Deaths Democracy: A Beginning

This story will start following Elixir, a kobold, his scales orange and his self nothing special, eyes a vibrant blue, his horns barren and smooth with but alternating stripes of orange and red, only the two on the back of his head, barely curving down and in. He is a fairly typical kobold, collecting moss, setting traps, storing food. Only around three years of age at this time, which is fully matured for this species always under such great stress.
We start in a cave, many bustling kobolds out and about, it’s hard to tell any apart, and it doesn’t matter, everyone is a worker, everyone works whatever job is needed at the time. They seem to intuitively know what needs to be done with never more than a short interaction. Elixir is presently smoothing some stones on the ground to prevent tripping, near the mouth of the cave when he hears the sky rumble. “A storm” wonders the small kobold.
         “Such a defenseless creature had best away from what’s coming.” mutters a voice from just beyond the mouth of the cave “Though, I doubt no matter how far you hide that you’ll be safe”
Elixir, confused of this voice, so much smoother and deeper than the scratchy and screeching voices he has only ever heard from his fellows, steps out to find where the voice came from.
         “A goblin?” wonders the kobold as he sees the source of the voice. Goblins and kobolds tend to not see much of each other, one keeping to the woods and the other deep within the earth.
         “What’s a goblin doing here” asks Elixir to the Goblin, about half his already short height, dressed in a sandy cloak covering his body below his neck, a deep red scar at the base of its nose, and in his eyes, where the white would usually be is pitch black, with thin yellow slits as the iris with no pupil.
         “A war is coming, and not the type that will care for collateral. I’m here to warn the creatures of the land before I embark on my own quest. It’s a waste of a task really, not much something so weak can do to save itself” says the goblin, who seems to carry himself as if he were a person rather than a monster.
         “A war? No, we are isolate kobold, we need no war”
         “Not one soul in this world needs war, never anything but a waste, but this is a war beyond your souls”
         “N-“ Elixir was about to argue, but the goblin quickly makes away, leaving the kobolds sight in but a few seconds.
Elixir, furious at being left with such little knowledge follows out of the mouth of the cave, somewhere he has never ventured. He is immediately struck where he stood, pausing in the middle of his step.
In but one second a new type of sense washes over him, the rustling of leaves, wind flowing between his scales, whistling around his horns. His eyes widen, his slitted pupils dilating as they are exposed to more light than he’d ever seen a moment of his life. The ground beneath him is soft, its soil, its grass, its like the moss he knows but thin and in strips. The trees are like the stone pillars but brown and seem to smell more alive. And then- the sky, the sky was a piercing red, Elixir was stunned for a second until a thought crossed his mind “didn’t others say the sky was blue?”
Suddenly, the clouds which had but a moment ago seemed weightless and massive in the sky start to break, no, rather simply splitting apart, but more as if they were shattering, falling? No, clouds are supposed to stay in the sky, not fall.
One piece strikes the earth not far from Elixir, sending dust, dirt and stone flying into the air, the wind now blowing violently thrashes the sand and stone into Elixir, bouncing off and scratching his hard scales. Elixir panics and rushes back into the cave.
He sprints past all the workers, not caring if he knocks any down, he is truly in a panic. Remember how it was said everyone here was a worker? That was a lie, there’s a leader, said to be more of a dragon than the others, he has lightning breath. It’s more of a tingle when he licks you, but that’s more than everyone else here.
         “Who’s this, and why are they rushing to me?” Demands the leader, sitting upon a throne of clay
Before anyone can answer, Elixir tackles past the guards and shouts to the leader. “The sky is caving in!”
The leader tilts his head, his crown, which was made entirely out of shedded bug shells, drops some pieces which click on the ground “How so?” He asks
         “The floating white moss! I-it’s falling, it’s stabbing the ear-“
And right then, the whole cave rumbles, some stones falling.
         “There really is a cave in… Evacuate the caves! Now!” The leader shouts in desperation, immediately starting to run out, though the throne room was at the deepest of the cave, he is promptly crushed by a falling rock.
Elixir looks as the blood of his leader spills across the stone, it’s hard to tell the difference after his eyes got used to the light outside, but the smell, its blood, he’s dead, he’s silent.
Before Elixir can help, he feels a “clunk” and his vision goes black.
Elixir slowly opens his eyes, he feels a boulder atop his leg. He looks around, he can see… the sky? It’s still red, no clouds, only yellow cracks, only lightning falling from nothing.
Our kobold knows he is stuck.
Our kobold knows everyone is dead.
Our kobold smells death.
Our kobold hears no life.
Our kobold takes his claws and starts to scratch at his trapped leg, slowly pulling and ripping flesh off of it, scales splitting and crunching, his claws break soon, so all he has is bare finger tips to pull through his flesh. Needing to wrap his raw fingers around veins and ligaments, tearing muscle, ripping skin. He finds a muscle, he pulls, it tears out as a massive chunk, blood and viscera fly, he tastes his own blood. But then he is stuck again, he has bone, tears running down our lizard face, screams echoing from him without even hearing them himself, he takes a stone to prepare to crush the bone, when all of a sudden, something drops from the sky in front of him, evidently hearing the scream.
         “Oh, just a beast.” it mutters, though the voice is beyond the senses of Elixir, be it because he is suffering, or be it because the creature is beyond him “its leg is stuck, hm…”
And suddenly, the bone is cut clean through, the pain of a thousand thrashings pulses through the remainder of his thigh, by this point he can’t even scream, by the time his eyes open back up the thing is gone.
Elixir has to pull himself out from this collapsed cave he is in, once he makes it to the surface, nothing but a scorching wind with heat and sand and stone clicking against his remaining scales, and scratching the bare flesh on his body.
His ears ring, his hands, face, everything is covered in blood, flowing fully between his scales as rivers would through valleys. He picks up a piece of debris to hold his body up and he limps his way away.
And then, the goblin appears again
         “What a sorry sight you are, guess some good came out of my warnings, even if it was only one who ended up surviving” it mutters
         “What… the fuck is going on…” mutters the kobold through scratchy throat
         “Pardon?”
         “What’s happening, why is the sky like this, why did everyone die… what was that thing that cleaved my bone as easy as breathing!” The kobold tries to shout, but he has screamed so violently that his voice comes out as little more than a squeak.
         “Gods.” says the goblin calmly “May as well be devils, not like they do any good, nothing but tyranny. They were having a war on which group was better, something as petty as what we would have down here. But creating countless times more damage. Picked this continent as their fighting ground, and… seems only two creatures survived. You and I.”
         “Did… did these gods even consider u-“
The goblin cuts him off “no, this was a continent full of nothing but monsters, not a single person.”
         “Who are you?”
         “Does that matter, if I am simply about to lea-“
A tree, which was barely standing, falls, crushing the goblins head, bits of brain and meat go flying.
The kobold doesn’t bother screaming this time, when he awoke he was able to smell thousands dead from the rubble around him. This is just one more death. He takes the cloak off the goblin. “Suppose if this creature saved my life, may as well remember him somehow” and he puts the cloak on, though it tears and only covers just below the kobolds shoulders. It’s something.
Elixir looks down to his leg and sighs “fuck, Will I even survive from here on…”
And with his rubble supporting the right side of his body, he limps his way along. After days without food he eventually finds a deep crater from the damage and just drops down and lays down, his tongue feels rough from the sand as he breaths in. He expects death.
Nightfall.
Rain.
Stars?
Elixir is asleep, but a small glob with a blue glow, not dissimilar from Elixirs eyes, spills over the edge of the crater and toward his body. The moment it touches, the kobolds eyes snap open.
It starts to pull on his scales, no, not pulling, opening them, tearing his flesh into cracks so it can seep into his body, pain stinging through his arm at this. But then
Calm.
The pain in his leg is gone too.
The rain picks up.
A voice in the back of Elixirs head “don’t mind if I crash in here, didn’t know living beings could hold dead souls”
         “I-“ Elixir is about to respond as another blue glob rolls down the crater, again, tearing his flesh open to get into him.
         “Huh, guess we can live inside of his soul”
More globs, more souls, all piercing into Elixirs body as he can do nothing to resist, he is too weak. Suddenly, the stars he thought he saw seem to gather, as a beam, they strike into his chest, more of the blue stars float from the land around into the beam and shoot themselves into his chest, pain worse than when his leg was torn off. He loses consciousness.
He awakes, his leg has returned. But he doesn’t even notice that. He can’t hear anything, or rather, he hears too much. Hundreds, no… billions, billions of voices bouncing through his head.
He slowly stands, he shouts “SHUT UP!” And suddenly the voices seem to hush, save for some mentions of “we live here, we owe the guy some peace”
One more voice “peace? What about our peace? We should get revenge on those gods who killed us all!”
One more voice “yeah! We should do that!”
And soon, the rumble through his mind returns.
But some weeks later, Elixir learns, Elixir doesn’t know if it’s what he wants, or even if he is the one doing most of his thinking anymore.
He’s going to kill some gods.