FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

On the Second Day of Yiffmas, Jakealope Wrote for Thee...

Two Terrible Dergs

"...Yip?"

The little kobold hadn't a clue where he was. One moment he was preparing for a rapid descent down the most treacherous snowy cliff in the mountains, and the next... he was here. And where was here?

It was white as the snow he sled down, but everywhere. There was no end to the white beyond--and no beginning, either. No up or down. No day or night. No... anything.

"Yip?!"

In the vast emptiness, no echo was heard--but there was a noise. An approaching noise, a building noise... until he could see it. A creature of similar features to him, yet this creature was no kobold. The kobold knew his brethren well, and this was not one of them. The shimmering of scales was all wrong. The glow in his eyes was unsettling. And the smile...

"Welcome, dear kobold," the creature said, grinning that awful, bone chilling smile. "You must have questions for me, little one. Perhaps... who am I? And where are we?"

"Yip... Yip Yip, Yip?"

"Did I see you nail that sick stunt?... No, unfortunately you did not make it down that cliffside, dearest kobold." The kobold mimic spread his arms wide to wave at the white void. "Which is in fact why you're here. I have the horrible job of telling you the news of your... sudden passing--and the fantastic job of deciding your fate!"

"Yip?"

"Yes. You could say that your fate is now in my..." the creature looked at his hand. "Claws--tiny, useless ones at that. But I digress... I must offer you, in this moment of your demise, two paths of eternal torment."

They spotted the distress on the kobold's glacier-blue face. "Confused as to why you've been sentenced to endless suffering? I don't have the answers for that question--nor do I care to." A barking laugh from their shimmering mouth was lost to the void. "If I cared to know the whys of each unfortunate bastard dropped in here, I'd never hear the end of it! But alas, let's get to the fun part of our meeting."

Reaching behind their back for a moment, the mimic brought forth two mirrors, cradled in the palm of each hand. "Would you be interested in... paroozing your choices?"

The kobold looked to either hand, then back at the mimic-creature. "Yip?"

"Sorry chap--no is not an option, nor are there any secret third, fourth, or any other options. Just. These. Two."

The kobold gulped noisily, then looked at his choices again. There were no differences between the two mirrors; both were gilded in a gold framing, and the mirror itself reflect nothing at all. Inside each glass was an eerie darkness, so different from the white expanse they stood in now.

After taking a good look at each mirror, then going back and forth with an indecisive finger, the creature growled out, "I don't have all eternity--at least, not to be spent with you. Pick one!"

"Err... Yip!"

"The left one? How marvelous!" The creature spun the mirror around, inspecting the glass contents for himself. "Yes. An interesting choice--perhaps not interesting for you, though. The correct word to use would be..." That wicked smile grew evermore strange.

"Torturous."

The mirror spun around just as quickly as it had prior, but now it was no longer pitch black. There were colors and shapes--a whole world existed in there, and it was getting bigger...

No. That wasn't true. It was the kobold getting smaller. With horrid realization, the kobold had been lifted from whatever constituted the ground, and shrunk to the size of the mirror he'd chosen. Above the mirror was that wicked mimic-kobold, eyes glowing and teeth showing.

Then he was gone. The white void receded behind him, and he was dropped into a world that was still not his own, but at the very least a world of some sort. There was daylight, and the smell of earth all around him. Tickling at his paws was a grassy field as far as the eye could see. There were a few sparce trees littering the area, and the various noises of wildlife were music to his ears.

"Hmm... what do we have here?"

The kobold yipped in surprise of the voice rumbling just behind him. He spun around to look at the dragon--who'd not been there a moment before. How did they sneak up on him so quickly and quietly?

"One little kobold lost and out in the open. Not the best place to be..." She said, as the voice was obviously feminine in pitch. Her face was nearly as large as his entire body, as was typical for all dragons to dwarf the size of their distant kobold relatives, and scales were a perfect white that matched the void he'd just come from. "Do you have nothing to say for yourself, little one?"

"Yip? Yip, Yip... Yip Yip, Yip!"

"Oh. You're senile," the dragon said in a sad tone.

"Yip!" the kobold answered, stomping one paw in the dirt.

"What, so you expect me to believe you appeared from a white void by a creature of the afterlife?"

The kobold frowned, because of course he didn't expect her to believe that. Dragons typically didn't care what kobolds had to say at all, so it'd be beyond a miracle to convince one of what he'd just seen.

"No matter. Senile or not, you'll be of some entertainment for me."

The kobold backed away slowly. "Yip..."

"Oh, going so soon?" complained the dragon. Her white frills flared on her head. "But our fun was just about to start! Please, stick around..." She raised her closest paw, moving it directly over the kobold's body. "...or you can stick to the underside of my paw. Your choice."

"YIP!"

The kobold pointed behind the dragon, and she turned her long neck around to look at what was distressing him. When she saw nothing, she looked back to the kobold--only, he wasn't there anymore! His scampering blue legs were tailing towards the nearest cluster of trees, already halfway there... but it was hopeless. He was too slow and weak to break away the predator's grasp. He could hear her advance, dashing on all fours that outpaced his stride by a factor of ten. Seconds after giving chase had the kobold surpassed, and a few more had the little lizard pinned under the very claws she'd warned him of.

"I must commend the effort," she commented, not in any way fazed by the kobold's attempt to escape her clutches. "Not as stupid as you first seemed--but your attempt to escape my paw was in vain." She dug her claws a little deeper into the dirt, scrunching his little body tighter in the makeshift cage. "Mmm. Just gave myself an idea--a way for you to ­never escape my paw."

The threat did not sound like a kind one. In fact, it sounded downright insidious, like venom laced her tongue, but it wasn't venom that'd be the kobold's undoing.

Whispers of an ancient dragon language danced from the dragon's maw into the kobold's ear. He half understood them, only in meaning, and what they meant for him to do. The words asked him to rub those paw beans squishing him against the ground. They suggested that he'd like to be those beans, and whatever resistance to that idea was squandered by the rhythmic persistence of the dragon's magic.

It was that persistence that made the magic work; convincing the kobold target that he was in fact meant to serve under a dragon's paw. Compelling the imperceivable into reality--making the kobold believe he was just a simple pad of rough-textured skin, meant for walking on and protecting the owner's dainty toes, and the more the kobold believed it...

"That's it... give yourself to my paw," the dragon purred from somewhere above.

She continued a song of submission, each melody breaking down and rebuilding the kobold into something new. First to go were his hands, dutifully rubbing and squishing her soft beans, then entirely melting into them. It was an odd feeling, still being able to move his arms around a bit but never capable of pulling them away from where they morphed into her paw pad. And it only got worse from there as his blue scales joined into her blue skin--nearly the same coloration.

She began to push down a little harder on the softening kobold, causing his forearms and his feet to get sucked into the pad next. Her singsong voice carried on and his body was pulled into a new life of servitude. It was a servitude he didn't want, except he didn't know that he didn't want that, because the dragon's tongue warped his thoughts as they were thought. Shouts to stop became pleas to continue. Cries for help became whimpers to become one with his rightful place.

And once his mind was cleared of the charm's effect, he'd have no way of voicing his complaints. Once fully assimilated, he'd have nothing but her paw pressing down on him, over and over and over again.

"Almost there, pad. It'll be fun grinding you against the dirt."

Indeed, the kobold's body was getting close to fully delving into that paw. His arms were only nubs now, as were the little that remained of his legs. The next to go would be his hips and torso--and even before that would be his face. The poor kobold wouldn't even get to see the last of his body go before his eyes were rendered useless. The compelling song made him do it, made him smear his liquifying face into the flesh between her pads. Eventually his head and brain therein are absorbed into the skin, but still he can feel and think by some oddity.

Deciding that she's reached the finality of her enchantment, she slams home her paw against the dirt, completely obliterating the remainder of the kobold's body into a blue goop that is sucked up into the paw. Her song ends with the last piece of him vanishing into her pad.

"There you are little one. Safe and sound in your new forever body--well, my body still, you're just a passenger come along for the ride. A sweaty, paw-stink life." She laughed cruelly at his fate. "I'm sure you'll come to love those things about me, in time."

He did smell her stink. He felt the dirt grinding so hard against him, and when she stepped forward, he saw light for a fleeting moment before being slammed back into the ground. He could hear her cheery humming as she carried him wherever she now went. And he tasted her paw--the same sweaty salt she'd been so polite to warn him about.

They stopped after a short walk. The dirt felt cooler here, and from what the kobold-turned-paw could see, there was shade from the cloudless, midday sky. She'd chosen someplace cooler to examine her new addition, which she now turned to face her.

"Oh, I can see where you joined me," she said, examining the kobold's new form with her scrutinous eyes. "The blue of your scales dotted the blue of my paw pad. How cute... Are you in there little one?"

She felt a presence within her paw, a faint tickle. She desired to spark that tickle by dragging her wet tongue across the meat of the pad. It worked as she'd hoped, and some life was riled into her newest prisoner. "There you are, paw-pet. I'm glad you like the attention. You may not get much of it from here on, but I'll try to remember you... for a while." She grinned nearly as wickedly as the creature of the void. "Ah--and every paw should know their owner's name! I am Alya, and you will serve_me_ from now on."

---

...

"YIIIIIIP!"

The kobold slammed back into place at the white void so viciously and suddenly. In front of him was the same mimic-kobold, and in his hands were the same black mirrors.

"So, how was it? A tantalizing taste of torment yet to come? A delectable doom that is your damnation?" The creature shook his head. "No! Don't tell me yet! Not until you've experienced what's behind mirror number two..."

The mirror in his right hand was reviewed thoughtfully by the mimic. "Oh yes... interesting. Very interesting. Not the tamest I've ever seen, but I've certainly seen worse fates. Perhaps you ought to see..."

Once again the mirror was turned around to face the kobold, and once again a different world existed in that tiny glass view, and once again he was pulled towards it and through it...

"Oof--yip..."

The landing was a bit more rough this time around--namely because it was on a hard surface rather than a cushioning field of grass. But what was the surface, and what were these outlandish objects off in the distance? The kobold could see things that he understood to be items of everyday use--refrigerator, a sink, microwave oven, and cabinets circling the walls. This was a kitchen the same as any other, only that it was magnitudes larger than anything he'd ever seen!

It seemed he was standing on the granite top of an island centerpiece. With the cold air and colder counter sapping him of heat, he much preferred the sunlit field on his scales.

"Oh! An unexpected visitor!"

"YIP!" The kobold spun around to face another dragon that appeared out of thin air--just as the first did! Since when were dragons known to be stealthy?

"What're you doing in here, cutie?" The dragon asked, his voice a deep, masculine rumble that might've rattled the kobold's bones from up close. "You are a bit lost, yeah? Not everyday a kobold winds up in my kitchen, haha!"

The kobold considered his options quickly as the dragon spoke. Making a break for it didn't help last time, and there weren't any hiding spots to run to anyways. The only thing he could do was dare a dive off the countertop--but he wasn't sure the impact would agree with his bones.

"Oh! I've forgotten my manners; my name is Esh!" The dragon curtsied with his neck to the tiny kobold on his counter. His cheek and head were adorned with wicked horns that might've unsettled the kobold... if the dragon himself weren't so ridiculously cheery. "Oh, you look like you're freezing!" Esh exclaimed, his great eyes showing dismay at such an insignificant kobold's wellbeing. "I've got just the thing to warm you up..."

Just as Esh wisped into reality, so too did the steaming bowl of something on the counter. Esh pulled this unknown bowl over to the kobold, allowing him to get a whiff of the contents.

"It's a gravy meant for the turkey--but the turkey isn't quite done yet," Esh explained. He reached to pick up the kobold between two meaty digits--so similar to the digits he'd lost himself in only moments prior--and deposited him on the rim of the bowl. "You can dip your toes to get a little heat back in your body! It should be just the right temperature for you."

The kobold saw no harm in trying it out. His paws dipped under the brown surface, oozing down into the thick liquid. The gravy filled around his toes and the gaps between. It was delightful--divine, even. There was no sense of cold distress in his paws anymore. The same could not be said for his upper torso and arms, shivering twice as bad now, as if the warmth returning to his paws was a source of envy for the rest of his body.

Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to...

"Oh!"

The dragon seemed a tad bit shocked when the kobold took the plunge, yet recovered with a chuckle. "I wasn't expecting a kobold to be taking a bath in my gravy bowl. A welcome surprise, at the very least. How does it feel, little one?"

The kobold yipped his contentment. There really wasn't any better way of returning the heat to his scales than a relaxing spa... that just so happened to be gravy flavored, which was a bonus in itself. The kobold didn't care to help himself to a few paws full of the liquid.

A distant rumble did rouse him from his ease. He turned to the dragon staring at him from above, and it was a concerning look he saw. A drooling, hungry look.

"Oh, uhm..." Esh swallowed his saliva with a noisy gulp. "Ehh, I'm certainly a bit hungry. This turkey is taking far longer to cook than I anticipated. I might... I might just have a try..."

Esh turned away as the kobold tried to process the turn of events. Was the nice dragon not to be trusted? Perhaps the kobold had invited himself to a one-way trip down Esh's gullet? Suddenly the kobold was not quite so interested in a gravy spa--but the walls of the bowl were too high, and he was sinking into the brown ooze as quickly as he tried to scamper up it!

"Here we are," Esh muttered, loud enough for the kobold to hear his return. The dragon was holding something now: a ladle, just the right size to fit a kobold within. "I might have to indulge myself just a bit, apologies. Just a little treat while I await the main course..."

The ladle entered the bowl as the kobold tried everything in his power to get away from it. It pushed under the surface, creating a recess that was filled in quick fashion, nearly pulling the kobold in as well.

"Shh. Do not worry little one. I just want a taste, nothing more!"

The spoon popped into Esh's mouth and was licked clean in seconds. The dragon groaned, which didn't seem a normal reaction to food, even when hungry, and the sudden brightness in his eyes was also concerning to the kobold.

"Oh wow... that was delicious..." The dragon's head swung in closer. "My dearest kobold--you are delicious..." Esh no longer seemed the same innocent dragon before; as much as his sweet talk still there, the looming threat of his wet maw was also there, too. "I maybe can't help myself to an appetizer. You did come into my home uninvited, so it doesn't seem so wrong to do with you as I please--and I am so pleased by your wonderful flavor..."

The spoon was back again, this time making a direct line for where the kobold was wading the surface. Swimming through the gravy was an impossibility; the sludge might as well have been quicksand with how stuck and vulnerable he was, so it was oh so easy for the Esh to pluck him out of the bowl and into the ladle.

"There you are. Don't worry, I'll make the trip down pleasant. And think of all the turkey gravy that'll join you soon after..." The dragon's compelling dialogue doesn't quell the kobold's heart, but there were no other options beside the teeth-filled one in front of the spoon. "Be a good snack and digest easy for me, okay?"

The dragon had no other words to give the kobold, and the kobold couldn't even get out a last yip before he was chomped. The entirety of the spoon was encased by hot and sticky walls. The kobold decided to abandon ship as soon as possible, jumping over the edge of the ladle and down onto the spongy surface of Esh's tongue. His movement teased out another groan from the cavernous throat--the very throat he'd be forced to descend, if the dragon lived up to his promise.

The spoon receded from Esh's maw, not even all the contents cleaned out. "Mmm~ you are a one-of-a-kind delicacy--a shame I only get to enjoy you once." More smothering action from the tongue as it licked him, rubbed him, and pressed him against the roof of Esh's mouth. "Can you forgive me for enjoying you so immensely? I wish we could've had a bit more fun together... but I am so hungry for you. I can't wait any longer..."

The little lizard knew what that entailed. He was on his last ticket off this realm--and into the nasty guts of the predator who'd slathered him up as a precursor to swallowing him down.

The world tilted toward the inescapable opening. Saliva pooled at the bottom, and the kobold hung on for as long as he could--but all it took was one lazy flop of the dragon's tongue to dislodge his grip, sending him careening down to his doom. It was an instinctual swallow that ended the poor kobold, taking no time to push him down that gullet, sliding further and further into the smelly abyss, and finally deposited into a horrid, bubbling landscape that was the dragon's stomach. So treacherous an environment inside such a gentle soul. There would be no gentleness from his digestive system.

"Mmm. Delightful all the way down. You made a nice bulge in my throat, snack, and my stomach yearns for more of you. I will remember you fondly..."

---

...

"YIIIIIIIPPP!"

Back again at the white expanse of nothingness. Back again with his chauffeur to the afterlife. While the blue-scaled kobold was less than pleased at being yanked around so abruptly, the mimic was positively beaming with... whatever energy a divine being contained.

"My oh my, back so soon! Well, far longer for you--what feels like minutes, hours, days, months, and the eons after... they're just a snap of the fingers for me. A necessity when you have so many visitors to entertain..." The mimic flashed his devilish smile to his faux brethren. "But alas I must pester you... which variety of damnation will it be? That is the ultimate answer I must seek out before our time here comes to a close."

The kobold considered the creatures words and the consequences of either choice. If he had no other options besides the two he just experienced firsthand, what would he decide to be his timeless fate?

"...Yip?"

"What?!"

The mimic's imitation faltered, distorted away, and for a moment, the kobold saw something far more abstract and horrible.

"Did you really ask that?" The mimic laughed. He bellowed and snorted, shimmered more brightly than ever as he did so. "In all my time--and that's a looong time--never once has there been a request... no, a_desire_ for both! Whatever is wrong in that tiny pea brain of yours?"

"Yip!" the kobold pouted, not enjoying the teasing of his alien counterpart. "Yip, yip yip! Yip yip--"

"Okay! Okay, enough with your yammering. I do not have the time nor the patience to argue the semantics, so... voila!"

A poof! blinded the kobold momentarily, and there was a twitching, tingling itch that scratched itself after a second--or perhaps years and years in this damning space of white. Once it dissipated, he was staring at another kobold, but this one was just as real as him. In fact, this one was him. He was staring at an exact replica of himself--not in a mirror or another summoned mirage. This new kobold was every bit another real and live being, a creature of flesh and blood like him.

"Two of you, split straight down the middle. One to experience each fate, while being linked together in mind so as to feel the other's," the mimic stated in satisfaction of a job well done. "Now off you two go--you wouldn't want to miss another second of forever!"

The mimic-kobold tilted their hands to drop the mirrors, but they did not fall. Instead, they expanded in size, and those same worlds from his past experiences were reborn again. Between the newborn doorways, the frightening smile beckoned them forward.

"Welcome to the end... and the beginning. Endure your eternal stay."