Damn, you live like this? - Zola and Digs
Feb 22, 2024 12:22:15 GMT
Andy Davy and Zola Rhomdaen like this
Post by Tom M on Feb 22, 2024 12:22:15 GMT
Co-written with Zola Rhomdaen
As Digs is traversing through the sewer tunnels of Port Ffirst, he hears a voice being carried down from a half-open manhole overhead. The voice sounds familiar, gentle, and melodic — it’s Zola.
Digs is jumpier than usual right now and is startled. He scrambles up the bricks towards the manhole and a pair of yellow reptilian eyes scan the street scene as best they can in the blinding sunlight.
Her back is to turned to him, but the crystal crown, the double-pointed ears, and the thick, wavy, white hair are unmistakable. She appears to be chatting amicably with a pair of buskers — percussionists with drums around their waists. Eventually, the buskers pack up their things and bid Zola goodbye as they walk down a different street, and she turns to leave as well.
Digs watches from the manhole and as she walks away he begins to slink back down. He stops, sighs to himself, and instead clambers out into the daylight, pulling a hood over his head to protect his eyes.
He catches up with her and tugs at the skirt of her dress to get her attention.
Zola stops in her tracks and whirls around. “Can I help— Digs? Is that you?”
“Oh yeah.” He pulls back the hood briefly, “Hey Zola, just saw you and… wanted to say hi. That’s a nice dress.”
“Thanks. And hi.” She cocks her head to one side in curiosity. “Digs, is everything okay?”
The kobold covered in sewer grime, clearly ticcing nervously, and trying to ignore the sound of whatever dead draconic megalomaniac is currently ranting in his head, raises an eyebrow and gives a shot at looking nonchalant. “Yeah it’s… kinda? Yeah, no. How are you doing?” he ventures in an attempt to regain the nonchalance.
“I’m… fine? But you don’t seem to be?”
“Rough few days. Complicated. Are you going somewhere nice?”
“Just going back to the Flourished Hook. Do you… wanna talk about it? Over a drink?”
“Huh, I was there last week. I guess? You probably don’t want to go to my place in that dress.”
Zola’s one good eye lights up. “Oh right! You have a place in the sewers now, don’t you? I’d love to see it! If you don’t mind, of course.”
Digs seems to be doing some slightly concerned mental calculations. “No, that’d be… nice? And it’s private too, which helps. Just stick close to me on the way in.”
He’s able to disable all of the many, many traps along the way, except for a 20-foot long stretch of tunnel that has an axe that sweeps across about 3 feet above the ground. He suggests crawling, but a misty step circumvents it just as well.
“Wow, this is very elaborate,” Zola remarks as she follows behind Digs, eyeing up each and every trap with wonder, whilst lifting her skirt to avoid it getting stained by muck. When they reach the swinging axe, she vanishes in a puff of moonlit mist and reappears on the other side of the tunnel.
“Thanks, it’s kind of a hobby? And it keeps Grablag quiet.”
“Grablag?”
“Yeah, that’s a whole… thing.”
Digs opens a well-hidden hatch into one of the larger tunnels.
The first thing Zola sees is the massive skull of Vorax the blue dracolich suspended from the ceiling, but also the head of Covys the white dragon very poorly taxidermied on the wall. There are numerous crude target dummies and what looks like an aerobatic assault course hanging from the ceiling by several ropes and chains. The floor is smeared with repeated impacts and occasional pools of blood. On the far side of the room is a large chest with a small hammock set up directly above it. In a corner sits a wooden frame on which several rats, a seagull, and half a fish are air-drying.
Digs starts unclasping his armour, folding it up, and placing it on a rotting figurehead taken from a ship. He closes his eyes and sighs with relief as he does so. “What do you think?” He gestures proudly to the unhinged pit he’s created to live in.
Zola’s mouth hangs open for a while, as if she’s still processing that he lives in this poop- and blood-smeared deathtrap. On purpose.
“It’s… great!” She forces a grin. “Love the… decor.”
“Thanks! I put a lot of work into it.”
“Really looks like it! Um, is there somewhere I can sit? I don’t want to mess up your training course. You’ve clearly worked hard to set this up.”
“Oh, umm… yeah, I don’t often get guests.”
He thinks for a second before quickly dismantling one of the straw training dummies to leave just the mouldy, straw-stuffed burlap sack it has for a torso. He puts this makeshift cushion on the figurehead next to his armour. Zola sits down on it, folding her hands on her lap. She looks completely out of place here, but she pays no mind to it.
“So, who’s Grablag?”
“He’s a high priest of Gaknulak who, umm…” Digs rolls his eyes. “…kinda lives in my armour.”
The smile drops from her face and her gaze moves warily to the armour hanging from the figurehead. “Umm… What?”
Digs explains the whole situation. He opts for total honesty as he’s hoping for useful advice.
“…And yeah. They’re each talking to me all the time when I wear it and I thought I could listen to Grablag at least? But I don’t think he gives good advice either.”
The cheerfulness in Zola’s expression is all but gone now, replaced by a serious frown. “So there are souls trapped in your armour? Against their will? And you’ve been hunting for more.”
“Yeah, and that sounds fine because they’re dragons, but I met a dragon the other day who I don’t think was evil and I don’t know what to think about the whole thing now.” He gestures at the armour. “Those ones were evil, but this one sacrificed herself to help other people. I watched them do it. They… reminded me of Dorsey.”
“Dorsey. That’s the knight who saved you.”
“Yeah.” He slumps down onto the filthy floor crossed legged.
“And you’re surprised by this dragon’s self-sacrifice because you thought all dragons are evil. I was worried. I had an inkling you were carrying that belief, but I didn’t know how to broach the topic with you.” She heaves out a sigh. “It’s not true, Digs. No singular kind of creature is all evil, or all good. Every person is a unique individual.”
She points at the armour. “And this is wrong. You know it is.” The tone of her voice has been vacillating between gentleness and sternness. She understands where Digs is coming from, but she is clearly outraged by the injustice that has happened — is still happening — here. “Don’t you see that this makes you a tyrant?”
He springs up, indignant. “No, but that’s not fair!” He points at the hanging skull. “Vorax killed a whole kobold community. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe! He ate them, Zola, and they never did anything to deserve it. They spent their whole lives working to serve him and he killed all of them! It’s like the money thing where people get upset about me taking stuff from rich people and they take stuff all the time and they have these ‘rules’ and the rules only help them and they already have all these advantages anyway!”
“Vorax deserved death, and you’ve already given him that! Nobody deserves to be imprisoned and tortured for eternity, Digs, no matter what they did. These dragons are dead! They’re not even dragons anymore, they’re just souls. Now you have all the power over them.”
“But I can use that power to save other people! My whole,” he hesitates at the word, “family are being worked to death and sacrificed and everything else by a dragon just like that one, and-and-and why should one dragon’s life matter more than a thousand kobolds?”
His tone is angry, but almost pleading. “This armour means I can fix things! You told me that heroes can look all sorts of different ways, and I’m not big or strong like you, I can’t do magic, I don’t have any titles or anything that makes people do what I say. This is what me being a hero looks like, Zola!”
“No, Digs, you’re using this power to abuse souls who are now defenceless against you. There are so many ways to get stronger without needing to resort to this! Look around you!” She rises to her feet and sweeps across the lair, gesturing to the traps and the acrobatics course and the dummies. “Digs, you’re so, so smart and resourceful. You move faster than anything on Toril and, for goodness’ sake, I saw you steal a man’s sword from right under his nose! That was before you had this accursed armour. You’ve achieved great things without it and you don’t need it to save your village!”
“Yes I do! None of those things matter to dragons!” He starts counting things off on his fingers, “They’re smarter than I’ll ever be, they fly, they live forever, they’re so big, they do magic, you can’t hide from them, and you can’t steal weapons from them because the gods thought it was a good idea to give them everything just for being born and made it so I can’t even see properly in daylight, Zola.”
“And yet, you killed Vorax without the power of this armour!”
“Vorax was dead when I got there! Vorax was some blind, broken thing full of mushrooms. That’s all I helped kill.”
“A dracolich is even stronger, even more durable than a regular living dragon, do you realise that? You’re getting stuck in your own doubts, Digs. You are an extremely capable kobold. Why are you so insistent on believing that you aren’t?” Zola takes a deep breath in and out, and her voice softens. “If you don’t want to believe in yourself, would you at least believe me when I tell you that you’re pretty great?”
Digs was getting ready to spit back another angry reply, but he simmers down a little. It’s hard to tell in a kobold, but he doesn’t look like he’s slept properly in a while. He’s exhausted.
“It’s what they do, though. They make you doubt everything. I’ve seen all kinds of scary things, but it’s like, when they want to be, they can just be made of fear or something. I don’t even think that’s just me.” He picks up the armour. “When I wear this, I’m not afraid.” A predatory look begins to emerge on his face. “I’ve seen it in their eyes. When I wear this armour, they’re scared of me.”
“It’s true that dragons can do that… But you don’t need that armour to not be frightened of them. Do you know why? Because you can just stand next to me.”
Zola steps in to stand near Digs, planting her hands on her waist. Sure enough, there is a comforting aura, an aura of courage, that envelops his small, tired body. He physically staggers as the magic suppresses the fear that rules so much of his mind.
“Look,” she says gently. “Nobody’s expecting you to slay a dragon all on your own. Hardly anyone in history has done that. But you’ve got friends who will help you. You can count that as another one of your strengths, and you can be sure that does matter with fighting dragons.”
“…And some of those friends are in danger and don’t even know it,” he mutters.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I need to talk to Calla about something.” Digs looks at Zola with steely determination in his eyes. “I promise I’ll think about the armour, okay?”
“Wh— Um, okay?”
“But that can wait, I guess.” He yawns and smiles. “I don’t think you know how much these chats help me. I know I’m not the kind of person you want around in your fancy life, but if there is anything I can ever do to pay you back…”
“I do want you in my life. And I don’t expect anything in return from you, but thank you.”
Zola’s shoulders relax as she lets out another sigh. She wanders around the strange lair, hugging her arms to herself. “Well, I suppose you might want to know. I’ve decided that I will overthrow my mother, the matron. I will take over ruling the house from her.”
“Oh wow, that’s way bigger than my stuff. Do you need, like, an army and things?”
“No. Just a few good warriors. I’ve got… a plan. Of sorts.”
Digs sits cross-legged on the floor, hugging his folded-up armour as he listens. She sits down next to him and talks about her plan to attack House Rhomdaen in Aeschira, but it’s not long until he slumps over and falls into a deep, peaceful sleep with a smile on his face.
Zola gently scoops his little body up and puts him in the hammock. She finds a blanket made from a cut-up burlap sack and lays it over him, pausing to cast one last glance at the armour in his embrace.
Then she goes to stand at the entrance of the lair with arms akimbo. “Well, shit. Now how do I get out of here without triggering the traps…”
Unbeknownst to the paladin, in the hammock behind her — now beyond the reach of her aura — Digs’s body convulses and the smile goes away.
As Digs is traversing through the sewer tunnels of Port Ffirst, he hears a voice being carried down from a half-open manhole overhead. The voice sounds familiar, gentle, and melodic — it’s Zola.
Digs is jumpier than usual right now and is startled. He scrambles up the bricks towards the manhole and a pair of yellow reptilian eyes scan the street scene as best they can in the blinding sunlight.
Her back is to turned to him, but the crystal crown, the double-pointed ears, and the thick, wavy, white hair are unmistakable. She appears to be chatting amicably with a pair of buskers — percussionists with drums around their waists. Eventually, the buskers pack up their things and bid Zola goodbye as they walk down a different street, and she turns to leave as well.
Digs watches from the manhole and as she walks away he begins to slink back down. He stops, sighs to himself, and instead clambers out into the daylight, pulling a hood over his head to protect his eyes.
He catches up with her and tugs at the skirt of her dress to get her attention.
Zola stops in her tracks and whirls around. “Can I help— Digs? Is that you?”
“Oh yeah.” He pulls back the hood briefly, “Hey Zola, just saw you and… wanted to say hi. That’s a nice dress.”
“Thanks. And hi.” She cocks her head to one side in curiosity. “Digs, is everything okay?”
The kobold covered in sewer grime, clearly ticcing nervously, and trying to ignore the sound of whatever dead draconic megalomaniac is currently ranting in his head, raises an eyebrow and gives a shot at looking nonchalant. “Yeah it’s… kinda? Yeah, no. How are you doing?” he ventures in an attempt to regain the nonchalance.
“I’m… fine? But you don’t seem to be?”
“Rough few days. Complicated. Are you going somewhere nice?”
“Just going back to the Flourished Hook. Do you… wanna talk about it? Over a drink?”
“Huh, I was there last week. I guess? You probably don’t want to go to my place in that dress.”
Zola’s one good eye lights up. “Oh right! You have a place in the sewers now, don’t you? I’d love to see it! If you don’t mind, of course.”
Digs seems to be doing some slightly concerned mental calculations. “No, that’d be… nice? And it’s private too, which helps. Just stick close to me on the way in.”
He’s able to disable all of the many, many traps along the way, except for a 20-foot long stretch of tunnel that has an axe that sweeps across about 3 feet above the ground. He suggests crawling, but a misty step circumvents it just as well.
“Wow, this is very elaborate,” Zola remarks as she follows behind Digs, eyeing up each and every trap with wonder, whilst lifting her skirt to avoid it getting stained by muck. When they reach the swinging axe, she vanishes in a puff of moonlit mist and reappears on the other side of the tunnel.
“Thanks, it’s kind of a hobby? And it keeps Grablag quiet.”
“Grablag?”
“Yeah, that’s a whole… thing.”
Digs opens a well-hidden hatch into one of the larger tunnels.
The first thing Zola sees is the massive skull of Vorax the blue dracolich suspended from the ceiling, but also the head of Covys the white dragon very poorly taxidermied on the wall. There are numerous crude target dummies and what looks like an aerobatic assault course hanging from the ceiling by several ropes and chains. The floor is smeared with repeated impacts and occasional pools of blood. On the far side of the room is a large chest with a small hammock set up directly above it. In a corner sits a wooden frame on which several rats, a seagull, and half a fish are air-drying.
Digs starts unclasping his armour, folding it up, and placing it on a rotting figurehead taken from a ship. He closes his eyes and sighs with relief as he does so. “What do you think?” He gestures proudly to the unhinged pit he’s created to live in.
Zola’s mouth hangs open for a while, as if she’s still processing that he lives in this poop- and blood-smeared deathtrap. On purpose.
“It’s… great!” She forces a grin. “Love the… decor.”
“Thanks! I put a lot of work into it.”
“Really looks like it! Um, is there somewhere I can sit? I don’t want to mess up your training course. You’ve clearly worked hard to set this up.”
“Oh, umm… yeah, I don’t often get guests.”
He thinks for a second before quickly dismantling one of the straw training dummies to leave just the mouldy, straw-stuffed burlap sack it has for a torso. He puts this makeshift cushion on the figurehead next to his armour. Zola sits down on it, folding her hands on her lap. She looks completely out of place here, but she pays no mind to it.
“So, who’s Grablag?”
“He’s a high priest of Gaknulak who, umm…” Digs rolls his eyes. “…kinda lives in my armour.”
The smile drops from her face and her gaze moves warily to the armour hanging from the figurehead. “Umm… What?”
Digs explains the whole situation. He opts for total honesty as he’s hoping for useful advice.
“…And yeah. They’re each talking to me all the time when I wear it and I thought I could listen to Grablag at least? But I don’t think he gives good advice either.”
The cheerfulness in Zola’s expression is all but gone now, replaced by a serious frown. “So there are souls trapped in your armour? Against their will? And you’ve been hunting for more.”
“Yeah, and that sounds fine because they’re dragons, but I met a dragon the other day who I don’t think was evil and I don’t know what to think about the whole thing now.” He gestures at the armour. “Those ones were evil, but this one sacrificed herself to help other people. I watched them do it. They… reminded me of Dorsey.”
“Dorsey. That’s the knight who saved you.”
“Yeah.” He slumps down onto the filthy floor crossed legged.
“And you’re surprised by this dragon’s self-sacrifice because you thought all dragons are evil. I was worried. I had an inkling you were carrying that belief, but I didn’t know how to broach the topic with you.” She heaves out a sigh. “It’s not true, Digs. No singular kind of creature is all evil, or all good. Every person is a unique individual.”
She points at the armour. “And this is wrong. You know it is.” The tone of her voice has been vacillating between gentleness and sternness. She understands where Digs is coming from, but she is clearly outraged by the injustice that has happened — is still happening — here. “Don’t you see that this makes you a tyrant?”
He springs up, indignant. “No, but that’s not fair!” He points at the hanging skull. “Vorax killed a whole kobold community. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe! He ate them, Zola, and they never did anything to deserve it. They spent their whole lives working to serve him and he killed all of them! It’s like the money thing where people get upset about me taking stuff from rich people and they take stuff all the time and they have these ‘rules’ and the rules only help them and they already have all these advantages anyway!”
“Vorax deserved death, and you’ve already given him that! Nobody deserves to be imprisoned and tortured for eternity, Digs, no matter what they did. These dragons are dead! They’re not even dragons anymore, they’re just souls. Now you have all the power over them.”
“But I can use that power to save other people! My whole,” he hesitates at the word, “family are being worked to death and sacrificed and everything else by a dragon just like that one, and-and-and why should one dragon’s life matter more than a thousand kobolds?”
His tone is angry, but almost pleading. “This armour means I can fix things! You told me that heroes can look all sorts of different ways, and I’m not big or strong like you, I can’t do magic, I don’t have any titles or anything that makes people do what I say. This is what me being a hero looks like, Zola!”
“No, Digs, you’re using this power to abuse souls who are now defenceless against you. There are so many ways to get stronger without needing to resort to this! Look around you!” She rises to her feet and sweeps across the lair, gesturing to the traps and the acrobatics course and the dummies. “Digs, you’re so, so smart and resourceful. You move faster than anything on Toril and, for goodness’ sake, I saw you steal a man’s sword from right under his nose! That was before you had this accursed armour. You’ve achieved great things without it and you don’t need it to save your village!”
“Yes I do! None of those things matter to dragons!” He starts counting things off on his fingers, “They’re smarter than I’ll ever be, they fly, they live forever, they’re so big, they do magic, you can’t hide from them, and you can’t steal weapons from them because the gods thought it was a good idea to give them everything just for being born and made it so I can’t even see properly in daylight, Zola.”
“And yet, you killed Vorax without the power of this armour!”
“Vorax was dead when I got there! Vorax was some blind, broken thing full of mushrooms. That’s all I helped kill.”
“A dracolich is even stronger, even more durable than a regular living dragon, do you realise that? You’re getting stuck in your own doubts, Digs. You are an extremely capable kobold. Why are you so insistent on believing that you aren’t?” Zola takes a deep breath in and out, and her voice softens. “If you don’t want to believe in yourself, would you at least believe me when I tell you that you’re pretty great?”
Digs was getting ready to spit back another angry reply, but he simmers down a little. It’s hard to tell in a kobold, but he doesn’t look like he’s slept properly in a while. He’s exhausted.
“It’s what they do, though. They make you doubt everything. I’ve seen all kinds of scary things, but it’s like, when they want to be, they can just be made of fear or something. I don’t even think that’s just me.” He picks up the armour. “When I wear this, I’m not afraid.” A predatory look begins to emerge on his face. “I’ve seen it in their eyes. When I wear this armour, they’re scared of me.”
“It’s true that dragons can do that… But you don’t need that armour to not be frightened of them. Do you know why? Because you can just stand next to me.”
Zola steps in to stand near Digs, planting her hands on her waist. Sure enough, there is a comforting aura, an aura of courage, that envelops his small, tired body. He physically staggers as the magic suppresses the fear that rules so much of his mind.
“Look,” she says gently. “Nobody’s expecting you to slay a dragon all on your own. Hardly anyone in history has done that. But you’ve got friends who will help you. You can count that as another one of your strengths, and you can be sure that does matter with fighting dragons.”
“…And some of those friends are in danger and don’t even know it,” he mutters.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I need to talk to Calla about something.” Digs looks at Zola with steely determination in his eyes. “I promise I’ll think about the armour, okay?”
“Wh— Um, okay?”
“But that can wait, I guess.” He yawns and smiles. “I don’t think you know how much these chats help me. I know I’m not the kind of person you want around in your fancy life, but if there is anything I can ever do to pay you back…”
“I do want you in my life. And I don’t expect anything in return from you, but thank you.”
Zola’s shoulders relax as she lets out another sigh. She wanders around the strange lair, hugging her arms to herself. “Well, I suppose you might want to know. I’ve decided that I will overthrow my mother, the matron. I will take over ruling the house from her.”
“Oh wow, that’s way bigger than my stuff. Do you need, like, an army and things?”
“No. Just a few good warriors. I’ve got… a plan. Of sorts.”
Digs sits cross-legged on the floor, hugging his folded-up armour as he listens. She sits down next to him and talks about her plan to attack House Rhomdaen in Aeschira, but it’s not long until he slumps over and falls into a deep, peaceful sleep with a smile on his face.
Zola gently scoops his little body up and puts him in the hammock. She finds a blanket made from a cut-up burlap sack and lays it over him, pausing to cast one last glance at the armour in his embrace.
Then she goes to stand at the entrance of the lair with arms akimbo. “Well, shit. Now how do I get out of here without triggering the traps…”
Unbeknownst to the paladin, in the hammock behind her — now beyond the reach of her aura — Digs’s body convulses and the smile goes away.