Jinya's Skirmish

North of Storm Heights, in the Sifane Hills. A column of over a thousand kobolds was trudging slowly across the rolling hills, looking like a swarm of ants from afar. They were a transport convoy of the Kingdom of Cinders. "Hurry it up! Get all that gold moved—Lord Trump personally gave this order!" *Crack!* Holding a leather whip, Jinya lashed the ground fiercely, shouting orders at the kobolds gathered near the mine entrance. As vassals left behind at Storm Heights, the kobolds remained responsible for mining and transport. Day and night, they hauled gold ore from the mines, working with surprising diligence. The secret to their dedication was simple: those with outstanding performance would be rewarded with a dragon bloodline potion, transforming them into legendary winged kobolds—urds. With the deepening effects of the dragon bloodline, Jinya was now even capable of converting dragon-blooded kobolds himself, bestowing a Bloodline Boon upon them. Jinya's own appearance had grown increasingly akin to a true dragon. Though he still stood bipedal, he now measured over four meters from head to tail. His head resembled that of a wyrmling, and a ridge of bone spikes ran down his back. However, the gold tooth in his mouth looked quite miniature against his massively enlarged frame. Seeing a kobold stumble and fall, Jinya roared. "Roar—!" "Move it, you whelps! Don't you want to grow wings?" By now, Jinya's roar barely sounded like yapping bark anymore; it carried the resonance of a newborn dragon's roar. The fallen kobold scrambled up from the ground with difficulty, gathering the gold ore scattered across the dirt while muttering under his breath. "Tch, just got a little lucky, that's all. What's he putting on airs for?" "He's just an urd. One day I'll be one too..." This kobold was named Heiya, called so because of a mouth full of teeth so yellow they bordered on black—a naming convention favored among kobolds. Though sullen and defiant in speech, Heiya nonetheless gathered the ore back into his basket, shook himself off, and hurried to catch up with the convoy without stopping to rest. "Wait for me—!" Yet the column had already moved far ahead, and for the moment, Heiya couldn't close the gap. Behind him, a strange, howling gale swept in, sending an involuntary shiver through the cold-averse kobold. "Hiss..." "Great Red Dragon above, why is it so cold this time of year...?" The biting chill grew fiercer as it rushed up from behind him, stiffening Heiya's limbs until a thin layer of frost coated his scales. Just as Heiya opened his mouth to cry for help, a colossal shadow fell over him. Slowly, he looked up, and sheer terror instantly warped his ugly face. "Th-this is..." A frost giant standing over six meters tall, clad in crude armor of beast hide and bone, and wearing a horned helmet, gazed down at him while gripping a battleaxe. The frost giant pulled back his lips into a savage grin. "Ugly little thing..." "It must feel wonderful to crush you underfoot." Heiya scrambled to flee, but the freezing wind had already numbed his limbs. He looked up in horror as the beast-hide-wrapped foot grew larger and larger in his vision. *Splat!* With the sickening crunch of crushed flesh and bone, the kobold was flattened into a bloody paste beneath the giant's heel. The frost giant casually scraped the sole of his foot against the ground and grumbled impatiently, "Why is the road full of these little runts? They don't have anything worth looting." Behind him stood forty more frost giants. They were scouts from the Everfrost Tribe, dispatched by Chieftain Kasa to reconnoiter Storm Heights. "Tema, don't forget the chieftain's orders." "Don't waste time on these insignificant weaklings." The speaker had a deep, rumbling voice; he was the leader of this reconnaissance force. This frost giant stood apart from the rest, towering more than half a head over his peers. He wore clothes stitched from scales, gripped a long bone pick in his hand, and wore a pendant of long fangs across his chest. Frost giants fashioned clothing from beast hides and bones, carved trinkets from tusks, and repurposed the arms and armor of smaller foes—patching multiple shields together into crude armor, or binding sword blades to wooden shafts to make spears. Most frost giants wore such haphazard gear. To them, however, the finest spoils of war always came from dragon hunts. The truly great frost giant leaders donned armor fashioned from dragon scales and wielded weapons crafted from dragon bone—and this giant commander was no exception. His name was Baya Everfrost, Kasa's younger brother and captain of the frost giant hunting party, who had once taken part in slaying a white dragon. The frost giant named Tema pointed ahead and said, "Captain Baya, these kobolds aren't entirely insignificant. Look up ahead—that's clearly a transport column. "We can pry their mouths open and learn what's happening around here. After all, it's been decades since we frost giants marched south in force." Baya replied coldly, "You have a point. In that case... crush them." Freezing winds howled past as the earth rumbled. Several frost giants mounted on tundra landwyrms charged forward like moving mountains, trampling and pulverizing hundreds of kobolds. With a frigid expression, Baya charged at the forefront. A single swing of his bone pick obliterated over a dozen kobolds. To him, these creatures that barely reached his knees were as laughable as ants ripe for squashing. "Ambush!" "Heavens, what are those?" "Damn it, they're frost giants!" "The frost giants have marched south! The Frost Calamity is here!" Yapping wails and frantic cries erupted from the kobolds as they scattered in every direction. The dragon blood coursing through their veins made the kobolds fierce and aggressive, but that bravado only held against human militia. Before the crushing, absolute might of frost giants, any resistance was sheer folly. In the dire emergency, Jinya flapped his wings and took to the sky. Though terrified out of his wits, he instinctively tried to steady the situation: "Hold on, you whelps!" "They're just overgrown human buffoons!" "Hold out until the kingdom's reinforcements arrive!" Attracted by the familiar roar, Baya looked up into the air. His eyes narrowed slightly, an eager spark igniting within his icy blue pupils. "Is that... a wyrmling?" The frost giant licked his lips. Baya didn't recognize it as a kobold at all; instead, he took it for a misshapen dragon wyrmling, and the thought thrilled him. "To think we'd stumble into a windfall like this. Blood from a dragon like that must taste wonderful—probably quite different from a white dragon's. "It will make the finest trophy!" Baya vaulted down from his tundra landwyrm, scooped up a boulder from the ground, and hurled it straight into the air. *Whoosh—!* The rock traced an arc through the sky, but Jinya reacted quickly and dodged it. Yet Baya gave him no time to prepare. Gripping his bone pick tightly, the frost giant leaped more than ten meters into the air and hooked the winged kobold straight out of the sky with the pick's head. "Dragon, I'm going to rip off your hide!" Clutching Jinya's wing in his right hand, the frost giant roared in feral exhilaration.