The next day we saw the first signs of refugees fleeing the supposed holy crusade of the Wild Elves, large swaths of brush that had been trampled underfoot as they fled towards the kobold city. I hoped some of them would be able to hide in the kobold's mountain but, I didn’t really expect it to work out that way. No city was really set up to take on a huge influx of new people, especially not when most would be farmers, and small-scale merchants that would have had to leave everything behind.

The world just didn’t have any need for heroes and adventurers, everyone got by just fine holing up in their walled cities. At least they had, I still didn’t understand what could drive someone to give aether to the Wild Elves, without it, they would have bled themselves against a city wall before heading home feeling like they’d purified themselves. Now they were sweeping through the empire, recruiting anyone that survived their initial push into a city, like some ever-growing plague of locusts willing to consume everything in their path.

Worse still, despite all the rumors and hints I had no idea what to expect. There were just too many possibilities, too many ways to skirt rules and side effects. The only thing I could really know for sure is all the rumors about time magic were just false, aether just didn’t work that way. Every wizard in history that had tried to effect time had either exploded spectacularly or just straight up vanished into nothing, normally with some truly horrendous side effects that left the world scarred. Even the thought of magic items left me utterly perplexed, sure I'd had some success making overly efficient tools, but that’s all they were. Aether artifacts that held real power were obscenely rare, it just took so much effort and knowledge to make even one, and even something like the dullahan had still had side effects.

Seeing my soured mood Ultai had approached me, leaning against me and asking “Why you become wizard? Don’t think was just to be Spicy meat for goblins.”

Ultai did know how to get a smile out of me, even when I was in a poor mood. “I was really only ever good at reading, and my family had a reputation to protect so being a simple librarian would have been too lowly for them. A wizard was something they could respect though, and I loved studying the weird ways we could change the world. Then I had passed my exams and had the aether forced into me and I was off to try and create something new and exciting for the world. If not for you, the tribe, and this war I'd still be holed up in my little hut trying to find ways to make the forest do more work for humanity.”

Ultai smiled widely at me stating “Sounds lazy, I like it.” just proud as she could be. That got a loud laugh out of me. She was absolutely right, I really was lazy, alone out in the forest I had been more than happy to read my books and play with my aether. Even now, despite all that had happened, I was mostly just playing with my aether while the tribe did most of what was needed to get by for me.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“You're too smart to be good for me sometimes, just so you know.”

She just kept her trademark smile before wandering off to start our patrol again. I got back to patrolling as well, trying to be sure none of the trampled paths had come too close to our home. There would no doubt be fighting in our future but the further we could keep it from the cave the better.

There was a loud commotion and lots of yelling back by the caves entrance. Rushing home, we found some of the goblinsand our dullahan had a badly wounded dragon-kin surrounded. The goblins just kept screaming for her to go away, and she just kept yelling back she knew what the dullahan was.

“If you're looking for safe haven the kobold city is west of here.”

“You, you’re a mage and that’s a dullahan. Why are you out here hiding with these goblins?” She half screamed at me, staring with bloodshot tear-filled eyes.

“Chief stays with tribe” Sazz interjected coming to stand in front of me hatchets held tight and angrily.

“Are you a refugee?” I asked coldly. This situation wasn’t going anywhere and if she was part of the Wild Elves horde we would need to act quickly.

“Why aren't you out there fighting? Everyone is dying and you're just hiding away like the world isn't ending.” the dragon-kin broke down sobbing.

I walked through the crowd of very uncomfortable looking goblins and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“This is a small tribe, not some massive army. I’m just a bumbling wizard more suited to playing with plants and petty parlor tricks not some great warrior from legend. The dullahan is newly forged and even that had its own complications.” I said waving my arms around to emphasize the afterimages.

The dragon-kin sank to her knees, staring down, quietly crying to herself. She looked her place in the world, a sad young woman forced to flee from her home due to a war she didn’t understand. With all the fight having left her the goblins were calming down as well, only the dullahan still standing ready for combat and it didn’t take long for Sazz to shoo it back to guarding the entrance.

Eventually the dragon-kin managed to regain a bit of her composure. She looked around at us before asking “what should I do now, just go hide with the kobolds until I'm forced to flee again?”

Ultai tugged on my pant leg while staring at the dragon-kin, stating “Home safe, home safer if question.”

I gave a hard look at the dragon-kin, she was young perhaps only in mid-twenties. She had long black hair draped down to the small of her back, her scales were a light gray color and showed signs of chipping in places. Like all of her kind she had disproportionately large claws for hands and feet, and small draconic wings on her back that had obvious tears rent through them. Her armor was a mishmash of ruined plates over torn leather, the gaps showing through to barely healed wounds on her exceedingly pale grey skin. She looked very much like she may have been a guard at some point forced into fleeing a losing battle.

Ultai was right, this young woman might have answers, and if she felt safer hiding behind a wizard, so be it. We rallied the rest of the tribe and led our new guest down into the caves.