Tik's species reassignment nears completion in this awesome sequence by  intricatevision! If you've enjoyed the pictures, please go +1 and pay kudos to the artist!

...er, these 'vignettes' are getting longer. This isn't even his final form!!!! 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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There's a rustling of sheets, and a clattering of unsteady claws against timber floor. Korel looks around at the sound of Tik stirring, and smiles, a little distractedly. The words of the book slowly pass from his head, and the fuzz clears. He focuses.

"Tik... don't exert yourself." Korel slowly stands. "...it's okay. It's okay. How do you feel...?"

The mound in the bed – all protruding, gangly bits and tenting flaps of purple tarpaulin – rises. Or rather spills from the nest of quilts with a stubborn determination. Alien weight and a dislocated centre of gravity flummox Tiktaalik’s wobbling legs; they give way, and he flops hard to the ground with a groan. His fretful blue friend scurries to lend a steady arm.

“Tik! Tik, stop… stop. Don’t… you’ll hurt yourself. Please…” he says, with a firm – though not unkind – tone of worry. “…for me, if not for yourself?” he adds with a small smile, feeling his words twisting the wyvern’s conscience. Tik’s contrite eyes turn askew.

“…mm …fine. Fine. I’m fine,” he mutters, like a mantra. The wyvern’s lanky head laboriously bobs, panting with his whole body. But there’s a deeper weariness in his creased grimace than the brief burst of exertion should warrant, a tiredness inebriating Tik’s unfamiliar bones.

He’d been crippled with ache for days, a week. Longer? And in that time Tik the warrior, Tik the brave and stalwart knight (he still hadn’t, Tik inwardly sighed parenthetically, even found a real Knight so he could go on a Quest and be knighted for real…) had been bedridden like an arthritic old fart. Meanwhile, his Clan was in peril! They came back… most days, sometimes bloodied and bruised from their efforts to unravel the conspiracy…

Trouble had come to Summerset like a nasty stink; the unfriendly band of foreigners were really more beside the fact, a trailing swarm of flies. Somewhere, far away, the kobolds knew a dark architect was enacting sinister designs…

Maybe this was like that ale stuff, maybe this was like some kind of a… hangover. The pain twinges; Tik’s wing-arms tightly convulse. I’m still here… it says…

No, this wasn’t some kind of hang-over – Tik had thought that when the… pressure to change had vented then the gnawing pain might dissipate, but the aches were worse than ever. …will it ever stop? He stared over to his sword again, propped against a distant wall, with longing. The drive to feel the leather hilt beneath fingers he didn't have any more, yearning need that had flung him from the mattress, filled his throat again like bile. He was angry.

Tik had wondered, as he’d roused in bed, if today would be the day he wouldn’t hold his sword again. Right now it felt as if he’d never even walk again. To walk had never felt so impossible.

He couldn’t be this helpless, refused to be. “For me, if not for yourself…?” Korel’s words stung again; but the angry bile thickened, even as his nerves quickened with the stirring momentum to lunge for his sword a second time.

But what if I can’t even lift a weapon to protect you anymore?! The wyvern shuddered in Korelian’s arms, grinding his teeth, snout contorted like he was biting back an inarticulate roar. What if I can’t even walk?

I’m better than that, Tik vows to himself.

Walk.

Lungs hiss boiling air, like a venting pneumatic valve; powerful muscles push, and Tiktaalik tears himself free from Korelian’s coddling embrace. He takes one step, two towards his blade, triumph in his eyes, then gasps. The creature grunts, then stumbles, flopping forwards onto quaking wings and crawling on all fours like an animal. This time, Korelian is ready. The kobold grabs his stubborn friend with a groan of effort. If nothing else, Tik was still predictable as ever.

“I’m fine.”

“You are NOT fine,” Korelian reposts in synchrony. Tik was always ‘fine’, so far as Tik was concerned. But the beast was much too heavy for the slender wizard; the shaking, huddling pair gently, mutually, puddled on the floor.

“…Tik, you don’t have to be brave for my sake.” Korelian eventually sighs, catching his breath, “best to keep it slow,” he tries to soothe the wyvern’s bristling temper, his hold embrace melting into a tender hug.

A short-lived grin acquiesces over Tik’s contorted muzzle, then no! he recoils. A frustrated wing suddenly crunches against the floor as the angry bile surges back. Slow? SLOW!? “-shite, weaselshite stupid suck suck eggsuck!”

The huffing tantrum truncates abruptly. Korel looks nonplussed. "...er..."

The tremulous quiet lingers on unwelcomely, the silence uncomfortably bloated with the anticipated diarrhoea of shouts and swears which had turned out to be a lot of hot air; the awkwardness deflates, Tiktaalik flatulently hisses through his teeth and lips. Venting, again. A pressure valve. A bitter cloud of smoke ascends from the warrior's flaring nostrils.

"...you've had some... temper issues…" Korelian dryly observes; he sighs too, but begins to chuckle. "…that wasn’t the helm-magic swearing.”

"-uh... s-sorry..." The sheepish wyvern rubs a smarting wing. Shock receding, Korelian brightly laughs and hugs his knight real tight. Nothing to worry about, no… the hapless warrior was just frustrated. Tik had a gentle heart, but only he could become so passionately outraged at his own febrile mortality. That he couldn’t be impossibly dependable, that for once he couldn’t help but needed help.

"...still hurting?" The kobold grins, heaving them both to their feet with a grunt and guiding the teetering Tik back towards the bed. “…lie down. Give your muscles a chance to rest… they’re barely formed.”

Tik acquiesces, softly sighs, but betrays his simmering agitation with a restless flick of tail (then wincing at the self-inflicted pain from the strain). "...I-I don't ...I hate being so ...useless ...stuck in bed - it hurts, yes it hurts and I hate it, I don’t belong in bed…" he growls, exasperated, but allowing himself to be lowered down to rest.

Korelian shakes his head; incorrigible. "...Tik... what use do you think you'll be out of bed like this?" he wearily smiles. "I could lie in bed all day and read books. Use isn't... being up and around and doing stuff ...it's being safe and secure. The Clan cares about you... I care, Aliz cares, Dras cares, Yapkin cares… there's no need to rush."

Reluctantly, Tik nods. “Okay,” he mouths. But his eyes keep flickering to the sword against the wall.

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Some hours later, Yapkin comes bustling down the tower’s spiral stairs, bristling with a bandolier of shiny, brand-new bullets strapped across belly... probably, it seemed, in an ineffectual attempt to hide an uncharacteristic fatness in her tummy. In her arms she clings to a snazzy new revolver rifle like a babe, if she were trying to strangle the baby at the same time. She seems to be outrunning something…

"Me needs aim practicings. Have not gotten chance to properly test new prototype weapon modification. Yis." She chimes down to Marcus the wizard and the other kobolds, nibbling meats and fruits around a finely-lacquered table. Her measured, musical tone grates... oddly against her hurried, even frenzied descent.

A vagrant sword bounces down the stairs behind her, swiftly followed by a tumbling Tiktaalik. Purple wing and tail and neck and sword and spear and armful of armour spill across the floor. The jumble loudly groans; Yapkin, danger eluded, returns to help Tik up; Korelian, agape at first, raises an amused eye-ridge when it’s apparent that Tik’s okay.

“I’m fine,” the wyvern huffs. Korelian shakes his head.

"...Tik, ask for help sometimes! Honestly..." Yapkin fossicks in to yank the dragon out from the puddle of arms and armour.

"Me thinks we will have to make you special straps or something for you to carry weapons easier." She has to flex and scrunch her face just to support Tik’s swaying bulk as he steadies himself, wings splayed. “Ees you really okay?”

Sighing with uncharacteristic concern, Draselth glances up from the corner of the room with a glint of something wistful in his eyes. Then, more characteristically, he smirks at his formerly-identical twin. “You're way too goofy Tik, your new shape just makes you drop your sword more…”