That was all I needed to hear for now so I just thanked him before rushing to recover my ore with a mad smile on my face. I knew that he would come to my side soon and he would bring some more warriors with him, I had now completed my second step to freedom.

The next morning I was proven right as while I was in line to get breakfast my warrior brother came up to me and said he needed to talk. Since we were in public we didn’t want to be too conspicuous so we waited until we had gotten our food, more bland mushrooms, before finding a private room to talk in. ‘I thought about what you said last night.’ My brother began as soon as we were in the room and the door was closed

‘If what you say is right then I think it is worth the risk, I don’t think I have ever seen our master defend us from a threat that wasn’t big enough that he had to be concerned.’ While my brother was saying this he had a look of pure contempt on his face that even I was surprised by. ‘I even asked one of the older warriors I work under and they couldn’t remember anything like that happening either.’

At this I just nodded my head and said, ‘I am sure, he looks strong to us individually but if we manage to gather enough people to fight alongside us then our liberation is practically guaranteed.’ As long as this trial thing isn’t a trick from the gods I added in my head, luckily not letting my anxiety show. It seemed like my words had done the trick as my brother’s expression turned from one of worry and contempt to one of determination and hope.

‘Good, there has been some unspoken unrest amongst a few of the guards so I should be able to get at least three more warriors to join our cause, if you can find someone else with magical abilities like you then we might have a shot at this.’ My brother said, immediately getting into scheming our revolt. ‘How long do you think it will take us to get ready for our plan?’

At this I took a second to think it over ‘I have a gut feeling that we can’t take longer than five sleeps before we are found out so we only have four to get ready. Luckily I think that is enough time.’ I said, trying to keep from saying that this whole thing was because of something that could have just been a random hallucination. ‘If there are any other fire wielders among us I will try to find them but I am not making any promises.’

I wanted to continue talking to flesh out our plan further but we had already been away for too long and if I didn’t get to the mine soon then it would look suspicious. We agreed on a place to meet up after I returned from the mines before saying goodbye and getting to work. Although I was also keeping an eye out for any signs that someone else was experimenting with fire.

While I was working I was too focused on my task so I didn’t find anything suspicious about anyone but when I was in line to give my daily offering of ore I kept a closer look on everyone than I normally would. This ended up working as one of the other miners had a few flakes of soot on them that couldn’t be anything other than from something similar to what I had done yesterday.

Unfortunately I couldn’t go up straight away and confront them so instead I quickly left the hall and found the rendezvous point where my brother and three other kobolds were already training. For the next hour we experimented to find out what my newfound powers were and how to best use them and the results were amazing. I could cover myself and two other people with the flame resistant shield that had saved me.

I could shoot three levels of fire, each twice as powerful as the last. Unfortunately the most powerful fire used my [Empower spell] ability and we found that it took a lot out of me and I could only use it once every five minutes. This meant that I could only use it once in the fight as I doubt it will last more than one minute.

I could also shape the flame when shooting it so that it came out different depending on what I wanted it to do. The most powerful of which sent out three blazing rays of fire that even started to turn the stone red. That was all we could find during the first day of training as I was practically completely out of mana and needing to rest so I left the warriors to find my fellow Firestarter.

It didn’t take me long to find them and corner them as, since they didn’t think anyone suspected them of anything, they didn’t try to hide where they were going when they left the food hall to find a quiet place to experiment. I quietly followed them and once they were in a private place I waited for a minute until I was sure they had started before interrupting them.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’ I said as I walked into the room with a cocky smile on my face similar to a lizard that had finally cornered an annoying fly. I got an immediate response as the Firestarter lost control of the fire they were making, causing it to sputter into nonexistence, as they whipped their heads around. ‘Wh-wh-what do you mean? I’m not doing anything.’ They stuttered out in a panic as they tried to think of a way to cover their blunder.

I wasn’t here to send them in a panic attack and I needed them on my side so I decided to be nice and tell them the truth. ‘Relax, I already knew what you were doing, if I wanted you dead I would have just turned you into the guard.’ At this there panic lessened slightly and was replaced by confusion. ‘I am here because I want to set our people free from our master’s reign of terror and I think you are the last piece that I need to succeed.’

‘What!? Are you insane? No matter what plot you have cooked up, any attempt will just end in failure.’ They said, their panic unfortunately still there, in fact I think I might have made it worse, oops. In an attempt to convince them I took a step closer to them with my hands out while saying, ‘Why do you think our master told us that only he had power over fire even though both of us do?’

At this I made a small flame start flickering between us to back up my statement. I instantly could tell that my plan was working as their panic was starting to disappear, I just needed one more push. ‘I think it is because he isn’t as powerful, nor are we as weak, as he says so the only way to keep us in line is to make us believe that we could never stand a chance against him.

‘I already have four of our best warriors to back me up, I only need you, think of what life will be like for all of us if we manage to succeed.’ Once I had finished I could tell I had won them over to my side by the look on their face. ‘Fine, I will help you. The worst thing that can happen is I die and if anyone else finds out about my powers I will be doomed anyway. What is your plan?’

Hearing this I felt like I could run forever, my plan might actually work. I calmed myself down though as I didn’t have the time for that, instead I explained that we were still in the process of making a plan, but now that we had all the parts necessary we could buff out a proper plan. This almost sent them into another panic attack but I quickly explained that we had the majority of the plan, we just needed to sort out the small details.

This calmed them down and over the next ten minutes we went over everything they could do. As it turned out their powers were exactly the same as mine so we were able to go through everything much faster than when I was figuring everything out by myself. Unfortunately it was getting late so we agreed to meet at the rendezvous tomorrow morning to carry on training and to set our plan in stone.

That night instead of going straight to sleep I went through my plan to make sure nothing could go wrong. I must have fallen to sleep eventually but I was so focused on my thoughts that I didn’t realise until my fellow kobolds around me started to shuffle and wake up. I quickly got up and went through my final plan one more time, making sure I was happy with it.

I couldn’t see anything wrong with it so I quickly made my way to the meeting point. Everyone was already there, getting acquainted with each other so I quickly told them my plan. There were a few blind spots that I hadn’t noticed but once those were sorted out everyone was happy with the plan so we quickly got to work.

Even though I had said that we were capable of defeating our master I didn’t think we would win in a straight fight so we would have to catch him by surprise. Luckily we had the tools necessary to accomplish this, there was an unused area that ran near the hoard room that we could launch our attack from. It would need to be dug out a bit to make the wall thin enough but a few pickaxes going missing shouldn’t be that suspicious.

Luckily we had four fit kobolds that could do that for us over the next three days without being suspicious. Meanwhile me and the other Firestarter would continue with our work like normal but whenever we had free time we would practise how to use our powers better. Then once everything was ready on the fourth day we would wait until the wyvern was asleep before blowing the wall up, causing a ton of rocks to fall on him.

This would pin him long enough to let everyone get free attacks in, using our most powerful abilities and dealing a ton of damage. I doubt that would be enough to kill him outright but it should be enough to give us the upper hand and after that finishing him off should be pretty simple.

Four days later and we were ready to start the battle, I could feel an uneasy energy permeate throughout the room but I had never been good at motivating talks. Instead I just looked at everyone to make sure they were ready before charging up the spell that would start the spell. A flame appeared in front of me and my fellow Firestarter and quickly grew in size until they were both easily as big as I was.

The two flames then merged to create one huge fireball four times as big before shooting to the other side of the room. An enormous explosion erupted around the room that was so loud that my ears started to ring and I was sure it had woken everyone up. I may not be able to hear anymore but I didn’t need to as all of us ran to where the wall had been.

In its place was a massive hole that let into the hoard room and we could see that half of the massive wyvern had been buried underneath the rocks, effectively pinning him down. That wouldn’t be the case for long so the four warriors immediately jumped down on top of the wyvern while the two Firestarters cast our most powerful spells. Seconds later six beams of white hot flame shot into the wyvern causing massive damage as even its scales were melted off.

Meanwhile two warriors landed on each of its wings, its weakest point as they weren’t covered by scales, and cut deep grooves through it. It would still be able to fly but a lot of blood had started to seep out of it. Looking down as I gathered my breath from casting two incredibly taxing breaths I could see the wyvern was roaring something but I was unable to hear what he was saying.

Not that I cared all that much, we had a job to do and nothing he could say would be able to affect us anymore. Unfortunately his writhing managed to free him from the rock as well as cause the warriors to fall off of him. But not before one of the warriors got a second stab on it and the other Firestarter managed to hit him with two more rays of blazing fire.

As soon as he was free he immediately filled the room with flame to try to kill the warriors that were closer. We were expecting this though so the four warriors were easily shielded from the fire, leaving them with just a little bit of damage from an attack that should have killed them. Seeing this clearly surprised the great wyvern as he didn’t even dodge two more strikes from the warriors and three flaming rays from me.

This didn’t last long as he immediately started to swipe at the warriors around him, catching two of them in vital areas that caused them to start bleeding out. In doing this the wyvern had to focus on those two so it received a few more hits from everyone. Other than the bleeding warriors the fight seemed to be going extremely well for us as the wyvern had tons of wounds on it and it was starting to slow down.

The wyvern could tell that it was slowly but surely losing the fight and in a last ditch effort let out a huge roar that shook me to my core even though I couldn’t hear it and almost made me run away immediately. Before I could, a wave of some kind of reassuring force emanated out of my brother and my terror left me as quickly as it had come.

Seeing that its final effort had failed the wyvern went back to slashing and biting the two remaining warriors but thanks to it slowing down they were able to easily block all of its attacks. Over the next twenty seconds the fight turned into a battle of attrition until my brother hit it in his leg with enough force to make it stumble to the floor. The other warrior used this opportunity to decapitate the dragon wannabe, ending the fight.

The room went quiet, the ringing in my ears having gone by now, as the realisation that we had succeeded slowly sunk in. The first thing that I noticed was my body starting to shift as I grew taller and some weird protrusions started to grow out of my back. I quickly realised that this is what the message meant by evolution and that I was growing wings.

Looking around I saw that the other three survivors were also shifting exactly as I was. After a minute the shifting stopped and I was about to jump down to celebrate with everyone else when I suddenly felt an overwhelming exhaustion enveloping my mind before losing consciousness.