Niz was rudely poked in her side.

“Get up! A scout found us a new safespot, we’re moving the tribe.”

Ulkr, his usual impatient self, was already of to the next kobold that was dozing off.

Niz rubbed her eyes and got up. Their current safespot was hardly deserving of the name. A couple of ridges the tribe could hide behind dotted the cavern, which was decent enough. The problem was the number of entrances. No less then 5 tunnels were located in the caverns walls, to many for the tribe to comfortably watch. The only reason they had even been staying in this spot for the last week was the tar pit. The tar found in these bubbling pools of stickiness was their main source of fire. Sure, you could burn a centipede or some mushrooms in a pinch, but to waste food for safety was risky endeavour. To look for more food you needed to scout some more tunnels, and to be able to scout more tunnels you needed more fire to keep the beasts at bay. And to keep an eye on your fellow scouts of course. As long as you could still see another person you could be sure that the tunnels wouldn’t shift.

She walked to the tarpit and started to refill her fire bowl. The crude stone bowl was her most prized possession. Her first possession. Though she couldn’t remember getting it herself, Rurui never let her forget the story.

Apparently she was the first of her clutch to hatch. While her clutch mates were still breaking out of their literal shells, Niz was already crawling towards their guard. Rurui had been sitting next to his fire bowl and watched amused as the pale hatchling waggled towards him. He had walked up to Niz and picked her up, only for her to start crying and trying to get free. The fire must have been more interesting than an old guard. Rurui had sighed and put Niz on the ground, picking up his bowl instead. Suddenly he had had her full attention.

“You’re pretty smart to be moving towards the fire as the first thing in your life. If you can keep this up you might even grow as old as me someday!”

He slowly moved the fire closer to the hatchling as she stretched her tiny arms out to reach for the flames. Just before she could touch the fire Rurui put the lid on and extinguished the fire. Niz yelped and jumped for the bowl. Before Rurui could move the bowl away from the tiny creature she knocked it over and splattered the floor, walls, and herself with the viscous goop. Without a moment to waste Niz rooted through the tar, wondering where the fire had gone. When she realized the fire wasn’t hiding beneath the tar, she had headed towards the bowl. Seeing her struggling to lift the stone object Rurui muttered to himself.

“You know what? Just keep the damn thing. I was looking for a new one anyway.”

With a few scoops of her stone ladle Niz had refilled her bowl. Not that she needed to light it right now, the whole tribe was going to travel to the safespot together and there was no need to waste fuel. She wondered what the new safespot was going to be like. A few moves ago they had stayed in a cave with some glowing mushrooms. Unfortunately the glowing mushrooms were far to poisonous to eat, but the tribe hadn’t needed to keep fires lit in the cavern itself, which was pretty convenient. Or maybe this safespot would have a lake or a river in it. Niz smacked her lips thinking of the fish that could be caught in the frigid waters. But most of all she hoped the scouts would’ve found a dead basilisk or a hook horror. Their flesh was disgusting, but the tribe had been running low on bone for a while, and spears wouldn’t craft themselves.

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She eagerly moved to the front of her tribe, being careful not to bump into the other members of her tribe who were still packing up their belongings. The tribe didn’t have much, but every kobold had at least a fire bowl, waterskin and a small knife, either bone or stone. The elders kept totems with them and the crafters had small packs of tools to carve bone and chip stone, but no one possessed more than they could carry. At the front she met up with Darar, an absolute unit of a kobold.

Darar was over a meter tall and nearly half as wide, the largest kobold of her tribe by far. The elders had hoped Darar would become a hunter but, as it turned out, Darar was not well fit for the job. On his first hunt he had become distracted by a shiny spot on a cavern wall and had promptly begun carving it out. The loud sound of his carving had scared their prey away and the tribe had gone hungry for that day. But Darar had kept carving. The fire bowl he made that day was the antithesis of her own, shiny and immaculate. Darar insisted that, even though his bowl was only half as thick as a regular bowl, his was stronger and more durable. Not that he would let anyone test it out. That first hunt had firmly cemented Darar as a crafter, and he had made good use of his bulk. Where most crafters only carried a handful of tools, Darar had strapped dozens of different knives and bones to his back.

Darar disapprovingly glanced at her fire bowl.

“You sure you don’t need a new one?”

Niz sighed. It almost had become a greeting between the two of them. She knew he meant well, but she was attached to the old bowl. With the object firmly held she walked ahead of the tribe, towards the direction the scouts had beckoned. She ached with anticipation. The thrill of heading into the unknown, of heading straight into the darkness had always intrigued her. However, her penchant for wandering off had kept her from being a scout too often.

When the rest of the tribe finally managed to gather all their belongings and started moving toward their new safespace, Niz dreamed about the wonders of her new home. Behind them, she heard the soft crunching sound of the shifting tunnels, forever blocking their way back.

Their new safespace turned out to be… Decent. The cave had a circular space, with a few clusters of glowing mushrooms that dotted the walls. Two tunnels on the same side of the room, no more then a few meters apart and, on the other side of the cave, a plateau that covered about a quarter of the total space.

Niz felt a grin cross her face. Easily defendable, enough ambient light to manage without lighting fires. Unfortunately no source of food or tar, but decent enough. If they made their nests on top of the plateau they would be kept safe from any sudden intrusions, and if they managed to find a source of food near enough to keep the tunnels open they might even be lay and hatch some eggs. It had been a few years since the last clutch could be hatched.

She shot towards the plateau, determined to find the best spot for her to make her nest. While crawling up the cliff (Darar would have to make a few handholds) the spotted a flash of out of the corner of her eye. A few meters to her left, in the middle of a bunch of pale blue mushrooms shone a bright green light. She climbed towards the mushrooms and saw the green light appearing and disappearing, often obscured my the fungi. When she reached the patch she fumbled to get out her knife while hanging from the wall and cut of some of the mushrooms. Lines had been carved into the stone and the green light pulsed from the depts. Niz reached out to touch it and everything went black.