Two Doors, One Dragon

I’m trying to figure out which of the two is the leader. I’m thinking it is the human, she seems to take point in searching each room of the pyramid. She also have fancier armor, full plate with gold engravings throughout. There is an emblem of a fist on fire on her chest.

The elf focuses on belittling me, their prisoner. “Come on scales, do you actually worship dragons? You realize they’re just big lizards, right? Hell, we one recently. That’s how I got this armor!” He then began to pat his reptilian leather armor while laughing.

Sure, make fun of kobolds you stupid smoothskin. You’re lucky I’m tied up. “We don’t think dragons are gods. More like, a parent. We all spawn from her, and we hope to grow our wings and fly with her.”

The elf finds cackles, “Wings! Seriously? God you guys are stupid. I can’t believe it.” He continues to ramble and laugh about how inferior we are, while the human searches each room thoroughly. I keep quiet, just nodding and occasionally chiming in. Just gotta avoid pissing them off.

Most of the rooms are cluttered by broken furniture and disarmed traps. We eventually make our way to a larger, more decorative room. There are murals on the walls, too faded to make out and the right wall has a giant crack on its lower section. There are several holes around the crack, almost like someone punched through the stone repeatedly. The floor was also strange, instead of being flat like the other rooms it was slanted from each wall with the center being the lowest point. It’s not slanted enough to make it difficult to walk and stand, but just enough to notice. The center point has an emblem of a black kobold skull.

On the way across from the doorway was two large doors. Each one twice as tall as the elf, and he is pretty tall. The right door had a red scale design, the left had a green scale design. The doors formed two halves of a single dragon design, with a wing mural above each door. Each door had a knob shaped like a dragon claw holding an orb that matched the door’s color. Each knob is about three feet off the ground, barely above my head.

The human finally talks, “I know you kobolds love traps. Which one is the safe doorway?” They both turn to me.

Damn, I have no idea. “I just lived in the village. I’ve never been to the pyramid. Only the elders come here to give offerings to mother.” They each stare at me angrily, looks that screamed “why are we keeping you alive?” Gotta think, “Mother is a green dragon! See, I have green scales. Everyone in the village is green!” I attempt to smile. No idea how smoothskins do it.

The elf turns to the human, “he has a point. The green door has to be the safe one, right?”

The human grabs me and shoves me towards the green door, “okay, you open and go first.” I just stare at him and shrug. The elf tied my hands behind my back hours ago, when they kidnapped me as I was out getting water. “Fine, I’ll open and you’ll go first.” I try to smile again and nod vigorously.

They just stand there and stare at me. Finally the elf goes “I bet he’s tricking us. Look at that creepy smile. I bet they thought we’d think green is safe, so it’s the red.”

I smile and nod, “okay, open the red door and I’ll go through. I’ll make sure there’s no traps.”

The elf grimaces, “Of course you will.” He turns to the human, “I bet he wants to go first so he can escape. One of us should go, that way he can’t run forward or backward if we’re both there.”

I stop smiling. I had hoped that smiling would make them less likely to hurt me, but it seems that it’s just making them more paranoid of me. What’s wrong with my smile? Don’t mammals usually smile to be friendly and show trust? I don’t understand humanoids at all.

The human began walking towards the red door while the elf shoved me to be between the two of them. The human opened the door, and I heard a click. She stepped into the doorway while I dived to the side. The elf followed my example. The human had barely enough time to turn around and look at the commotion we caused before fire erupted from the doorway.

The two of us just stared for a moment at the charred remains. The door attempts to swing closed but is stopped by what’s left of her head and arm. The elf finally moved to grab me and I sprint to the red door, “look I’m serious! I’ve never been here before!” I’m next to the body, hoping it will scare him away.

He moves to pull out a short sword, but stops, “god you’re useless. At least this means the treasure is all mine.” He reaches for the green knob, and I hear a familiar click. He retracts his hand and brings it to his mouth sucking on a wound and staring at the needle in the knob. He grabs his sword and begins to charge me, but after four steps he sways and swings the sword in a large arc. I dodge to the ground, and crawl to the side as he swings downward at me. The momentum of swinging knocks his whole body to the ground. He is obviously losing function, but he is still madly swinging his sword back and forth despite me moving several feet away.

I strike a dramatically triumphant pose “ha, never underestimate us kobolds! The reason elders are the only ones that come here is that they’re the strongest of us! They’re the only one strong enough to dispose of the bodies and reset the traps. They then take the bodies and loot to mother's real home.”

I walk up to the crack in the wall, and press a button inside. The center of the room opens to a small tunnel and ladder. "Seriously, the door knobs are too tall for us. We prefer small tunnels. How do you expect to kill mother when you know nothing about us?" I then press the button again and reset the trapdoor.

He screams elvish gibberish that I assume are profanities as I walk back the way we came, back home. Mother is going to be so proud of me.