God Agent: All Hail The Great Kobold

Lady Zira stood quietly beside one of the wounded warriors, watching Za’r work with careful concentration. The young kobold had crushed several unique herbs into a thick mixture and was now rubbing it over the warrior’s knee, where one of Lucy’s arrows had struck him during the battle. The wound had already been treated once to remove the arrow and stop the bleeding, but the flesh around it remained swollen and angry. The moment Za’r pressed the herbal mixture against the injury, the warrior flinched and his claws dug into the edge of the wooden stool beneath him.

"Easy," Za’r said quietly, though her voice lacked its usual warmth. "It will hurt for a while, but the swelling should go down faster."

The warrior nodded through gritted teeth while Za’r continued applying the mixture until the wound was properly covered. When she was satisfied, she pulled her hands away and scraped the remaining mixture from her fingers onto the broken piece of pottery she had been using as a container. Lady Zira immediately stepped forward with a clean strip of cloth and carefully wrapped it around the warrior’s knee, tying it tightly enough to keep the herbs in place without cutting off circulation.

"There," Lady Zira said as she checked the knot. "Try not to put too much weight on it. If you tear the wound open again, Za’r will have to treat you twice."

The warrior gave a weak smile before nodding. "I understand."

Around them, several female kobolds continued working with the wounded scattered throughout the room. Some washed blood from cuts while others crushed herbs, boiled water or replaced old bandages. Normally, there would have been conversation and laughter between the workers. The healing room had always been one of the few places in the colony where people could work for hours without realizing how quickly time had passed because someone was always talking about something. Today, however, the mood was noticeably quieter.

The reason was impossible to miss.

Za’r.

She moved from one task to another without complaining, but there was something absent from her movements. Her usual energy had disappeared. She answered when spoken to, but only with short responses, and even when the younger kobolds tried to make her laugh, she only forced a small smile before returning to work. Lady Zira had watched her closely throughout the morning and knew exactly what was wrong.

When she finished tying the cloth around the warrior’s knee, Lady Zira turned around just in time to see Za’r packing her tools into a small woven pouch. She placed the remaining herbs inside, wiped her hands with a damp cloth and headed toward the exit without saying anything to the others.

Lady Zira hurried after her.

"Hey... Are you okay?" she called out.

Za’r stopped and looked over her shoulder with slight surprise in her eyes. For a moment, she simply stared at Lady Zira before giving a dry nod.

"I’m fine," she said unenthusiastically.

The answer came too quickly to be convincing. Za’r immediately turned around and continued walking, clearly hoping the conversation would end there.

Lady Zira watched her for a moment before releasing a sad sigh. It pained her to see the usually cheerful and friendly Za’r like this. The young kobold had always carried warmth wherever she went. Even when the others argued, Za’r was usually the first to pull them back together. Seeing her shoulders lowered and her eyes dull made Lady Zira feel as though something important had been taken from the colony.

She hurried forward until she was walking beside her. Za’r gave her a brief glance but quickly returned her attention to the path ahead.

"You know, my story with Tud’or is quite similar to yours," Lady Zira said. "In fact, I think you have it better than me."

That immediately caught Za’r’s attention. A small amount of curiosity finally returned to her eyes.

"Really?" she asked in surprise.

"Of course," Lady Zira replied with a frustrated expression. "Tud’or was a bonehead with not even one strand of romance in his warrior soul."

Za’r giggled despite herself.

Lady Zira noticed the sound and smiled faintly. She remembered how intimidating Tud’or had been when the children first began working together. Even during those days when they were nothing more than young kobolds digging drainage channels outside the cave to stop flooding, Tud’or had treated everything with the seriousness of a military campaign. He would stand over everyone with crossed arms, making sure no one wasted time or abandoned their assigned section.

Even as children, most of them had been slightly afraid of him.

Za’r could understand why Lady Zira found him frustrating.

"How did you even get him to stay?" Za’r asked.

Lady Zira’s smile slowly faded. She shook her head.

"I couldn’t."

Za’r’s eyes widened. "Really?"

Lady Zira nodded with a bitter smile as they turned left through one of the quieter passages of the colony. "For fifteen years, I was constantly waiting for him to return from expeditions, wondering if that would be the day someone carried him back to me as a corpse. I got so good at cleaning wounds because he was always getting hurt."

Za’r’s expression gradually became serious.

Fifteen years was a significant amount of time for kobolds. Those without magic usually lived for a little over thirty years if they were fortunate enough to avoid disease, predators and violence. Those who awakened magic could live past fifty, while exceptional cases like Kong’gong were almost unheard of. After reaching the Gold Core Realm, his lifespan had increased dramatically, and if nothing unexpected happened, he might become the only kobold in Vaal’kor’s history to approach seventy years of age. That was basically the lifespan of a human!

For someone like Lady Zira, waiting fifteen years meant waiting through nearly half the expected lifetime of an ordinary kobold.

"Isn’t that a little too much?" Za’r asked.

Lady Zira shook her head. "That’s what I thought too."

Her expression became distant as an old memory returned to her. "Until the final day."

Za’r remained silent.

Lady Zira’s steps slowed slightly as she continued. "He came back covered in blood and wounds, but he wore the biggest smile I had ever seen. Even today, I don’t think I have ever seen him happier."

Za’r noticed Lady Zira’s eyes beginning to shake with emotion.

"Do you know what he told me?"

Za’r was taken aback by the sudden intensity in her voice. "What did he say?"

At that point, tears were already running down Lady Zira’s cheeks.

"He told me he wouldn’t be leaving anymore. He said he had finally created the perfect technique and that now he could protect me and everyone else properly."

Za’r froze.

Images immediately flashed through her mind and a tear slowly ran down her left cheek.

"Don’t tell me..."

Lady Zira nodded with a bitter smile. "He was talking about the Elemental Body."

The realization settled heavily between them.

"And he was right," Lady Zira continued, her voice trembling. "He did protect us with that technique. It took him fifteen years to create it, and when the time finally came, he used it exactly the way he promised he would."

Thud!

Lady Zira suddenly stopped walking. Za’r stopped beside her before looking around, only then realizing where they were.

They were standing in front of what had once been Tud’or’s room.

The door remained open and inside, his charred corpse was still resting where they had placed it. Even in death, the posture made it look like he was ready to fight.

His corpse alone was proof that Tud’or had never stopped resisting until the very moment his life ended.

Za’r’s chest tightened.

Lady Zira stared at her partner’s body for several seconds before wiping her face.

"What I’m trying to say is that whatever Ka’z is doing, he’s doing it because of you and all of us. I promise you that when he’s done, he will be so excited to show you everything that you will finally understand why he’s working so hard." She turned toward Za’r, her expression filled with painful certainty. "So don’t ever think he doesn’t love you."

Za’r slowly nodded, but something inside her still resisted those words.

"I don’t want a hero."

Lady Zira looked at her before a small smile appeared on her face. She stepped closer and gently patted Za’r’s hair.

"Men will always try to make life safer and better for the people they love," she said quietly. "All men want to be heroes to someone. It’s not something you can easily change."

Za’r lowered her eyes. She understood what Lady Zira meant, but that was precisely what frightened her.

Heroes fought battles, carried burdens, walked into danger because everyone believed they could survive it and eventually, heroes became the people left behind in stories while everyone else was forced to remember them.

Za’r slowly looked toward Tud’or’s corpse again, and her hand unconsciously tightened around the pouch containing her herbal tools.

She didn’t want Ka’z to become another legend Vaal’kor mourned. She just wanted him to come home.

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