Sonder stepped back from the glowing cube, letting the trapped kobolds throw themselves again and again against the barrier walls. They had an hour to tire themselves out.
She turned her attention to the city instead.
It was emptier than she expected.
There were no signs or sounds of life. Just shuttered windows, barred doors and the lingering smell of smoke that came from the fires of the Chackara.
Sonder held her staff ready and moved deeper between rows of squat, mud-brick houses, some of which were braced with wooden beams.
The alleys were narrow, carved by generations of the small kobolds folk. She pressed herself flat against walls when she heard the scuttle of claws.
Sonder tensed.
A pair of kobold scouts darted around a corner and spotted her instantly.
Their eyes widened and they raised their weapons.
"Not again," Sonder muttered.
Before they could shout, or throw their spears, she conjured up another barrier. She braced the spell against the building's wall, lessening the strain it took to create more barriers. With that, she pinned them gently against the building's wall.
They yelped, more startled than harmed.
Sonder sighed. "I'm trying to be nice," she told them. "Please don't make me cube the entire city."
She kept moving, trying to keep out of sight, but any kobold that saw her reacted the same way: panic and then aggression. In every case that became dangerous, she trapped them briefly and left them unharmed.
And the layout of the city funneled her toward a single point.
Eventually, she climbed a slope of hard-packed clay and reached a plateau at the center of the city.
There it stood:
A structure of layered wood and dried mud, larger than any other building. Decorated with wind chimes and faded cloths, maybe banners once, but they were too tattered now to show their symbols. Parts of it slanted as though it was slowly sinking into the ground.
A faint vibration tingled at her side and she knew it was the shards in her satchel stirring to some unknown power that lay within it.
She suspected another shard, but that was only a guess.
There was still a fear that lingered in Sonder every time she thought about the dark power of the shards, but she had to overcome it.
The Shemmi seemed terrified and quick to violence, but she couldn't be sure that a presence made them like that.
She didn't know real war.
The only one had had been really involved; the march into Irath, was just that, a march.
There had been two battles, one against the monstrous flesh creatures and Vell against the king of the Irath.
Neither of them resembled what she imagined war to be.
Maybe reason was thrown out when war was on your doorstep and has been for a while.
Maybe kobolds were just unreasonable creatures to begin with?
Sonder shook her head. She didn't want to think like that, but the option had to remain until she found what she was looking for.