance of a large cave so wide as to be a tunnel. Bones around the entrance marked the territory but at the smell alone he would have known.
If he entered, he thought, he was dead. To take a step back, to turn away offered a worse fate in the eyes of that pitiful kobel.
So to hide his fears more than his scent he started to cover himself with dirt, rubbing arms, legs and belly. At his temples he realized the futility. So, after a last look outside he took the first step, went in, got swallowed by the cavernous darkness.
Walking on toes didn't stop his steps from faintly echoing.
Touching the rocks, skimming them really, revealed how a beast's claws had shredded them to make way.
His lizard eyes could see shapes in the dark. The passage opened into a large room with two more tunnels, one whose stench was too foul even for him and the other circling up that he followed to reach the nest proper.
There the cave stretched up around a stalagmite surrounded by a carpet of bones in the hundreds, a litter of them. Small rays of light fell from the ceiling, making the base glitter.
Gold. Gold coins. Gems and jewels. Entire chests thrown open, piled up into an unfathomable treasure.
The beast was nowhere to be seen.
The beast was approaching behind him.
Dark and silent despite its massive weight, the wyvern had approached from the same passage the kobel had come from. When he turned around Tunu saw it, that beast filling the passage. Beastly eyes fixed on him, annoyed to see that pest.
It was a majestic creature, three meters high at the wings' base, scales of a dark brown scarred by a lifetime of battles. Just its slow breath was like poison.
The young kobel had fallen to the ground. He knew he was caught and still could not move, too scared even when those claws at the wing's tip reached for him.
When he woke up he was alive.
He woke up alive.
Tunu opened his eyes and realized he was still in the cave, still surrounded by all those bones. The treasure behind him glimmered.
He looked around, panicked, could not find the beast and started touching his cape, his arms, his belly to check for wounds.
Instead of the rough fur what he felt were scales.
"Wha..." His voice broke off in a fit of coughing.
His heart was burning him like a hot rod. His whole body was on fire. Energized was the word. Like a furnace alit, he was trembling from all the power he felt overflowing his limbs, filling his breath.
What he had failed to see was how another carcass had joined the mass of bones. The wyvern's skull lay on the side, its empty orbits fixed on him.