Chương 8: Basic Rations

Mark knew there was no way he had spent only fifteen hours in that dimensional pouch unless the definition of an hour was completely different in this world. He had slept three times. He had fully explored the warren and was certain he walked several miles to do it, which took hours. Plus he learned from Sage for several hours as well.

"No. I had to have been in there much longer than that. I slept three separate times. I explored for hours in the warren and I spent multiple hours learning about herbs. It was so much longer than fifteen hours.

"It was torture. The kobolds kept trying to make me worship a dragon. They never stop..." Wes suddenly turned a bit pale and looked down at the floor rather than down at Mark.

"Oh, guess I forgot to warn you. There is time dilation. The pouch runs at a three-to-one ratio, three subjective hours inside the pouch for every real hour outside. I should have warned you."

"You forgot to mention time runs three times faster in there?"

"I thought the extended rest would help." Wes lifted his head to look at Mark.

"When I returned and saw your readings had stayed high for so long, I knew I'd miscalculated. It's supposed to be the ideal environment for whichever familiar goes inside. I thought you would be upset if I took you out too soon and I know how rough you felt when I created you so I wanted you to have a lot of time with your own kind." Wes had not abandoned him, and when he saw the readings spike, he had pulled Mark out. So that at least was something good.

How could anyone think that was a comforting environment with the rats and praying kobolds who wouldn't accept no for an answer? If real kobolds thought that was ideal then Mark never wanted to meet one. Plus Wes had wanted Mark to stay longer in that hellhole so he would adapt and think of himself as a kobold.

Wes actually wanted him to feel comfortable with those robots, and likely hoped he would come out and love digging and building traps and eating rats so much that he would forget about his previous human life.

"Many of the kobolds were praying to some Great Scaled Master. They were celebrating their enslavement. They chanted over and over, 'We exist to please. We are grateful to serve.'" He met Wes's eyes.

"Watching them worship their chains was worse than anything else in there. One of the praying kobolds kept following me everywhere, even to my chambers. He wouldn't stop talking about how I needed to pray and chant all day to their guardian dragon. He only left when I faked sleeping." Wes's quill froze mid-stroke.

"Most familiars find the dimensional companions comforting."

"Those companions aren't comforting. They only respond to specific words otherwise they stay in the same loop over and over again. Most are more isolating than true solitude. I did learn about herbs from an older kobold named Sage, but even she, because of something I said, was stuck calling me B52 instead of Mark."

"I can change the settings," Wes said, scribbling another note.

"Perhaps have them exhibit more personality and be able to speak more than before. It will likely make them far fewer so I think each kobold may have multiple training modules instead of just one. It will take more magic and I won't be able to maintain time dilation but it sounds like you did not like that feature much anyway." No, Mark did not like that feature, and he just realized that Wes had just confirmed his theory about the pouch being basically a tutorial.

"The praying and chanting wasn't the only bad part, though." Wes looked up.

"What else was an issue?"

"Well for one I evidently lived on forty-five hours of raw rats." The quill stopped.

"Rats? That's all the warren provided?"

"There was one squirrel, too. According to Sage, the food offered was kobold-appropriate basic rations. I'd like that setting changed." Mark paused a second before continuing.

"I complained to the ceiling loudly after the third sleep cycle, and the next pile had a squirrel in it, so apparently the customer-service department was listening somehow." Wes's face paled.

"Right. The dimensional pouch automatic provisioning system was active and I did have it on the basic setting." He dragged a hand through his disheveled hair.

"I didn't think..."

"Just tell me I can eat something other than rodents." Mark leaned forward.

"Fruit, vegetables, cheese, cooked meat that isn't vermin." Wes shrank back, looking noticeably younger and uncertain.

"You can eat other meats, but kobolds are mostly carnivorous and most of their diet tends to be insects, rodents, moss, and fungi and the like.

"They would be willing to eat lots of other animals I'm sure but insects and rats or mice are probably the most common foods they have available meat wise. By having rats available instead of insects you likely had what most kobolds would consider a feast."

"I have memories of being a human. No, I will never think that rats are a feast. Sure it tasted fine once I forced myself to eat it, but they're rats! It's absolutely disgusting just to think about. Imagine if you went forty-five hours eating nothing but raw rodents. Would you call that a feast?"

"The human memories complicate things. I agree that sounds disgusting to me too. I know kobolds don't cook food, but I don't know if it's because they haven't figured out how to make fires or if it doesn't taste good to them. They are very innovative in making things, so I assume they know about fire and just don't like things cooked or it's considered too much trouble for them. I seem to remember hearing that often kobolds prefer spoiled foods since it has more taste.

They are notorious at being poison resistant and the like." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Spoiled… foods… what the hell. No, I am not eating foods that are spoiled. Wes kept talking, "I grew up on a farm, and my father traded with the local kobold warren. My mother made excellent stew from their mushrooms. I'll ask her for the recipe on my next visit, and I'll check with my professors about whether you can eat other things.

Maybe bread and produce simply don't reach underground warrens very often."

"I saw some blue and green mushrooms in the warren that emitted a blue green light. Would those be safe to eat? Were those the mushrooms your mother cooked the stew with?" Wes looked at him strangely.

"No, those weren't the mushrooms but I guarantee even if they were poisonous to me they'd be safe for you. Kobolds can eat poison mushrooms without any issue. That's what they've told me anyway."

"Did you know any kobolds? What did you think of them? You didn't seem happy that I was a kobold."

"My father handled the trading, but I met a few kobolds who came aboveground to scavenge. When I was twelve, one of them became my friend. He loved seeing the stars, so for a few weeks we met outside at night. His double talk annoyed me, but he was clever, and he was the only one in his clutch brave enough to approach a human boy.

"Then he told me he was three. He explained that kobolds mature quickly and that we were about the same age by the standards of our species. All I heard was three. That was also the year I learned I could use magic, and I started worrying about what people would think of a future wizard playing with a kobold toddler. The next few times he came, I ignored him. Eventually, he stopped coming." Wes stared at the quill between his fingers.

"A few years later, I realized I'd thrown away a friend because I wanted to feel important."

"I was angry when you turned out to be a kobold because everyone had convinced me the right ingredients would produce a dragonkin. Then you woke up staring at yourself and behaving strangely, and I decided you were a particularly stupid kobold."

"I was traumatized! I still am, in fact. I woke with no memory, discovered I was covered in scales, and then had an entire human lifetime flood into my head. I think I behaved remarkably well, considering." Wes laughed.

"Well I know that now. Hmmm… so the human memories didn't come immediately and they were fragments. This is just further proof you were newly created. Have you accepted that yet?" Mark narrowed his eyes and bared his teeth.

"If you start this again, I will bite you. You can believe that but you can't convince me these memories aren't real." Wes raised both hands.

"Fine. I won't try to convince you. Not now."

"How old do you think I am as a kobold? I looked a bit small compared to other kobolds in the warren."

"Magical constructs all start off as adolescents for their species. You will age to adulthood and then stop aging." Wes then said, "Right now you are probably around three or four years old as a kobold. You look very different from my former friend though, he was green."

"Stop aging? Wes, what do you mean by stop aging?" Wes smiled.

"Well I finally got some good news for you. Magical constructs stop aging once they reach adulthood. They aren't immortal as they can still die in battle or by losing their source of power and not replacing it but as long as neither of those happens you are pretty much immortal." Immortality, but with an exit if he ever needed one. If he had received that gift on Earth and could have shared it with Sarah and Emma, it would have been the best news imaginable.

Here it meant an endless life as a kobold familiar, dependent on a bond for survival and cut off from everyone he loved. He could not think about forever yet, so he retreated to the smaller problem.

"Since you believe you created me and put me in this body, if I'm stuck eating raw meat, bugs, and mushrooms, maybe you can occasionally join me in those delicacies." Wes's grimace suggested this would never happen. Well, it was worth a shot.

"Please, turn off the time dilation, and give the kobolds more personality. I like Sage but you can get rid of any of the others if you want."

"Done." Wes tapped his wand against the pouch. Blue light flared.

"One-to-one time. I'll create better companions. If I lower their count by half that should allow their individual adaptability to improve." Wes tapped his wand a few more times on the pouch, "And I'll stock real meat. Chicken, pork, and rabbit. Getting rid of the time dilation should allow it." Mark's tail was suddenly raised and wagging.

"How about some steak?" Wes wrinkled his brow.

"What's steak?" The conversation that followed was educational, but a little heartbreaking to Mark. Cows had existed once in this world, but dragons had found them particularly appealing and the species had not survived their interest. Minotaurs, descended from that same ancient stock, were citizens and therefore not on the menu. Pigs existed but ran greenish due to ancient orcish influence in the bloodline, which most people found off-putting though many considered it a delicacy.

Most other meats otherwise seemed consistent with his Earth memories. The bright point was yarik, a large catlike creature whose meat was considered a luxury. While consulting the pouch guide, Wes discovered he could add it to the warren's provisions. Better meat consumed more magic than basic rations, so yarik would remain an occasional treat. Even so, Wes was delighted by a loophole the pouch's designers had apparently missed: the owner could remove whatever meat the pouch generated.

"Yarik is so expensive I've only had it a handful of times. My boss Morty gave me my first bite. He's a ratkin and thinks it's hilarious that his favorite food is a giant cat." Mark stared at him.

"Will a ratkin be offended that I've spent the last two days eating rats?"

"Morty is a person, not an oversized rat. Beastkin hate that comparison. He won't care what you ate." Mark still decided not to lead with the subject when they met. When Wes mentioned sleeping in the pouch again, Mark made his position clear.

"I'd rather sleep on your floor than go back to that pouch for a full night, even with improvements." Wes's head tilted.

"You'd choose my floor over a pocket dimension designed for kobold comfort?"

"I'd choose sleeping in reality over being trapped in a prison any day. I need interaction, even with a wizard who thinks I'm a construct. A kobold utopia isn't my utopia, but I doubt a real kobold would be excited about that place either. At least I hope they wouldn't.

"I'm fine going there for training. I have so much more to learn with Sage. I'm honestly excited to see her with more personality but I have no interest in just going in the pouch to sleep."

"You can stay out whenever you want." Wes looked actually pleased at this revelation. Wes continued, "My friend Sannic has a goblin familiar who drags things out constantly. It's mostly bones and things better left inside, but the principle works fine. You can bring out the yarik when I stock it, and if you want your bed to go out here you can take it out. Unless you want to sleep at the foot of my bed." No… that was not happening. I'm not his dog.

"Thank you, but I think I'll bring my bed out. It's just furs but it is more than big enough for me and should keep me from getting too cold from the stone floor." Mark wanted a better look at Wes's room in daylight. As he turned, however, his tail swept through a stack of books. Three heavy tomes crashed onto the stone.

"Sorry!" Mark caught his tail in both hands.

"I'm still not used to it."

"You'll develop control with time." Mark looked down at the red-and-bronze tail twisting between his claws. Time, apparently, was one thing he had plenty of.