Her days after winter had started were boring without end. The shaman wouldn't start to teach them for another month and she had already been taught everything her band could reasonably teach while confined to the hut, at least without hunting for extra materials. The outside was too cold to play in and her brother was as boring as ever. The only thing she could do was mope around by herself.

After two days of that she had more than enough, it was time to do something. After some thought she came up with an idea, she could start to examine the strange feelings that had been with her ever since she was born, a foreign set of instincts, subconscious knowledge she couldn't have and lastly a mind that developed a lot faster than that of her siblings.

Ves huddled down near the fire and retreated in her mind. Slowly all external sensations retreated, the heat, smells and sounds all became unimportant. She inspected the instincts first, there was nothing really useful, she was a predator and not prey! Even more confusing was the total lack of the energy she knew to be empowering her body.

That was interesting - she had been sure every being was filled by that energy but perhaps she was special. She couldn't think of a way to measure the other oddities so she decided to investigate the energy.

She left her mind and concentrated on her body, searching it for the energy she knew to be present. She found it easily enough, it flowing through every part of her very being. Sometimes it came up to a dead end right under her scales, leaking small amounts in her surroundings.

When she tried taking control of the energy she experienced some kind of wall in her head, a resistance that rebuffed her mental commands. Walls were fragile things though, even she, a small kobold would able to break through the most powerful wall in the village in due time!

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Imagining her command as a wooden club she used the tried and true way of smashing things until they broke to attack the barrier.

Failure. The barrier didn't even move!

Perhaps it would be wise to try and circumvent it instead, all walls had to have an exit.

After several hundred breaths of mental prodding she knew the wall to be solid, it seemed to imprison her mind just like her egg imprisoned her before she broke free.

Her egg!

She escaped one of those before, but she could still remember the bone deep exhaustion she had after fighting for her freedom.

She could either do the same as she did back then, breaking out of the shell with her legs, but why would she do something like that, she had seen far more powerful and frightening forces than a single kobold. She just had to leave her hut, the storm still raging outside was far more dangerous than she would ever be.

Ves pictured herself as a dark stormcloud, torrents of water and ice propelled by winds faster than anything could run, an origin of lightning, slowly filling out all available space. She even started to get a little compressed once she was happy with her result.

She pictured air leaving her first, powerful gusts of wind pushing against the shell. Soon after she added lightning, bolts of electricity and sound, powerful and destructive. Last but not least she added water and ice, a constant, unending assault of nature slowly draining all heat.

Soon after she felt the shell crack. Power flooded her mind. A part of her knew she couldn't stop now, she took control of herself forcing the forces of the storm under tight control and continuing her assault, destroying more than half of the shell until she felt her cloud-self would easily fit through the opening without compromise, losing some of its power in the process. It was way harder than she anticipated, she constantly had to stop herself from leaving, all due to the nature of a cloud wanting to spread out instead of compress.

Ves opened her eyes to a different world. She felt her surroundings like never before, small currents of air, water all around her, even the heat of the fire seemed more vibrant than ever. That was something for later though; first she had to sleep. She had never felt so exhausted before - both her body and her mind were screaming for rest.