Number 4! If you're still ogling these and haven't fave'd the originals by  intricatevision yet then may a thousand wyverns rend your flesh!

The following is loosely extracted from bits of 1-on-1 RP and the whole-party roleplay, featuring  kaerou's kobold Aliz the druid,  koviell's kobold Draselth the cleric,  sovandar's kobold Korelian the wizard and  kritkobold's kobold Yapkin the alchemist. The game was run by  tereus, I don't take credit! I just re-wrote a few bits.

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The sunshine licks their scales, easing the chills in their hearts; the breeze pays its respects, kisses their cheeks and sympathetically sighs what could’ve been words. Four figures – three kobolds, and one… was-kobold stand outside a bleached-white tower. A fifth is missing.

Draselth, brother of Tiktaalik, murmurs a prayer to their fallen Clan. "Oh Lord, who's in the Outerworld, we're here to remember the spirits of our fallen brothers. May they find peace in the other life. They shall not be forgotten.” He scatters holy water on the mound of earth, a makeshift grave.

Korelian the wizard bows his head carefully and mutters something as Dras prays. Something about 'Io'. It sounds reverential and sad; but he only prays for a moment. Beside him, Aliz the druid shakily stands and bows her head.

Wincing – aching all over – Tiktaalik limps across to his twin, though the resemblance is only superficial these days, only as deep as the purple hue of their scales. "...maybe ...we should find Yap first ...give her a chance to be here too..." he sombrely whispers. His legs wobble, then buckle; he drops hard onto his rump. "...s-she’s still ...missing," he says. Learning more of the massacre from Marcus, the human wizard, had been… too much. Yapkin, the gun-toting little tinkerer had rushed outside, into the woods as memories came flooding back.

Korelian snaps to, and rushes to help Tik to his feet. "...missing?! What happened?"

Tiktaalik weakly grins and nods. "it’s …okay, she just ran off …that way, I think…” he gestures toward the trees. “...I think ...we should find her first-," he groans hard, pausing to catch his breath as he struggles back to his feet. "...take care of the living ...before the dead, yeah…?"

"...are YOU okay?" Korelian grunts, straining to support the warrior’s weight, worry in his eyes. Ohgodsohgodsohgods - Great Io, had Liz been right? Was this a risk too far? The spell wearing off *should* put everything back as it was, but what if, what if it interfered destructively..? They had… experimented. Attempted some minor magic on the former kobold, tried to override the power in the cursed helm and revert him back to his natural shape. It’d seemed to work… then his head had changed again and his fingers elongated, back to the way he’d been before the experiment.

Am now, now that you’re here... Tik’s thoughts are rushing, throat quivering with the intention to placate his anxious friend. But to placate would concede something is wrong, and the worry in Korelian’s eyes fills Tiktaalik with such heartache. This is gonna hurt, for you and I. S-sorry… I’m sorry… the trembling warrior wants to whisper. When his spindly wing-fingers and draconic head had returned, the leaden ache permeated as well, hungry for pain.

Despite the pain though… he’d thought he missed his kobold shape, but… truly, the relief feel like himself again was p-p…pah…

He cringes with brain-freeze, mind short-circuiting. But Tik doesn’t sense the icy sensation prise his stuttering thoughts apart and innocuously slip the word in then dissolve… p-palpable… like he’d been holding his breath, smothered by wraps.

It aches… worse, so exhaustive… something coming, something dreadful. It begins near his heart, the rearing transformative pain familiar enough to ignore and suppress. Familiar enough to know what comes next. Other times it’s quite subtle, on the cusp of perception, but this time the tension in the ache feels stretched out to infinity, like a spring… a-and, when it comes rocketing back…
Daggers of magma radiate from that spot near his heart, from the crystalline soul – his Silvah – embedded under his sternum. Lava boils from his Silvah, on the verge, too late, inevitable. Eruption is coming. What can Tik do, seriously try tell them he’ll be okay, …you sucking idiot!? B-but of c-course I will, I have to…

The warrior tries to break away from Korelian’s helping hands, wobbling back to his feet. “I’m f-,”

Spring snaps.

“-IIIIIIEEEYYIINE..!” erupts a wail from his lips as he crumples.

Pain. Horrendous pain, kill me, KILL me, please oh suck oh god please just let me die.

“Tik!” Korelian shouts. “…you’re not okay. All that exertion yesterday, it catches up with you…”

The trembling purple face slowly opens his eyes, raggedly with the sheer exhaustion of the first wave of pain, and with suspense of what’s to come…

Then he arcs, bucks and writhes, clutching as his head and screams. There’s a loud, wooden SNAP! Each and every cord of muscle, every single fibre feels like it melts. Lava spills from the spewing volcano, Tik’s very Silvah, his crystalline soul contracting and convulsing, radiating a distant undertow of bliss beneath the agony, like… l-like… climax.

Korelian gasps; panic spills into his voice as he cries out for Liz. She’s wiser. Stronger. Smarter. What good are you? He is ending and it’s *your fault*. You promised him he’d be safe...

“Focus, focus, listen to my voice, focus, pain is ephemeral, pain is in the mind, focus..” he whispers as Aliz dashes over, begging for her to use healing magic, something, anything to reduce the pain, wanting to unfetter the deep and primal scream choked up in his throat. Korel withdraws and anxiously hovers; Liz tears out a wand and holds it aloft, murmuring words until it sputters and spits sparks of magic.

"Ssssh, it’s all right.. it'll be over soon, it’s just a a side effect of that transmuting magic... it’s sped things up, is all... it’s all right…" she whispers, gingerly probing at the warping flesh with her wand.

It’s helping, it helps... Korelian chews his lip, holding Tik in his arms like a rag-doll but then…

SNAP! With a jutting start Tiktaalik’s neck lengthens out like a serpent. Crack crack crack. Vertebrae shear apart, stammering and stabbing. Tik grinds and crunches like a pepper mill. “K- K- KORE it HURTS,” he screams, hyperventilating between sobs. His hands pop and convulse, fingers groaning, elongating into wings before their very eyes with sounds like a bag of crushed walnuts.

Korelian winces. Great Io. His own fingers spasm with sympathetic cramps at the noise. Blue digits reach for, entwine with, delicate wing-buds as they start, centimeter by centimeter, to extend… he strokes Tik's fingers and thrashing tail as well. Anywhere the bones and muscles seem to be melting and grinding, where it hurts the most. Past the pain, push past the pain. Enjoy, instead... wills the helpless wizard. “We’re here, we’re here… focus, move past, focus…” he urges.

"F-f...fff… -cusss..." echoes Tiktaalik with a hiss through gritted teeth.

The half-wyvern silently screams as his tail slithers out from his rump, tense knots of muscle ripple and thickening like erectile tissue.

"Where is Yapkin?" Korelian flatly asks amidst the din. Draselth, unhearing, hollowly stares at his brother.

“I... I don't know what to do...”

Yapkin. Still… missing. Tik’s serpentine neck lolls from his shoulders in mimicry of his tongue as he heaves and pants. "F-f...ine go fin...d Y- ap," he hoarsely whispers.

Liz lunges for the flailing reins of sense, cutting through Tiktaalik’s yelps. “We can do nothing. We just have to wait it out.

"...Yapkin's got sedative herbs. That's all we can do, right now," murmurs Korel.

Liz’s hard-set eyes never trail from the warrior’s body, still twitching like a frog tethered up to a battery, but gradually tapering into stillness. “I told her not to experiment with transmutational magic on him in this state…” she sighs.

A wiry little figure bursts out from the woods, some distance away on the other side of a grassy field. Yapkin goes wide-eyed at the chaotic scene by the tower, stunned for a moment, before she drops the herbs she'd collected and sprints towards the others, "TIK!!"

“I-I heard the screaming! What the hell happened?" she breathlessly frets as she re-joins her friends and kneels next to Tik, frantically fossicking for her alchemical supplies and begins churning and mashing bundles of herbs into a paste.

“I'm so, so sorry Tik... I never meant-,” Yapkin furiously squeezes a salve from the herbal paste. “I should have listened to Aliz. I just wanted to see you happy," she babbles, shaking her head apologetically.

Aliz tries to assuage her contrite little friend. “Sssh… it’s all right Yapkin. Everything is all right.” Tik tries to nod.

"...w- …as hap… -appy to be old m- ...e again. Yap. Th... a...ankyou," he wanly breathes as the druid takes the herbal extract and begins to gently stroke the cool salve down the half-wyvern’s twitching wings. Tik’s eyes bug out of his head.

“L… iz, -IZ! S… st…” he squeaks, weakly squirming, trying to cover his swelling shame. Even as he bucks with after-shocks of the pain, the caress on his sensitive membranes feels…

Liz is relentless, insistently shushing his pleas. Tiktaalik swallows hard and clenches his toes, deeply flushing. Tense and utterly resigned to embarrassment, plain for all to see, or so he thinks… until her mothering fingers cease. He gratefully gasps, "...ankyou..."

The half-wyvern’s head slumps back into the dust with another, wearier, sigh. "...I be fine."