Keshry opened her mouth. Her lips moved, but it was not her voice that spoke. It was many voices, voices like the rushing of wind and rain and the grinding of stone, all layered over one another. Speaking as one.

As my focus on her intensified, glyphs pulsed to life at the upper edge of my vision.

(Innate Channel)

“Leave this place, and trouble these ones no further,” they commanded, the deepborn’s glowing eyes fixed on the Golden One, who actually cowered. Their wings drooped and their ears pressed back, their fur raised on-end. But they stood their ground. I was impressed in spite of myself. Even without the force of their attention directed at me, the power of whatever it was Keshry channeled was so great and so cold that it actually hurt to hear.

“LEAVE NOW!”

The skyborn turned tail and bolted up the tunnel.

Keshry smiled, letting her hand drop.

“Thank you, mountain ones,” she whispered.

The air warmed, the matching glow of glyphs and eyes faded, and we were left in the dark, though not completely blind. Just enough light made its way down the tunnel to suffice for my excellent new eyes, and my vision clarified by the second as they adjusted.

Then a blood-curdling scream echoed down to us, and in the next instant the golden kobold was hurtling back into the cave. The condorgrag loped happily along behind them, dragging what looked like the back half of a very large boar. Through the air just over its head swooped a small bird as well, mottled black and gray, which flitted up to cling to a bit of rock. It was so well-camouflaged that it quite nearly vanished from sight.

Shit.

“Oh, calm down,” sneered Destrien at the golden kobold, hurrying up to greet the vulture-like beast. “He’s my familiar.”

“That’s not the reason I—“

“Shrieked?” offered Keshry.

“Shouted,” corrected the skyborn, glaring over at her. “It’s raining. Burning rain.”

I quirked my head. “But…it was sunny.”

Destrien snickered.

“You can’t handle a bit of acid? Just hunch-and-tuck till you get back to your mates and your big warm fire.”

“It’s intensified, summoned by Diamond Elders, you idiots. Some kind of challenge, no doubt. Besides, I…” they faltered, lowered their voice, their wings twitching inward before flaring out, almost defiantly. “I have soft scales.”

“Ah,” said Keshry.

Destrien barked in laughter, but cut it off quickly as the little deepborn gave him a wide-eyed look.

He cleared his throat.

“Oh, er…sorry to hear that.”

What the hell did Keshry even just do? I thought she had dream magic, not spirit magic. And is acid rain normal here?

But I couldn’t ask without explaining my lost memories first, my cover story for everyone who didn’t know the truth. What’s more, the scents of the other kobolds were becoming almost uncomfortably intense, pleasing though they were. Even the stupid golden skyborn smelled amazing. Like roasted chestnuts or something.

So, partly to confirm their claim and partly to escape the pheromones, I wandered up the tunnel—the sound of pouring rain and the stinging scent of it growing ever more intense. I stepped up to the tunnel’s entrance, dumbfounded. A heavy pile of clouds had gathered directly overhead, rain sheeting down as if it’d been falling for hours. I could hear and smell—very faintly—the slow corrosion of the bones outside the tunnel under the acidic onslaught. And yet, miraculously, hardly any of the water flowed into the tunnel.

I squinted through the rain and scattered bones as I stepped out of the path of the one trickle of water that did make it through. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I caught the barest glimpse of what might have been a sigil, etched into the stone beneath all the carnage.

I focused on what I could see of it and gasped.

“Hey!” I yelled back the tunnel. “There are sigils up here that really need to be recharged, and I’m out of mana!”

Keshry hurried up first, of course, the others trailing slowly behind her.

“No,” I jerked my head at the little green kobold, pointing a claw at the Golden One. “You must already be low, Keshry. They can do their part if they want to shelter in here with us.” I fixed my gaze on the skyborn in question, but they were already brushing past me.

Stopping a pace from the tunnel entrance, they extended their hand—an unnecessary gesture, as far as I knew—and closed their eyes. The few rivulets of acidic rain that had made their way through broke off. Instead the rainwater pooled around the invisible barrier formed by the sigils, then flowed away to either side of it.

“Thank you,” I snapped, turning from them and heading back to the cave.

“Don’t ever thank me as if anything I do is for you,” they snarled back from behind me. “It’s for my own sake and for the one innocent deepborn here, the one I’m bound to protect.”

I scoffed as I stepped down into the main cave, still careful to avoid the trickle of acidic water now pooling at the tunnel’s base. It occurred to me that with slightly better light, I could use the water as a mirror and finally find out what my face looked like—something I’d been too thirsty and terrified to think to do earlier in the morning.

But sniping back at the golden jerk took precedence.

“Oh, very protective of you to force her to sleep out in the open in the rain,” I observed.

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“I chose to do that,” piped up Keshry from her moss-bed where she sat, a hunk of bloody meat in her hands and her tail curled into her lap. Destrien, also already eating, squatted beside his familiar at its bed, the half-a-boar-thing splayed out on the stone before it.

“She was in no real danger then,” countered the Golden One.

I sighed.

“What’s your name?”

They stopped in their tracks. Blinked.

“What?”

“If we’re going to be stuck in here with you, it’ll be really annoying not knowing your name.”

Their eyes went wide, pupils narrowed.

“Is this some kind of stupid joke? Some weak attempt at an insult?”

“Uuuh,” I searched their face, wondering what weird kobold custom made it occasionally offensive to ask someone’s name.

Unless…oh, shit. Of course.

My ear twitched.

“Look,” I said, tail lashing behind me. “I’m sorry if you’re a relative or like, someone I’ve known since childhood or something. But I have no idea who you are. I…I don’t remember anything before yesterday. I don’t know what happened. But it’s already been confirmed by a Truthseer. You can look into it yourself when this is over.”

The Golden One looked from Destrien to Keshry.

“The two of you believe this?”

“It is true,” said Keshry. “I’ve seen her dreams.”

For a moment, the skyborn just stood there, their expression one of angry bewilderment.

“This does not absolve you,” they snarled at last.

“I understand,” I said. “Now what was your name?”

They huffed air through their nostrils.

“Reve of Clan Soltras.”

“And we know each other?”

Their lips pulled back, baring very sharp, very white canines.

“Our clans are allies. I fostered with Ashry for three years, just out of my clutch, before returning to my own. Seri was my friend. One of my best. And if it hadn’t—if you hadn’t—“

Their voice faltered, broke. They dragged in a deep breath.

“If you hadn’t murdered her and as long as things didn’t go very unexpectedly in Initiation…she and I were bound for the same coven. The official request was in the hands of the Elders years ago.”

“Oh,” I breathed. They loved her. “I’m…I’m really sorry.”

The look they gave me then was as acidic as the downpour outside.

“Keep your false sympathies to yourself, kin-slayer,” they snapped back.

I sighed and turned from them, stomach growling at me almost as loud as they’d been. Squatting down in front of the tattered corpse, I considered my options. The top half was scaly, the bottom all leathery skin and course hair and spilling organs. It should have been gross. Nauseating. But the smell of fresh blood, of raw, ravaged meat…it enticed me.

I need something to cut with.

For a moment, I considered asking the others. But from everything I could tell, we’d all been sent into this deliberately empty-handed.

Our hands, however, were better-equipped than I was used to.

Extending a claw experimentally, I poked the skin of the thing’s side. It sunk in with surprising ease.

Oh, nice!

Carving a hunk of belly meat for myself, I sat back on the stone and, before I could take too much time to think about what I was doing, sunk my teeth into it.

The flavor burst across my tongue, consumed my awareness, almost too good to believe. Iron and salt and a sort of earthen, fatty sweetness, intense and primally satisfying. I think I might have groaned a bit at how good it was, getting more than a little blood on my face as I stuffed it.

I didn’t realize the others were staring at me until I’d finished, nothing but a mangled strip of hairy skin left in my claws.

“Er, sorry?” I offered, feeling a bit stupid as I watched Keshry daintily carve a choice piece from her meat-hunk and pop it into her mouth. “I was, um…hungrier than I thought.”

“Wow,” mouthed Destrien, while Reve just stared in blatant disgust.

Keshry quirked her head.

“Oh really? Perhaps it is almost your Moon.”

I snapped my head around to look at her.

“My what?”

Destrien cackled. Reve glared at him.

“What? It’s funny,” said the Garnet. “Terrible, but funny.”

“Keshry,” I spoke over him, going up to her. “What does that mean?”

“It’s means you’re about to get very, very lusty,” piped up Destrien from behind me.

Keshry nodded. “And you will have more mana than usual and smell especially good to skyborn. Normally in that time, you’d stay away from them unless you were trying to clutch. Buuut…”

Oh great. Kobold fucking Pon Farr.

“But we’re trapped in a cave together until the acid rain goes away,” I finished for her, grating my teeth. “But that can’t go on for too much longer, can it? The Elders aren’t going to destroy the environment just to challenge us…er,” I faltered as the others exchanged shifty looks. “Are they?”

“The long burning rains do come, sometimes. It is natural,” said Keshry. “But the mountain and the beasts and the trees survive.”

“I…how?”

No one seemed to know what to say to that, but then, I supposed that made sense. All of this was perfectly normal to them. If everything here had evolved to deal with the acid, well, then it made sense it could deal with the acid. Besides, they had magic.

“Never mind,” I cut off my own query, waving my hands in the air.“How long does this Moon thing last?”

“Three days,” said Keshry. “The second is the peak, the Full Moon. The first the Waxing, the third the Waning.”

“Ok, ok, ok,” I got up, beginning to pace, ears twitching frantically. “But there’s no guarantee that’s what’s happening right now. I’m just hungry. That doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Hmm, well there is one certain way to know,” said Keshry, peering past me to Reve.

A low growl rumbled in the skyborn’s chest.

“She…doesn’t smell terrible,” they admitted.

Keshry looked to Destrien.

“Yeah, she smells pretty good,” he acceded. “But never more appealing to me than you, Kesh. Full Moon or no.”

“I do not care,” said Keshry.

Destrien leant back, striking a fist to his heart.

“So cold!”

I stared at them, stomach shrinking into an anxious pit at my core.

“Please tell me you’re messing with me. Please say sike.”

“Sssssike,” said Keshry, testing out the word—which came out as-is when I’d said it, having no apparent translation. “Is that a word from—” she faltered, shooting a glance at Reve. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”

Keshry blinked.

“But I am not.”

I stared. Whipped around and began to pace again, running my hands over my ears over and over.

“Alright. It’s going to be ok. I’m just going to, to…ah, I’m just going to chill. And the rain will probably stop before it sets in. And then those two can go away. And then I’ll ride it out in here and I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine!”

“Do you know that you’re speaking out loud?” wondered Destrien. Beside him, Reve bent before the boar-half and began to carve a piece.

“You do not sound fine,” said Keshry.

I whirled back to her, crouched before her and took up her hands.

“Keshry, please,” I fixed my eyes on hers, held her gaze in mine. “Promise me you won’t let me get all horny Pon Farr for either of these assholes. Don’t let me throw myself at anyone, don’t let me embarrass myself. Please.”

She quirked her head.

“I do not know what some of that means,” she said. “But you are my Kind twice over, and I won’t let you do anything you don’t want me to let you do. But it will not be so bad. We must all learn to hold to our will against the changing forces of our bodies. I believe in our strength.”

Now Reve was the one laughing.

“You’re talking to the spoiled little krada who killed her own sister in a Frenzy and just inhaled a gorch-slab so fast she nearly choked on it,” scoffed the skyborn.

Keshry ignored them.

“I have the friendship of the mountain now, connected by a strong vein of Blue Jade,” she assured me, pulling one hand free of my grip only to layer it over the top of mine. “I will look after you.”

I choked up.

“Wh—why are you being so nice to me?”

I knew that she wanted stories from my world, but she could just as easily have blackmailed me for them.

How did I get so lucky?

She smiled.

“I hear the spirits, I hear the regrets of the dead,” she said. “I’ve heard them since before I got my Gem, though their voices were faint, then. I know what comes of cruelty.”

There was a small gasp of surprise from Reve behind me, and Destrien seemed to shift suddenly where he sat.

Releasing her hand, I leant forward and hugged her. She draped her arms around me and squeezed me back.

“Thank the gods for you, Keshry,” I whispered.

“I don’t know what those are,” she said. “But I’ll thank them if I ever find out.”