Episode 14 ~ Kobolds and Chronomancy

Calliope awoke to the soft hush of fading piano music, feeling more rested than she had in weeks. She pushed herself up from the thick mattress, reluctant to leave its plush embrace. This bed was better than the one in her tiny one-bedroom apartment—better than most things, honestly. The room still carried that warm, soothing scent of lavender and citrus.

Yawning, she rose, curls tousled from sleep, brushing them back with one hand. Her heart ticked gently—steady, comforted by the chill still radiating from her protective amulet. In the corner, Kuresh sat on a velvet chaise, messy black hair falling into his eyes, still absorbed in a book. Had he even slept?

“Kuresh,” she said, rubbing the last traces of sleep from her eyes. “We should go get breakfast.”

He gave a noncommittal grunt, but closed the book and stood, stretching with the grace of a cat.

Downstairs, the inn’s restaurant awaited like something out of a dream. The buffet was enormous, with more food than Calliope could have imagined—even in her most gluttonous fantasies.

She made a beeline for the waffle station, assembling a masterpiece of strawberries and cream. Mixing the batter, she poured it into the iron. Whatever enchantment fueled this place, it extended to the food—because the result was nothing short of divine.

Food still stirred her heart. She wasn’t some broken machine. She craved nourishment, warmth, sensation. She was still here.

Plating her creation to perfection—crisp waffle, syrup drizzled just right, berries glistening, whipped cream pillowed on top—she let the worries drift. Orion. The whisper to “find her.” That strange place she’d glimpsed—the garden gazebo beneath alien skies.

She sat down just as Arnos wandered in, clearly hungover, poking at a luxurious omelet that smelled of seared meat and expensive spices. Across the table, Kuresh stared into a plate of bacon as though it had personally offended him.

How, she wondered, could bacon look... sinful?

They ate quietly, letting the flavors speak where words didn’t need to. It took them a while to notice that Gideon was missing.

Not that it was unusual—Gideon’s absences had become a regular rhythm in their journey. The teenager was a bit of a hellion, younger than Calliope but always off chasing something. She just hoped this wasn’t one of those disappearances that ended with someone bailing her out of a rooftop brawl.

Calliope had just taken a bite of her glorious waffle when Tom, the town guard’s chief, approached their table.

“There’s something we could use your help with,” he said, casual but clipped. “A farm on the outskirts. Kobolds causing trouble in the fields.”

Without a word, Calliope reached into her neckline and drew out the small glass orb nestled in her décolletage. Inside, a single captured kobold floated in stasis, curled up like a guilty thought.

She raised an eyebrow.

“Funny,” she said. “We might already be familiar with the problem.”

“Kobly, do you—” she began, but Chief Tom’s eyes went wide.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t see you carrying around an unauthorized Class D magical creature,” he said, hands raised. “You’ll need to get a C-A Form filed.”

Calliope smiled smoothly. “Of course. Where can I do that?”

Her tone was honeyed, the kind that usually coaxed information from suspicious bureaucrats and tired guards alike.

“Just stop by the barracks,” he muttered, already backing away. “They’ll process it. There’ll be a vehicle waiting to drive you out to the farm.”

As he turned, Calliope glanced back at Kobly, still glowering in his orb.

“Kobly,” she said, holding him up. “Why would there be kobolds above ground?”

The tiny creature shifted, scaly tail twitching in annoyance. Arnos leaned in to give him a warning glare, but Kobly only huffed.

“We no go up unless Dragon says we go up,” he rasped.

Calliope’s breath caught. “Is there a dragon in this area?”

Kobly snorted. “No Dragon here.” She tucked the orb back into its place—nestled between her breasts, where the warmth calmed him almost instantly.

Arnos, still chewing through his regrets, muttered, “I don’t think I’m ever doin’ drugs again, lass.” Bits of omelet caught in his flaming beard, which charred them to ash. Kuresh was still stabbing at his bacon with slow, contemplative spite.

After finishing their meal, they made their way to the barracks. The paperwork for Kobly’s registration was filled out with minimal questions—though it would be a few days before the license was finalized.

The barracks weren’t all that different from the human ones she’d seen—busy, practical, humming with mild chaos. Soon, they were escorted to an old 1994 black-and-tan Isuzu Trooper. It gleamed oddly, as if enchanted with just enough glamour to still look stylish.

They piled in. The ride to the farm would take about an hour.

And as the vehicle rumbled to life, Calliope couldn't help but feel it again—the ticking heart beneath her ribs, the echo of distant piano keys, and that strange, unsettling sense that time was not quite linear anymore.

She wasn't even sure how the conversation started, but somewhere between the outskirts of town and open farmland, Arnos began to hold court once again—this time, enlightening her and Kuresh on the more baffling aspects of dwarven culture.

"Believe it or not, lass," Arnos said, puffing out his chest proudly as he stroked his flaming beard, "we grow turtles in all sorts o’ colors, matched to the size of a dwarf’s chest!"

Calliope blinked. "Turtle... shell... bras?" she said slowly, trying to imagine it.

"Aye! Colorful turtle shells!" Arnos beamed. "And we wear rabbit-skin underwear too! Very soft, very warm."

Her horrified thoughts practically froze her in place. We should not let him near any small, cute animals. She loved rabbits. And what had the turtles ever done to deserve such a fate?

Dwarves, she decided, were a very strange people.

Kuresh wasn’t saying a word. He just stared, his face a mix of disbelief and quiet alarm—his usual expression when exposed to Arnos’ cultural oversharing.

“Why,” Calliope finally muttered under her breath, “do I feel like I’ve just sinned by hearing that?”

Arnos only chuckled and leaned back into his seat. “You’ve never known comfort till you’ve worn a hare’s backside, lass.”

Calliope stared out the window, questioning every choice she’d ever made that led her into this exact moment.

The trees outside blurred as they drove deeper into farmland. Somewhere out there, kobolds were stirring—and possibly something more dangerous. But in the meantime… she tried not to imagine a dwarf modeling rabbit lingerie.

It didn’t help.

An older halfling woman named Margret Betty Smith came out to greet them as the vehicle pulled up to the edge of her farm. She was small and sturdy, with wiry gray hair tied back in a scarf and a floral apron dusted in flour. She had a sweetness about her, but her eyes darted constantly toward the field behind her house—tense, on edge.

“They took my husband’s foot,” she said without so much as a hello.

Calliope raised an eyebrow. “His actual foot?”

“Well, his prosthetic foot,” Margret clarified with a huff. “The left one. Snatched it right off while he was checking the irrigation line. He’s off in town gettin’ fitted for a new one, but I told him not to go out there in the first place.”

Calliope gave a slow nod. “Right. So… kobolds stole a prosthetic.”

“Stole it, bit it, who knows? All I know is it ain’t safe out there. Not anymore.”

There wasn’t much else to say. They had a job to do.

They crossed the yard toward the field, which looked unassuming enough—rows of leafy vegetables and half-tilled soil—but something about it hummed with wrongness, like a held breath waiting to exhale.

Arnos set down his briefcase and popped the latches. With a satisfying clack and hiss of steam, his Steel Defender unfolded itself and rose to its full height, metal limbs clicking into place like clockwork.

The construct looked around and, with a voice that somehow sounded both robotic and fed-up, said, “Fuck OSHA. No one is ever going to believe you.”

Calliope blinked. “Why… does it have a rainbow rave sticker?”

Across its plated chest, bold glittery letters read: Rave Baby.

Arnos shrugged. “It keeps the local kids from being scared of it.”

“Right,” she muttered. “Terrifying death machine, but festive.”

The field ahead was disturbingly still. Arnos took point, Steel Defender beside him, and Calliope lingered near the edge with Kuresh. The amulet at her chest pulsed with faint chill. Something stirred in the crops.

Then she saw them—small shadows weaving through the rows. Not quite human, not quite beast. Tiny snouts. Glinting eyes. Scaled limbs.

Kobolds.

Or something that looked like them.

And they were watching.

Combat started before there was time to think.

Arnos and his Steel Defender were swarmed almost instantly. The construct roared, steam hissing from its joints, while Arnos shouted something unintelligible and waded into the fray, warhammer swinging. Kobold blood and crushed chitin filled the air with sickening sounds.

Calliope stood still for a breath, heart ticking oddly in her chest—faster, but rhythmic. Her fingers closed around her wand. She could hear the echoes of time around her, her amulet pulsing cold against her skin. The ticking was different now.

Order in the chaos.

She exhaled slowly. “Orion, help,” she muttered under her breath, even knowing her mysterious maybe-boyfriend probably wasn’t listening. Still, prayers had weight. Even unspoken ones.

To her left, Kuresh cast with precision, shadowy magic lashing out in controlled arcs from where he stood safely out of melee range. A black spell surged past her with a sickening hiss. To her right, Arnos was in the thick of it, laughing like a maniac as one kobold got dragged halfway into his beard and came out slightly scorched.

Calliope raised her wand and felt the magic vibrate up her arm. One kobold—a particularly red and angry one—lunged at her, snarling. She flicked her wrist and sent him skyward with a burst of force. He screeched until gravity caught up and slammed him to the earth with a meaty crunch.

One by one, they fell.

Amid the chaos, she kept Kobly tucked close, secured in his favorite place between her breasts. She wasn’t about to let him see this. Or worse—get any ideas.

Near the end, as the last kobold limped forward, twitching and frothing at the mouth, Arnos stomped it with a grunt and pointed to the grotesque remains.

“This the bastard that ate your husband’s foot?”

A bit of kobold char clung to the edge of his flaming beard.

Margret didn’t hesitate.

With a shout and surprising speed, she rammed her pitchfork into the body again and again, vengeance radiating off her in waves. Her floral apron flapped violently in the breeze. Calliope winced.

She turned away and focused instead on the nearby flowerbeds, watching the breeze ruffle their petals.

Sometimes, it was better not to look

After it was over, Arnos and Kresh turned the kobolds into macabre little scarecrows in the field. She didn’t help, but instead, she stared at the flowers. Earlier, in the subways, she had taken two of those tiny kobold javelins to her thighs. Now, she waited as they finished and afterward had pie with Marget. She peered back from the glass window; the kobolds were strung up like warning signs. She longed to go home and watch the new Sailor Moon episodes.

A new guard—a fresh Izuzu trooper—arrived, and they headed back toward the city proper.