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It’s quiet, the first night of freedom. Sounds of fear and confusion subside; the din of rebuilding is put off until tomorrow. There will be time, later, for the never-ending task of fixing what’s broken.
Now’s the time to mourn.
No rain hits Skraak’s scales when they silently emerge onto the surface of the island — of their island, their home, whether they want it or not. For the first time in years of still-hazy memories, the night sky is clear and star-lit. A bright moon shines on the keep, light bouncing off the wet stones of the courtyard and the rickety metal walkways above.
Neither Skraak nor their people waste any time watching in awe as every available surface fills with kobolds. They all know what to do. Acting on no orders but nearly forgotten rituals, thousands of skilled claws wordlessly dissemble the rotting, useless corpse of the Institute’s upper floors, heaving its wooden beams to the centre of the courtyard. Skraak leads a smaller group up the lighthouse while still others scour every inch of the tunnels and floors, searching for the familiar sight of red scales, too pale and still to be alive. It doesn’t take long; the sea of burned dead still lies at the top floor, where he remembers.
Gently, he picks up a half-charred body — Nyrkaa, his mind supplies, a skilled metalworker, hadn’t she just hatched her first clutch before this began? — and carries it — her — carefully down the stairs. Skraak can hear Sassraa following them with another body, and they don’t need to look at her to know they’re both thinking of the same thing. Of their own drugged bodies throwing corpses into the sea, obeying orders without a thought, numb to the loss or the bone-deep knowledge that kobolds must return to the fire. That a kobold alone at sea can’t find their way home.
Not anymore, he thinks forcefully, stepping into the courtyard where pyre is already taking shape. They’ll send them home now, to a better place than they’d died.
When the world was right and scores of dead did not litter their tunnels, each kobold would get their own fire, a solemn ceremony to remember a life. But no one has ever accused Skraak’s people of being impractical or inefficient, and the world is so, so wrong. So he lays Nyrkaa on the wood beside another — Treyak, right, they’d been funny, hadn’t they, always a joker from the time they were a hatchling — and hopes this is enough.
Skraak kneels now, joining the silent circles around the mound of wood and pale bodies, and tries to breathe slowly, like they were taught so long ago. He’s surprised by how easy it is. By how little he feels. Are the drugs still working their way out of their system, still flattening their emotions into nothingness? Or is there too much loss for them to feel anything anymore?
The shuffling of feet stirs Skraak, and they look up to see a ring of kobolds around the pyre. Makalk. Triaalk. Daleeka. Kytaa. Takal. Elders, though far fewer than he remembers. Far younger. The ones who’d moved too slowly for the humans had — Skraak pushes the thought down almost on instinct.
Their faces solemnly impassive, the Elders let loose their fire, coaxing the timber to life. For a moment they stand, watching the flame crawl along the wood, before turning back into the rows of kneeling kobolds, returning underground. Letting others come to the surface and add to the blazing pyre.
By the time that Skraak stands in front of the inferno, dozens have already lent it their flames, and it rises high, already burning through the first bodies, their faces — their names, their lives — obscured by the smoke. For a moment, he stares at the fire, transfixed not out of reverence for the dead and the ancient rites, but with a sudden, mounting fury.
He should not be here. The pyre should not be so big. But more than that, it should not be so empty, missing so many who will never be grieved, not properly. Skraak wants to yell with the force of all their fire, with the anger of a people who will never be the same again. Wants the fire to burn bright enough to call back all those lost at sea. Wants to scream and shout and kick until all of this isn’t real.
But this — they try to breathe slowly, like they were taught, like millions of kobolds have done before, like thousands will do today — this is a time of mourning. Anger can come. Vengeance will come. Rebuilding may come, no matter how strange and wrong it feels.
Today, they have to breathe.
So Skraak draws the hot air slowly to their lungs, feels the warmth fill their body and mix with their rage, soothing and rousing him all at one. Then, as gently as he would guide a hatchling home, he blows sparks onto the already-roaring pyre. Watches them join his people’s fire, making no difference at all and meaning so much. Watches the flames rise higher and higher, dancing into the sky.
Watches the stars in the sky, pinpricks of fire calling the dead home.