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"It was a royal mandate," he says to the healer." Her mother proved herself to the old king before she was born."

"Wait, is she royalty?"

"No, no, nothing like that. She's the only child of the Dragonbloods to be brought here. Her mother was holding her egg when we attacked."

"Special treatment for the Dragonblood, eh?" the healer says, shaking his head. "I should have known."

"I'm right here," Dee speaks up in a croak. "If there's anything else you want to say behind my back, you should pay attention and do it elsewhere."

The two look at each other and pick up their things, the healer turning back to her and saying. "Again, I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," Dee says. "It's the old king's."

"You shouldn't speak traitorous things like that."'

"Didn't stop you."

"But I'm a Dragon's Heir."

"And so am I!" Dee snaps. "Now, get out of my room!" Her finger catches a pebble as she scratches, and she scoops it up, chucking it to the side until it crashes into the wall by the healer's face. He yelps and runs out to join with his assistant.

Another kobold steps into the room, but Dee turn her head to look away. "And what do you want?" she asks. "To gloat over how you can move, or to berate me for my heritage. I'm the only kobold here whose parentage seems to matter. I just wish my mother would have smashed my egg so I wouldn't have this life."

"Then, you wouldn't have had all of the fun times together," Tikit says.

She turns her head, dumbfounded by his appearance. "Ti... Tikit. What are you doing here? You should be in the breeding grounds."

"Perhaps," he says, stepping up to her with his hands behind his back. "But then again, I plan on having plenty of years to spread my brains around to the next generation. You, on the other hand, need to have something else to do."

"There's nothing for me, now," Dee says, gripping the blanket. "They put this over me not because I'm cold. I can't feel the warmth anymore down there."

"May I see?" he asks.

She winces. "It would not do for you to see the breeder you once so admired so low."

He grips the blanket and yanks it away from her. She grasps for it, but it is too late--he already sees the damage.

Growling, he tosses the blanket aside and gets down onto his knees. "They butchered you."

"I told you not to look..."

"They are afraid of what you represent. They don't want our tribe 'ruined' by the Dragonblood that flows within you. Well, we'll show them!"

"What do you mean?"

Tikit produces a length of string. He holds it out to her, pressing it against her body and pulling it out down to the tip of her toe. "Yes, yes, that much. "Hm... a bit short in the tail, but you were always different than the others.

"Did I really feel that good compared to the others you've had?"

"Others?" he asks, blinking. "Dee, I saved all my energy for you. I made a promise, remember. That the egg you would bare would be mine. That's why I saved all I had just for you."

"Well... that promise can't be kept, now. I only remember bits of it, but that egg belongs to the queen... or it did."

"Let's not talk about her," he says, standing up. "I've made all the appropriate measurements, now. I should be going. I'll be back, but it might take awhile. I need to work on this in my spare time. The Trapmaster is getting old, so I must learn from him and pick up his slack." He turns around, but she grabs him by the tail.

"Wait."

He stops, looking over his shoulder,

"Come to me..." she says."

Tikit drops everything and immediately disrobes, climbing on top of her with his desire. He finds his way to her, but she grits her teeth as he enters. His tongue lashes at her throat, and she tilts it, trying not to cry out. When he goes inside her, the dullness that she feels is nothing, yet just above, her body burns. Though she cannot feel it, she knows he goes to her with all the passion he once had, and soon, when he groans out in his broken cries and rolls off of her, she can't help it but let out her own cry, her tear-filled shock of pan.

Tikit pushes himself up, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Dee?"

She claps his shoulder and looks to him, smiling. "One last time... for you, before I was totally worthless."

"So, you really can't produce anymore eggs," he says, rubbing his skull. "That's... I just... why did we?"

"You enjoyed it, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but... but that can't be right. It's a waste. It would have been as productive to shoot it off into a cave."

"Would it have been as enjoyable?" she asks.

He gulps, then pushes himself up. "I... I really should be going. I only have a little bit of time to work on my project for you."

"Thank you," she says, sighing and laying back, closing her eyes to drift off to sleep.

--

The outcast kobold squeaks past the long-abandoned corridor. Generations ago, the kobolds of the Dragon's Heir actually had use for these places as a land of devotion to a long-forgotten deity. The mechanism that allows her to scoot along the uneven ground without the use of her dead legs makes these dangerous roads a trifle. Even with this last effort of her favored partner, she was never truly welcome in the warrens ever again.

No healthy kobold would ever make the journey, but there is nothing for her up above. Tikit moved on to his position of trapmaster. They would never except him wasting his bloodline. Without Takaka in charge, no one would take her in or even pity her. There is only the down below, for she would never endure higher above in the lands of the burning fire and the endless sky. So, her life consists of her foraging, for she is far too weak to do anything else for herself.

While picking a particularly tasty-looking mushroom, Her sharp ears catch something strange. Sniffing the air, she realizes the danger--something alien: something from outside.

She hooks her fingers around the spokes of her wheels, turning them with the utmost stealth as she approaches the sound, only to hear the frustrated ramblings of something in a language she never heard before. She pokes her head around the corner, only to hiss and withdraw as light, terrible light, burns her eyes.

The voice stops and the kobold curses herself, wheeling back as fast as she can, the speed of her escape much more important than the stealth now that she has been discovered.

Down the winding tunnel, she hastens her escape, panting as she pumps her arms with more force than she had ever needed. But no matter what she does, she can't escape the sound of some thing approaching her, chasing her down, hunting her.

Her seat isn't made for such fast travel. So, when her wheel hits a rock that she is too scared to notice, the seat pops into the air and topples, leaving her to spill out of it and roll along the ground, her useless legs sprawled limply as she lays on her back, groaning.

The bootsteps that had been chasing her slow down now, only for the wide, toned form to look down at her. Its face is smooth, with a large round nose and a strong jaw. On top of its smooth skin is long, straight fur, no, hair, that is braided like some kind of rope down over its back. It wears a strapped piece of clothing, wrapping around two mounds upon its underbelly. Large strong hands are covered in leather, fingerless gloves, showing off the decidedly un-clawed features. She knows exactly what it is, though Dee would have never thought she would run into a dwarf in these lands.

"What do we have here? A crippled kobold? All the way down in these tunnels? I never thought I'd live to see the day!" The dwarf says, grinning with flat white teeth underneath thick pink lips.

Dee hisses, though she knows full well that her current predicament is an inescapable one. The dwarf only laughs at her display and reaches down for the kobold's cart by her useless lower body. Dee closes her eyes, resigning herself to a terrible fate, only to open them again when the dwarf rights her on her seat and pats her on the head. "There we go, lass, good as new."

"Wait... you speak the dragon tongue?"

"Well, it only makes sense that I do," says the dwarf with a wink, "after all, I'm an heir to a dragon. Not the same dragon as you lot, mind you, but one all the same. Come on over to my tent, lass, and we can talk a bit about our similarities in the comforts of my abode."

The dwarf turns and heads back down the corridor, leaving Dee to sit there, alone, wondering what her next move should be. Whatever foulness the dwarf might have had in mind for her, could it be any worse than the uselessness she has right now? Resolving herself to her fate, she wheels her way over to the tent, seeing her gracious host holding the flap open to her.

Dee winces at the sight of the light, but the dwarf snaps her fingers, and the lamp extinguishes in a heartbeat. "Ah, there you go. Don't want you to be too uncomfortable. Don't see us doing very much reading together, anyway."

Dee wheels herself inside, finding the place to be furnished with more wood that she had ever seen in one place, with a bed, and a table, and even a chair. "You have such luxury down here..." she says. "These materials would make for great traps, but you spend them on comforts?"

"I've grown accustomed to the creature comforts," the dwarf responds. "Ah, but where are my manners? I invite a lass into my tent without introducing myself. You may call me Straiesha. I doubt that name has any meaning this far underground, though"

Dee shakes her head.

"Ah, good, good. Just as I hoped." The dwarf walks over towards her writing desk and closes a book she had placed on it. "So, judging by your looks, I'd say you were an outcast yourself. Finding yourself without a purpose, and cast out from your home when your singular purpose was suddenly no longer something you could do."

Hesitantly, Dee nods.

"Complications from egg-laying, I'd take it?" she asks. "You don't have the body of a breeder, but your injuries look like poor surgical techniques, rather than the work of some accident."

Dee nods again. "It was what I was raised to be."

"Well, someone didn't like you very much, putting you in that position," Straiesha says, collapsing onto her bed. "But, It just so happens that I have the perfect solution to your problem. It requires you giving up a big part of yourself to do it. If it works, both of us will have a new lease on life, in a manner of speaking."

Dee wheels herself closer to the bed, tilting her head. "What could an outsider possibly do for me?" she asks. "I am broken, unwanted. My only... friends," she feels a shudder in her spine when she says that, "have moved on or died. I didn't even get to see her when she faded."

The dwarf only smiles when she hears that and holds out her hand. "It requires a lot of magic, and a little bit of sacrifice, but you, my friend, will have a second chance. They all will."