Shit.

I sucked my next breath through my teeth, which probably sounded like a hiss. But the skyborn just sort of smirked, stretching as he stood up before ambling over and plopping himself down in front of us. New glyphs came into focus, pulsing at the corner of my vision.

(Innate Communion)

“I mean it, don’t worry. I vow myself to secrecy and all that or whatever,” he said, dropping to a hush as he scratched himself behind the ear with the little thumb-thing that stuck out from the hand part of his wing. “Wouldn’t have much weight coming from a Garnet, anyway. So, tell me about this other world. Are there crab people? Please say there are.”

“There are not,” said Keshry.

“Wha—why are you out here with us?” I stammered as the wind turned, washing me in both their mingled scents. Keshry’s of mint and cream and earth, the stranger’s of ground pink peppercorns and citrus and other things I couldn’t quite place or define, except to say that combined, they drew a physical reaction from me so strong that I had to direct most of my energy toward suppressing it.

Damned kobold horomones. Get a grip.

“Because of this one, of course,” he said, indicating Keshry with a wave of one iridescent hand. There was something especially fox-like about his face, and his horns were pronged…which I suppose made them more like antlers.

“We’re from the same clan—different cluster though, no relation. Known each other since childhood, haven’t we, Kesh? And I couldn’t just leave her to fend for herself out here with no one but a…you for company.”

Keshry tilted her head a bit.

“What was your name again?”

He made a face of exaggerated anguish.

“Oh, I’m hurt! But it’s Destrien, actually, though of course my friends call me Des.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“How did you hear us?”

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I was just passing the time by testing out my Innate Abilities.” He pointed to the rock at my back, and I twisted around, unsure of what the hell he was getting at until I noticed a tiny, fuzzy nose and a set of whiskers peeking out from one of the holes in the stone. In the next instant, it whirled around—revealing a flash of round ears and then a tuft-ended tail before disappearing from sight.

The elders watched through birds. I supposed it stood to reason that someone might be able to listen through a mouse.

“Garnets can warg into animals?”

Delightfully, “warg” had a very clear and direct translation into whatever language I was speaking.

“As a lowly 1Gem, I can only tap into the senses of creatures in my vicinity. I cannot control them,” he said. “Wow, you really don’t know anything, do you?”

“Oh yeah, thanks,” I said. “Rub it in some more, why don’t you?”

“You know, your scales do look pretty dry,” he said, eyeing the top of my head and my shoulders and rubbing his wrists together. “I’ll oil yours if you’ll oil mine.”

I looked past him to Keshry.

“This guy’s your friend?”

She shrugged.

“Not really. But he has been attracted to me since we matured into our breeding types.”

Matured into your what now? Yet another question for later.

“He is right here, you know. And in a way, there, and up there and—”

As he pointed to the mouse hole again and then the sky, a belated idea occurred to me.

“Are there any animals near the edge of the rocks, up there? Any birds flying or perched nearby?” I asked, pointing to the outcropping looming behind me. “Can you see if there are sigils? Or maybe fly up and check yourself?”

“Planning on doing some climbing, hm? Let us see. No, nothing in viewing range right now.”

Good and bad news. All that talk of animal eavesdropping had gotten me worried that the elders themselves might have overheard our conversation, too. Hopefully they’d been honest about only watching through birds.

“Alright, well…how about flying up there yourself, then?”

“Mmm, no, I don’t think so. Still a little early in the day for my first ever flight.”

“Your first?” I stared at him. “Really?”

Destrien attempted to exchange an exasperated look with Keshry, but she was staring off into the aether again. Frowning, he looked back to me.

“Well, I’m not alone,” he said, a little defensively. “We’ve all only just gotten our Gems. And unless they launched while I was sleeping, no one here’s tried yet.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

That made sense, actually. The kobolds’ wings were too small and their bodies entirely too solid for them to achieve flight without either magical interference or maybe different gravity or laws of physics.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to climb up and check?” I tried. “At least you’d have the back-up of wings if you slipped, even if you’ve never used them before.”

“Who says I’ve never used them?” he deflected, scratching his ear with a wing-thumb again.

“Fine!” I threw up my hands. “Don’t be useful.”

Turning from him, I took a step back as I sized up first the rocks on that side, and then those at the other. The former had the better footholds and a more even topside.

So I guess that’s the one I’ll climb.

Goddamnit.

“Oh, what are you doing?” wondered Keshry, coming up beside me as I inspected potential footholds.

“Looking for the best way up,” I grumbled. “I’m not living on this ledge for a whole week. But if they won’t let me under the roof, I’ll take the other tiers. Beside, who knows what I might find up there? Maybe there’s some food. Birds’ nests or something.”

And I’d rather face the heights than grovel at those assholes even more and get nothing for it.

“But birds are—”

“Off limits, I know. Besides, he says there’s no birds up there,” I waved my hand in Destrien’s direction, still focused on the rocks. “But they never said anything about their eggs.”

“Ooh, eggs,” said the skyborn, coming up to stand beside us. “Bring me back some too, if you find any.”

“Mmm, no, I don’t think so.”

He gasped.

“Lashing me with the whip of my own words?”

“Quiet, please. I need to concentrate.”

Taking a deep breath, I stuck my foot into the first indent and then, gripping the handholds I’d identified, hoisted myself upward. Step-by-step, hoist-by-hoist, I climbed higher and higher—going fast so as not to give myself a chance to think too much about what I was doing.

The winds intensified as I surpassed the warding of the sigils below, but thankfully they blew inward, buffeting me in the direction of the roof. As I hauled myself up to the top, I held my breath. Bracing myself for the impact of the height, I looked toward the edge. Forced my focus downward, to the rock and not the nauseating expanse beyond.

My heart raced, and I sucked in a breath of cold air in a sudden gasp.

“There are more sigils up here!” I called, unsure how well the others would be able to hear me. But of course, the sigils in question were pretty much dead, and I didn’t have a whole lot of mana left. Flattening myself against the stone, I crawled ever-so-slightly closer to the edge to get a better look at them.

More wards against harsh winds and falling deepborn. Thank you, imaginary gods.

Focusing on the sigils, I transferred what was left of my mana into them. And as the last of it drained away, it left me feeling empty and strangely weak.

But at least I didn’t have to worry as much about going splat…from this part of the mountain, in any case.

Now to see what else is up here.

With relief, I turned my attention toward the rooftop and the rise of uneven rock that wrapped around it. There were no birds’ nests in sight—which, though it was a disappointment, wasn’t really a surprise. There wasn’t much of any vegetation either—again, a huge bummer, but not a shock. Then my eye caught on something pale and bulbous.

Mushroom?!

I scrabbled up to it on all fours and over a rise of stone. My blood chilled as I realized that it was not a mushroom at all but the end of a long, femur-like bone, sticking up from the entrance of an opening in the stone. Blinking and peering into its shadowy confines, I saw that it was the mouth of a curving tunnel, its floor strewn with blanched bones and chunks of raw gemstone.

That guy said there weren’t any animals up here, I reminded myself even as my fur raised on end. It should be safe…for now.

There were only two possibilities. Either kobolds had placed those bones up here, or this was the entrance to the lair of an animal big enough to eat things bigger than I was. And it could return at any time.

But if there isn’t some horrible beasty in residence, then this could mean shelter, and who knows what else? And these gemstones…maybe they’re Gem gems? Either way, they’ve got to be useful somehow.

And I mean, barring any potential utility…they were still shiny rocks.

I gritted my teeth and turned back the way I’d come, scrabbling down until I could peer over the edge at the others.

“Hey! There’s a tunnel entrance full of bones and gemstones up here! I want to investigate but I could really use someone to watch my back.”

“I’m coming!” called Keshry, already sticking her foot into a hole in the rock.

“Um, maybe Destrien should come up? Since he has wings and can sense animals?”

“Eh,” said the skyborn.

I scowled down at him. An idea occurred to me.

“So you’re just going to let her risk herself instead? Little, tiny, wingless Keshry?”

“I am not that small,” said Keshry, climbing faster.

Destrien balked, already starting forward.

“Yes you are!”

I braced myself against the stone, helping Keshry up as she reached the top and made way for Destrien, who dragged himself over the edge immediately after her, already glaring at me.

I smirked.

“This way.”

“Don’t give me that look,” said the Garnet kobold, stretching a wing out behind Keshry, ready to catch her if needed. “I understand that I’ve been manipulated, which means that I haven’t really been manipulated.”

“That’s exactly how that works,” I said.

But his attention was already elsewhere, his ears perking forward and then tilting back suddenly, pupils narrowing.

“Something big is flying this way. Something really big.”

My own ears pressed back, and I hissed.

Did I really just do that? Again?

It was weird, the ways my human memories and kobold physiology intermingled, making immediate reactions like those ones feel at once totally natural and yet almost laughably absurd. My tail began to lash, but I forced it to stop, since I was using it like a fifth limb to further stabilize myself.

“Ooh, what is it?” wondered Keshry, peering up and around.

“I don’t know,” said Destrien. “It can’t see itself and I can’t see it yet from he—oh.”

I followed their mutual gaze. Something was indeed approaching from the far side of the caldera, its wingspan at least three times the length of my entire body, tail included.

My first instinct was to panic, to make for the footholds and get the hell down.

“Oh,” I realized with a sigh a second later, my muscles relaxing a bit. “It’s probably just one of the elders’ birds. Big one, though.”

Keshry squinted.

“It is not a bird,” she said. “It has too many legs, and the wrong kind of tail.”

By then the thing was a lot closer, and I could see that she was right. It was very much not a bird. It was more like what you would get if you combined a small dragon with a vulture and an exceptionally large cat—and there was no time now to get down to safety.

“Fuck,” I breathed.

Keshry gave me a confused sort of look and opened her mouth to reply, but then stopped short as Destrien dove sideways, placing himself between us and the oncoming creature and spreading his wings. Though of course, the thing could just fly straight over him.

The beast released a piercing shriek. As it swept downward, its shadow swallowing us up, something shiny caught my eye. Another blink, and I could see enough to realize what it was.

A huge opal, embedded at the center of the creature’s scaly chest.