As chieftain and shaman didn't plan to leave the village to take care of the monster Ves'ra resolved to get more powerful. The two most powerful beings of her village didn't seem too worried about whatever hunted them, certainly not enough for them to leave the village. She didn't even notice when Kes'ro was being snatched so she knew whatever it was was more dangerous than they assumed.

She sat down and started replaying her memory from the last time she saw him. He had been standing behind her when she heard the strange cry. She was sure the two were related, as was the wind that knocked her forwards.

Thinking about it now made her wonder though, why did she look up as long as she did? That wasn't like her at all. Something had to have affected her mind somehow! Its cry dazed her probably, and only the gust of wind made her snap out as fast as she did. She'd have to do something to make sure she was constantly guarded against that, hovering a sphere of ice above her head or something.

She would have to upgrade her magic too, she did very much doubt she'd hit something moving fast enough to cause gusts of wind with her ice. She would wait until tomorrow ask the chieftain for permission to go deep into the forest to improve her magic.

She was quite nervous after waking up, but it had to be done. The chieftain was already sitting outside, watching her approach with obvious amusement.

“What can I do for you youngling?”

“I need to improve my magic. I won't go hunting today.”

“Sure, you'll have to hunt your own food though. And tell your band. How long do you need?”

“I don't know.”

With the permission to go secured Ves'ra said goodbye to her band and left the village. She didn't know how loud her lightning would be and decided she'd move for half a day at least. After following the stream to a small pond she decided it was time to start her training.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The bolt of lightning impacted the tree with a loud crack. Ves'ra was quite frustrated, lightning didn't seem all that useful to her, it took an extraordinary amount of energy to keep it from impacting the ground all by itself. The best she could manage was five kobolds, sure anything getting within that area would be fried but that didn't help all that much.

Perhaps she had the wrong approach again, lightning obviously wasn't suited for attacking so she should use it to defend herself. She already knew she could impart ideas on her magic, something she intended to bring to a new level.

Ves'ra created a sphere of energy - the origin of all her higher magic - and instruced it to discharge at anything which would harm her. She had no way to test if it worked, but seeing that her energy vanished she was reasonably sure it did.

She went to sleep afterwards, climbing on a tree for a medium of security. She was exhausted by both the walk and magic - lightning needed way more energy than all other magic.

She had obviously been more exhausted than she assumed, the suns were quite high in the sky as she woke. Suddenly she heard a loud snapping out of the forest, instantly all sleep washed away, there was something foreign in the forest. She decided to investigate and retreat if whatever it was was too dangerous for her. She warmed her body with a quick spell, stealing the heat from her surroundings.

The group of beings was easy to find. Humans. Another strange tidbit of knowledge she had no way to know. While three of them moved with the silent grace of a predator the other five were having serious problems keeping their noise to a minimum.

They were chatting in an unknown language, heedless to the danger the forest contained.

They didn't seem all that dangerous, so she decided to follow them - perhaps she could learn something interesting.

With all the noise it was only a matter of time until something took offense to the invasion of its territory. The monster that decided to teach the invaders a lesson was some kind of boar.

Ves'ra’s band made sure not to attract undue attention of such beasts, they were dangerous and would almost always result in death of at least one of them.

The three dangerous humans noticed the boar running at them only moments after she did, alerting the rest of their group of the danger.

They reacted as one, all but three stepped back while the silver ones stepped forwards, taking hunks of metal from their backs and bracing themselves for impact. Ves’ra could practically see the boar snorting in amusement, no sane kobold would take a boar charge head on. She was glad not to be a human.

To her immense surprise the humans didn't budge when the boar impacted their frontline. She heard a grunt and saw the boar stumbling backwards, stunned. Before it could recover it already sported three sticks, shot from strange contraptions in the human’s hands. It took only seconds before the sticks were joined by two balls of fire, impacting the beasts head and finally killing it.