Ren of Atikala

Ren of Atikala by David Adams

  Copyright David Adams

  2013

  I am Ren of Atikala. Kobold. Sorcerer. Warrior. I am many things and I have many stories to tell. This one is about my home.

  Home. The word has a special resonance with us all. Great or humble, rich or poor, everyone cherishes their home and if deprived of it loses a piece of themselves.

  I remember looking back at Atikala, its ceiling collapsed in, the homes of fifty thousand kobolds crushed under unimaginable tonnes of rock and dirt. I remembering the feeling of horror and denial that immediately set in. I wanted to reject that this had happened to me, to scream to the ceiling until the rock receded, until fate changed its mind and restored everything to the way it was. I thought that life could not be so cruel as to take everything I'd known in an instant.

  Oh, how I now understand that life can be capricious indeed.

  This is story of how I came to the surface of Drathari and unwillingly traded a life for a life.

  Book one of the Kobolds series.

  Books by David Adams

  The Lacuna series (science fiction)

  Lacuna

  The Sands of Karathi

  The Spectre of Oblivion

  The Ashes of Humanity

  The Prelude to Eternity

  The Requiem of Steel (coming 2015)

  The Kobolds series (fantasy)

  Ren of Atikala

  The Scars of Northaven

  The Empire of Dust (coming 2015)

  Stories in the Kobolds universe

  The Pariahs

  The Pariahs: Freelands (coming 2015)

  Sacrifice

  Stories in the Lacuna universe

  Magnet

  Magnet: Special Mission

  Magnet: Marauder

  Magnet: Scarecrow

  Magnet Saves Christmas

  Magnet: Ironheart (coming 2015)

  Faith

  Imperfect

  Other Books

  Insufficient

  Insurrection

  Injustice (coming 2015)

  Who Will Save Supergirl?

  Evelyn’s Locket

  Ren of Atikala

  The Last Prophecy of the Gods

  On the final day of the final year of the Age of Immortality, the Gods promised they would do something unprecedented and beyond mortal understanding. This collective act was to usher in a new age for all the races of Drathari.

  Instead, on that day, the Gods died.

  Now prayers go unanswered, prophecies no longer hold, and the ancient magic used to heal wounds, extend life, and return the dead has long passed away. All that remains are the mortal races, struggling to survive and constantly at war.

  This is the Age of Betrayal.

  PROLOGUE

  The Cycle, Interrupted

  I WAS BORN DEAD.

  A living creature had not come back to life in many years. My rebirth must have been a surprising event indeed to those who witnessed it, especially such an insignificant creature as I.

  A kobold. A creature little more than vermin by most of the world, standing three feet tall and weighing fifty pounds, had crawled back from the grave before even cracking her shell.

  In the northernmost part of the world of Drathari in a place known as the Skycrown lay the sprawling underworld caverns that held the kobold city of Atikala. Here, hundreds of the fast-breeding kobolds were hatched every day. An egg was named as it was laid, the names taken from a registry and returned upon death.

  We were not the product of two souls in love, nor were they born into caring families as were humans, elves, or the hated gnomes. This was not our way. Instead, just as with almost every aspect of our rigid and inflexible lives, we had a system.

  Every wyrmling hatched in Atikala breathed its first breath in the nursery—the cavern that was the deepest, strongest, most protected part of the entire city. We meticulously recorded its parentage in our libraries before it was put to work as a craftsman, warrior, or some other assigned task, reproducing at the age of six winters, and toiling until killed by war, misadventure, or overwork.

  This was the cycle. Birth, assignment, reproduction, death. It was a system ruthlessly enforced with unwavering devotion, and our society flourished for it.

  However sometimes things went wrong. Sometimes order was not upheld.

  For every clutch of eggs the system produced, and it produced many, some were not viable. Those that did not contain the spark of life had their names reclaimed, the dead eggs cast into the furnaces, becoming fuel for the fires that heated the great central nursery and drove the forges we used to create tools and weapons.

  So it was for me.

  My dead egg was cast into the furnace with a dozen or so others; the fire burned around us, and one by one, they were consumed by the flames, soon reduced to nothing.

  Yet I was not.

  When the great conflagration died down, my protective shell sat unharmed and cradled in a pile of ash, glowing with a faint golden light.

  The first thing I remembered was the glow.

  This was a strange event indeed, seen from the inside of an egg, living inside a hardened shell. I remember the light, bright but welcoming, and the sincere feeling of comfort that accompanied it. Then movement. My egg was brought before the high sorceress assigned to watch over the clutch. I remember this moment most distinctly of all. Impossibly oversized claws enveloping my home, and I remember hearing her voice. The voice of Tzala.

  “You were certain that it was without life?”

  Dragons are hatched knowing how to speak. The same is true for my kind. We all know the tongue of our forebearers, and even before I had left my shell, I understood the nuances of our people. It was instinct. A racial memory we all possessed.

  Another voice, female, unknown to me. “Yes, Leader. Cold as the stone, it was. I used the wand to verify it; there was no spark. Protocol demanded it be destroyed.” There was a faint shuffling, claws scratching on the stone underfoot. “Am I to report for execution?”

  “You followed protocol,” the voice holding me reminded her, “and your duty was clear. You could not have foreseen the egg’s survival, plucked from death’s embrace by fate itself.”

  “Very well, Leader. With your blessing I will return to my labours.”

  I heard the kobold leave, and my home turned over and over in Tzala’s claws, a strange but not uncomfortable sensation. I felt drawn to her, comforted by her voice. She was known to me. I had met her already somehow, although I didn’t understand it. My earliest memories, however, did not reach any further back than the fading heat of the flames; my second birth in a roaring pit of fire.

  “How is this possible?” Tzala mused. “What are you?”

  Beyond this, I remember nothing.

  ACT I

  The Only Way to Go Is Up