Labyrinthian

when getting caught up in the affairs of an all-powerful sorceress, don't be a weak kobold

Each of the Kobold’s steps left the items on the walls of the general store bump a little. Their overloaded knapsack practically overflowing with various swords, staffs, pieces of armour, and other assorted pieces of loot was about as heavy as the Kobold themselves, and with a huff, they lifted their haul up onto the bewildered shopkeeper's counter.

Looking over the sprawling pile of weapons, the human shop-keep stared down at the Kobold for a few moments before suddenly snapping into a far more cheerful demeanour, “Phwoar, looks like you’ve had a productive day of adventuring there, Niv!”

Nivomi the little orange Kobold beamed with pride as the store owner looked over the mountain of loot they dropped off in front of him, “Yup! There was this bandit camp and stuff, and well, it’s a long story, but I did end up scavenging a bunch of stuff! How much do you think that’s all worth?”

“Bloody hell, I’m not even sure! I’ll have to catalogue this all first,” The shop-keep started sorting through the swords at the top of the pile and adding up numbers on an abacus, “Remind me to never piss off a Kobold, will you?”

Chuckling, Niv propped themselves up onto a nearby stool and waited for him to get through all their loot. They whistled idly and dangled their legs as the shopkeeper started working through a pile of gems.

“Ah, before I forget, someone was in here earlier looking for you! I’m not sure how she knew you’d be here eventually, but here, take this,” The shopkeeper handed the Kobold a small cream-coloured envelope with a red wax seal.

“Whoa, what’s this?” Niv turned the envelope over in their claws, but didn’t find any identifying marks apart from the seal on the front. They didn’t recognise the symbol, but it looked like something mythological. “Did they say anything about me, or about this envelope?”

“Nah, they just said that they wanted me to give this to my ‘little yellow adventurer’, and I figured that meant you. They talked about some big labyrinth and how they were looking for talented adventures to fill it with or something… Anyway, here you go, 37 gold and 30 silver pieces!”

Much unlike their usual gold-loving self, Niv didn’t pay much attention to the small sack the shopkeeper was handing over, instead deciding slice open the top of the envelope with a claw and see what was inside it.

A bright flash blinded the Kobold the moment they looked inside the envelope, leaving Niv stumbling backwards and attempting to grab the shelves behind them, only… There were no shelves behind him. Instead, they stumbled backwards until landing on their tail, and as the blindness cleared, they looked around to discover that they were somewhere entirely different.

The Kobold got to their feet as they looked up at the seemingly endless cobblestone walls towering into the sky all around them. What looked like centuries of moss, vine growth, and neglect covered the surrounding walls, but a feeling in Niv’s gut told them that it was all a ruse. This wasn’t just some high-walled maze, this place was magical.

The walls were so wide and far apart that even if the Kobold wasn’t a third the height of an average human it still would’ve felt huge. “Jeez, there must be a good 20 feet gap between all these walls… What kind of creature is this place for?”

It didn’t take much wandering before Niv realised that this was the labyrinth that whoever was looking for them talked about. After turning a square and angular corner, they saw a long straight hallway lined on one side with half a dozen other paths to go. Being so small it was going to take a while for Niv to explore this place, so they decided to go down the first branch to their left.

“Eugh, what is this stuff?” Some slimy green liquid coated the floor beneath Niv’s claws. It wasn’t all that sticky, but it left trails to their feet with every step they took, and was pretty messy. “It’s like a regular slime trail but… How wide is this? Do slimes even get this big?”

The Kobold froze at the sound of loud gurgling and squelching noises from directly behind them. They ever so slowly turned their head until they were face to face with the giant slime that was causing all this mess. It was huge, almost too big to fit between the walls of the maze, and countless skeletons could be seen within its mass. Niv instinctively reached for their sword and hoped what little damage they could do would be enough to stop it from wanting to eat them, but after seeing it harmlessly sink into its mass and get absorbed, they realised that might not work out best for them.

“O-oh, uh, h-hi! I’m just… Going to go…”

The slow steps Niv took to get away from the thing quickly turned into a sprint after the slime roared angry gurgling at its fleeing prey. The Kobold had to fight with all their might not to let their feet get caught up in the trail of slime below as they ran, and with their disadvantage, the giant slime was gaining on them. Luckily, moments before they would’ve been ensnared, they spotted a fork in the road, one that wasn’t filled with its gooey trail.

With no time to catch their breath, Niv could only keep running from the slime that was still barrelling towards them, but at least now the goop on their claws had dried into a crumbling layer. Unfortunately, they now faced the bigger issue of discovering why the slime decided not to go this way in the first place: Nivomi almost tumbled head-first into a giant pit of lava, only avoiding the fiery fate after feeling the heat on their scales and stopping.

They were trapped between a rock and a hard place, but neither of them were particularly rock-like or hard. The Kobold only had seconds left before the giant slime caught up with them, so without even thinking about it, they made a leap of faith.

As if by a miracle, a vine fell from the cobblestone walls above and into the Kobold’s reach. They grabbed it with all their might, and after getting terrifyingly close to the pit of lava below, successfully swung to the other side. They kept running, not eager to find out if the slime had any ranged tricks up its sleeve, and after rounding a corner, Niv collapsed and panted on the floor. With no sword, Niv’s only other option for defence was to look through their bag– “Aaaaand of course it didn’t get teleported with me…”

The Kobold took a few minutes to recover after the ordeal and spent the time scraping slime off their claws and putting out the small fire that the lava ignited in their robes. In all their hurry to get away, they lost track of the slime, but once they made their way back to pit of lava, they realised that it didn’t retreat at all. Along the walls of the pit was a whole bunch of charred-looking green slime, and the lava itself looked a lot less hot than it did a few minutes ago. “Huh… It jumped right in after me…” With their life at stake, the Kobold shook the twang of guilt they felt and continued on in the endless labyrinth.

After a few more minutes of walking through empty corridors, they saw something they weren’t quite expecting: Someone else. He looked to be some kind of half-orc, and judging from how he was shattering endless undead skeletons using a giant morning-star with ease, he probably didn’t need much help in here. Niv watched from around a corner as the pile of bones at the half-orc’s feet grew, the fight lasting a few more minutes until the flow of skeletons coming out of the walls stopped. Niv cautiously stepped forward, but without even turning, the half-orc shouted at them.

“Oi, sod off, this is my territory! Find yer own way you little rodent!”

Niv didn’t need to be told twice, and ran back around the corner into the only other fork in the maze accessible. They weren’t really interested in going this way at first, but seeing as both other ways they could go involved lava or angry half-orcs, they thought a big pile of rubber sheets might not be too bad.

They stepped up to the giant pile of sheets before them, and experimentally picked one up. Knowing this place, Niv was sure that it was going to latch onto him and suffocate him instantly, but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, it really was just a thin sheet of shiny black latex in the shape of a big square. The Kobold put it back down on the pile, and clambered their way over it. The giant heap of rubber sheets was large enough that crawling up ended up being a little difficult, but it didn’t take long for them to manage it.

Upon surpassing that strange obstacle, Niv headed forwards a little further until they found a fork in the path. To their left was a relatively clear route with only an overhanging growth of plant-life bridging between the two walls to worry about, but what they saw to their right was enough to make the Kobold blush.

The path was a dead end, and in that dead end was a giant puddle of thick white liquid slowly spilling outwards. That wasn’t the part that made the Kobold blush, however, as that could be attributed to the dozens of giant cocks poking out through holes in the walls, each of them cumming more and more of that white goop with seemingly no end. Even through the thick walls Niv could hear the chorus of moans that the victims trapped within were making, all their varied genitalia somehow cursed to orgasm endlessly.

Niv slowly stepped backwards as the pool of cum grew ever larger. The choice here was an easy one, and the Kobold rushed under the greenery to avoid the sticky cum bath. Unfortunately, they looked up just in time to watch as a slimy green slug landed splat on their face. They crashed to the floor once more and tried to pull the slug off as soon as possible, but it was faster than they ever could’ve anticipated. It slithered straight to their ear, and squeezed its slimy length straight inside, disappearing within before Niv’s hand even had a chance to grab it.

Everything felt like it was underwater, and then high above the clouds, and then upside down, then boiling and freezing and twisting until finally everything snapped back into place. Except… Something else was in control. The Kobold got up off the floor and turned around, forced to watch as they stumbled over to the pit of cum against their will. Inside their mind Niv was screaming, but it didn’t matter. They had no way to stop the slug’s control over their body now that it had rewired itself into their nervous system. Their body paused at the edge of the sea of cum, and for a split second Niv thought it might be merciful, but the feeling of their legs winding up for a jump quickly dispelled that notion.

The Kobold practically flew through the air as they jumped from the edge of the gooey pool, and the last thing they saw before sinking into it all was the wall of cocks still splurting more on top of them.

Judging by how they regained control of their body the moment they splooshed into the pool of cum, Niv figured that the slug must have had a cruel streak, but right now they were just desperate to get back to ‘shore’. The thickness of the cum made every movement a struggle, and simply lifting their head above the surface was hard enough. Strings of gooey-ness followed them wherever they pulled, and they couldn’t remove the glue-like cum from their eyes as hard as they tried. The Kobold’s lungs were starting to burn, and with one last valiant effort they managed to open their maw. A row of gooey strings were ready to seal their mouth back shut at a moment’s notice, but for the time being, Niv could breathe.

Still entirely unable to see, they had to rely on blind luck to figure out if they were wading in the right direction. The glue-like properties of the cum were only becoming more obvious by the second, and within moments of being above the surface it felt like the stench of that stuff would never leave them. With every breath filtered through a web of gooey ropes, their only option was to get used to smelling like cum.

By some stroke of luck, they made it back to the shore, but what could they do now? Something urged them to keep going no matter what, and at the back of their mind they could tell it was probably the slug’s influence, but it didn’t matter. They couldn’t stop moving for a second.

With their glue-cum coated body trying to stick to every stone of the floor below progress was agonisingly slow, but then something started to feel different. Instead of hard cobblestone, they felt a more familiar feeling below, and after a second of thinking, it hit them. They were crawling onto the pile of latex sheets, and each one they touched instantly glued itself to their body the moment it made contact. Niv knew they should turn back, or even simply stop so that things wouldn’t get worse, but they couldn’t. They couldn’t stop themselves from crawling all over the pile of sheets, and with every movement more of their body found latex glued to it, the thick cum coating beneath splurting between the cracks and always providing more area for more layers of sheets to be glued on. Niv hoped they could get away with only their hands and legs getting covered, but even more unavoidable urges forced them to lie flat and roll around, helping rubbery sheets reach every part of their body. They could feel the weight of all that latex on their tail, their belly, their back, everything, and soon they reached the top of the hill once more.

One last command from the slug’s control forced Niv to roll themselves down the other side of the hill, and with that, every last part of their body had latex glued onto it. Including their face.

“Mmmmm mmmm mmmmph!”

The Kobold had no idea what to do. They hoped that maybe their claws could poke holes for them to breathe through, but their hands were curled up into latex-covered mitts, entirely useless even for trying to pry the sheets off. Their lungs were burning once more, and this time it felt like it might truly be the end. One last fruitless attempt at rubbing their face against the cobblestone floor later, all they could do was go limp.

A pair of holes were pinched into the latex sheets covering their nostrils. Niv inhaled deeply, sucking in all the air they needed before even considering who helped them out. Was it the half-orc from before? Did he come back to rescue them?

“My oh my, watching your run through my maze has been quite the delight…”

The Kobold could barely hear with their ears sealed under both glue-cum and latex, but they could tell that it was feminine. Was it the woman that the shopkeeper mentioned? Was she why they were here?

“You avoided countless dangers by pure luck before deciding that running head-first into a pit of lava was a good idea. I thought it a shame to let a creature as cute as you perish so quickly, so I offered a gift, and you swung across with it just in time. Unfortunately, you also killed a beloved pet of mine in the process, so now I need a replacement…”

Niv felt a hand cup their chin, lifting their head up towards the sky and presumably towards the face of whoever was speaking.

“Mmm… Your brain is already nice and rewired for obedience, so it looks like all I’ll need to do is give that slug of yours a few extra commands. It would be cute to watch you try and defeat the heroes I send here as a blinded cummy Kobold, but I think I’ll give you a few advantages. After all, I only need to unlock a piece of magical potential left inside of you…”

A hand pressed down on the Kobold’s forehead, and Niv felt some strange energy radiate from it. They could tell that it was doing something, but it wasn’t doing anything directly to them. Instead, it was the brain-slug that was getting some new orders, and those orders were relayed straight to the poor Kobold.

“I’m sure you’ll be an excellent monstrosity, my dear pet. Maybe you’ll even be better at defeating heroes than your predecessor! Now, here, take this draconic spark, and I’ll see you in half an hour~”

Niv felt themselves hovering into the air, and a few seconds later, something pressed into their abdomen. A searing heat burned through their body from the impact site, one that spread everywhere and made the Kobold feel like a baked potato within a skin of latex. They were sure it was going to burn them up alive, but instead, the most peculiar thing happened. The fire imbued itself into their very flesh, burning hotter than ever, but now it was a part of them. A fire ignited within their very core, and the transformations it brought with it brought unimaginable power to the once-Kobold it filled.

They felt their body growing larger as they fell down on all-fours, the crawling position once uncomfortable but rapidly becoming natural via the twisted growth of their corruption. The cum-and-latex seal covering their body didn’t break apart as it ordinarily should’ve, instead it too became a part of the creature they were now turning into. Already they were easily twice their size, then three times, and soon it became silly to even compare them to their old body. The thin scales beneath the latex bonded with the material above to become powerful and impervious scales massive enough to protect the growing dragon’s entire body. The creature that was one Nivomi let out a colossal roar as their maw pushed out and merged with the surrounding latex, opening to reveal a glue-cum interior to the latex dragon. Growing pains filled the monster with a powerful rage, one that fed into their burning core and propelled them from a mere creature to a full-blown monster.

The growth stopped. A pair of pitch-black shiny eyes opened and examined its surroundings. The cum-dripping draconic monstrosity stood in a cramped cobblestone maze, one within which its massive wings would be useless. Gooey cum dripped from both its maw and the gaps between its black latex scales, the dragon leaking cum wherever it moved. Looking behind it, the dragon saw nothing of interest aside from the small pile of latex sheets one of its hind legs were resting on, so onward it went. As it traversed the cramped corridors of the labyrinth, images flashed up within its mind. It knew exactly where to go and what to do to guard as much of the maze as possible, and it did not care how it was given that information.

As the dragon patrolled the labyrinth it left behind a trail of the cum it was made out of, and before long it could tell that it might be useful in ensnaring victims. The dragon’s pointed ears flicked, throwing cum against the wall, but more importantly zeroing in on a hero to be dealt with. They were nearby, and something about their noises felt familiar. A trickle of memories from an old life slipped through the cracks of its mind, and let the cum-dragon know about a particular half-orc.

Clinging to the walls, the dragon hid above everything as it closed up on its prey. It turned a corner, and there he was. The half-orc was fighting some low-level creatures placed as fodder throughout the labyrinth, and the dragon knew just how to deal with him.

The half-orc laughed a merry laugh as he tore through crowds of undead with his morning-star, entirely oblivious to the fact that something far more powerful had made him its target. A loud splorch interrupted the hero’s fighting, and looking behind them they realised that a giant blob of thick white goo landed right next to them. They turned around, ready to run, but it was already too late. The second glob splattered down from above onto the other side of the corridor, and left him cornered. The half-orc gulped, and looked up just in time to see the dripping maw of a massive rubber dragon clamp down onto him.

The dragon returned to its prowling on the ground now that the first of many heroes it would deal with was quickly dissolving into cum within its core. It froze for a second as something teleported onto its back, but before it struck, a soothing influence flooded its mind and let it know that the little creature was not to be feared.

“Gosh, how right was I? You look simply stunning in your new form, and you already dealt with a pest that’s been trying to chip at my mana levels for a few hours! My oh my, you’re going quite the useful pet in the coming months… It’s almost peak hero season, after all!”

The dragon growled, cum dribbling from its maw as always. It didn’t understand the creature’s words, and it didn’t care. All it needed to do was protect the Labyrinth.