Viess had managed to build up a proper crib/nest combination she could keep her egg collection in. She had left the side that faced are bed open so she could still cuddle the eggs while staying close to the rest of us at night and day by day I could see her excitement growing.

“Ready for the adventure of raising kobold babies?”

“Gobold babies, good babies. Need green dye so little goblins not bully” Viess responded with an honestly scary fierceness in her eyes.

“I'd like to think our tribe is smart enough not to pick on my mate’s children.”

“Smart or dead, they pick.” Viess said while starting to develop a sinister smile.

I took that as my cue to leave, gave Viess a quick kiss on her head and fled like the coward I am. I made my way to the reservoir where I found Avi and Sazz locked in a life-or-death struggle as sazz tried to forcibly clean Avi, all the while Ultai was sitting to the side grinning like the mad goblin she is while threading small, curved bone needles I could only hope were for sutures.

I stripped down and climbed into the water to relax while being greatly entertained by Sazz’s mutterings of “brushy brushy”. Eventually Avi relented and allowed the red-headed goblin to climb and scurry all over her, cleaning to her heart's content. As Ultai started to make her way in I snatched the needles from and channeled some aether into them to act as anesthetic, I had to switch hands to hand them back to Ultai as the hand I had been holding them in now was completely numb as well. After explaining to the women what I'd just done I got a perfect example of duality as Avi looked very relieved and thankful, while Ultai looked at me horrified like she just caught me taking sweets from a child.

I managed to change Ultai’s mood by reminding her she had a new person to explain how we met too, much to my own embarrassment. While Ultai told Avi the story I could see the respect continuously leaving Avi’s eyes, but it did seem to work to distract her from Ultai stitching all her wounds. Me and Sazz soon entered into our own cleaning fight as we each attempted to clean the other at the same time.

Figuring there was no time like the present to get some practice in, I began slowly pushing aether into my after images and after a bit of trial and error managed to make them move according to my will. Using my new “aether ghost” to threaten to poke Sazz in the eyes or pinch her cheeks it didn’t take long for her to lose the cleaning war and for both of us to devolve into a giggling mess.

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“So, what's the cost for doing something weird like that?” Avi interjected

“No idea, aether is finnicky with how it reacts. That used to be my whole job, just poking it and seeing when and how it poked back.”

“How do any of you survive long enough to actually get anything done?” Avi responded

“The academy does a good job drilling into us what can get us into a world of trouble or outright killed before we even have a chance to channel, combine that with some firsthand experiences and we learn to only change small things quickly.”

Sazz held up my bone covered claw and managed to chuckle out “firsthand experience.”

“Well yes but that’s not exactly what I meant. Plenty of young wizards blow themselves up messing around and with the shit show that is those unfortunate other worlders there is tons of evidence to keep a wizard humble.”

“What the hell are other worlders?” Avi asked

“Fair enough, you probably haven't had the chance to meet one being their life expectancy is only about a week. No one is really sure why they end up here as they all seem to have different stories and different worlds but we end up with a lot of people with strange abilities just popping into existence here and there.”

“Goblins live longer than week.” Ultai fired off.

“Yeah..... new abilities in a new world seems to go poorly for those sad bastards, I had the unfortunate opportunity to watch one accidently off himself while I was at the academy.”

Seeing as all three of them where just staring on my I decided to elaborate.

“Some teenage guy just woke up in the Ephemeral Valley one day with no idea how he got there, he just kept talking nonsense about some metal sky world. Well, the academy has enough history with this sort of thing they brought him in to try and help and the figured out the guy could move insanely fast like running through the halls quick enough that no one could see him.”

“How does someone like that even get killed?” Avi asked incredulously.

“Yeah..... that thing about him being an almost invisible teenage boy, he picked up a bad habit of running through hallways flipping girl's skirts. One Poor girl decided she’d had enough and made an air shield around herself with her aether, the boy hit it going full speed and ended up spread across the entire hall and into a few different classrooms. I still can't eat chunky tomato sauces without out getting a little queasy. The girl ended up dropping out and the academy was still paying for therapy last I heard.”

Sazz and Ultai where laughing hysterically while Avi looked sick. Eventually Avi managed to squeak out “do all of them end up like that?”

“As far as I've ever heard, I mean they do have new untested powers. Aether is pretty well tested and known and I still ended up looking like this.”

With that chilling story to stew on Avi seemed to think it was time to call it a night and I couldn’t help but agree. As we all headed of for bed I couldn’t help but look forward to tomorrow since we’d already had one unexpected visitor, I figure it was past time to let Zraih and the goblins go wild and trap the whole cave system.