Chapter 37 – Piercing Veils

Uiska and Brynnal had gone ahead to scout the terrain, easily blazing a trail through the forest floor. However, the rest of the escape party wasn’t as nimble. The Veilwoods were far from welcoming to creatures their size. The first few days of the journey had been brutal, every step became a battle of scale. Towering branches wove a dense canopy overhead, blotting out the sky. Mossy undergrowth entangled their legs, while gnarled roots were formidable obstacles, forcing them to climb over or detour. Puddles disguised treacherous quicksand or deceptively deep mud pools.

The Sunshy eventually began to adapt to the environment, allowing them to push on. With little children to care for and Nib the mouse pulling Eryl’s sled at the rear, they had to fall back on old instincts, reshaping their path as they went. Sela and Ilkin led hunting teams on the party’s flanks, making quick work (and good eating) of the various beetles, centipedes, snakes, and salamanders that blocked their progress. Having learned from their experience with the boar, they took extra precautions to avoid larger animals, threading through bushes, burrows and logs to weave an improvised version of the Shyways.

For Vikka and her kin however, it had mostly been a miserable trek. Tibbin kept tripping, swearing each time. Nynka snarled at stubborn vines until she simply chewed through them. Sidhe determined to climb over obstacles rather than go around, ended up sliding down a damp rock, landing flat on her tail. Every misstep was a reminder that their bodies were all wrong.

But that was changing. Too slowly at first, but the effects of Veyran’s shrinking spell were already wearing off. Vikka noticed she could step over logs she swore had been waist-high the day before. Tibbin felt it when his claws found better purchase in the dirt, helping him to grip instead of slip. Nynka reached up to scratch her ears, and realized they now poked above the brushline.

By the fourth day, they were at half their normal size, around double the height of a Shy. And yet, the magic’s unraveling wasn’t just physical.

Vikka couldn't shake the feeling that the forest itself was changing around her—or was it her perception that was shifting? As she moved with the party, her ears twitched at every rustle or snap. It was as if the breeze whispered secrets as it blew through the thickening trees. Though Jerrik’s markers hopefully pointed the way to safety, a strange unease persisted in her mind.

The Shy relied on Brynnal’s Sunbrave tracking skills and Uiska’s senses to navigate. But for Vikka and the kobolds, the trail also harbored signs only they could parse. Familiar root tubers, too large for a Shy to harvest, had been pulled from the ground. A scratch along a tree, too long and deep to be one of Jerrik’s marks, matched the curve of their claws.

Vikka caught herself scanning the landscape differently, not just for danger but for other markers. She had never come across these places or omens before, but she somehow knew what they signified. Here, a shelter had once been dug. There, a meal had been shared. Common kobold staples, plants they used for food or rituals, including the firemoss that had helped start them on this crazy adventure, had been carefully gathered along the trail. The deeper they ventured, the more Vikka felt it—a pull, deep in her bones, a call to something she couldn't name but intuitively recognized.

This compulsion wasn’t tied to the instinctive call of the caldera hive they’d left and hoped to return to, or even a different hive altogether. It evoked a concept otherwise alien to kobolds. It felt like someone had been building another social structure altogether, not a hive but… a home?

She stopped abruptly, causing Tibbin to nearly bump into her.

"Oi," he muttered, rubbing his nose. "You alright?"

Vikka didn’t answer. Instead, she patted his snout and walked right past him, zeroing in on the next outcropping in their path. She reached out, running her claws over a telltale pattern gouged into the side of the rock. It was too deep for a Shy’s tools to make and didn’t match anything the Veilwoods’ native fauna would set down. They were a kobold’s markings. Someone like her had come this way not too long ago. And they didn’t just pass through, but were living and thriving, sheltered by the veil of the forest.

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Vikka began waking in the morning with her mind clouded by afterimages of her dreams. Once they’d reached the deepest part of the Veilwoods, the visions lingered. She would catch herself recognizing landmarks they had just encountered. The others seemed to be experiencing a growing sense of familiarity as well.

Tibbin spotted a half-buried claw print on the side of an almost imperceptible path. "This trail…" he muttered, crouching to examine the dirt. "It's like... it’s urging me on. You feel that too, don't you, Vikka?" He asked her trustingly, his usual bravado failing him.

Nynka sniffed the air. "Someone’s been here before. And I don’t mean humans."

Sidhe turned to Vikka, expectant. Waiting for her to confirm what they all were thinking.

Vikka nodded. 'Don’t worry,' she reassured the others. 'I feel it too.'"

When all the kobolds collectively breathed a sigh of relief, she realized just how much the dynamic had shifted. They weren’t just following along. They looked up to her. Not just to coordinate with the Shy, but to better understand what was going on and what they were supposed to do. As if she was supposed to know everything.

It was subtle at first—Tesska deferring to her when deciding where to set up sleeping spots. Rena waiting for her nod before foraging. Even Tibbin, usually quick to argue, hesitated now before answering back. As they trudged along, the whole group fell into step behind her, never forging ahead themselves. The more they grew back into their true size, the stronger the groupthink took hold.

The Shy noticed it too. Sylven caught her eye one evening as they gathered near the low-burning fire they used for warmth and to ward off predators.

"You’re changing," he said. “Even the way you walk is different.”

Vikka huffed. "We’re getting bigger again. That’s all."

But it wasn’t, and she knew it. Sylven didn’t look convinced either.

She could feel the magic shifting through her—the residue of Veyran’s spell unraveling, her body stretching back to its natural form. But it wasn’t just their proportions that were transforming, something else was waking up in them. They were now moving with more certainty, a greater sense of purpose.

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And when Vikka slept, she dreamed more vividly of the destination calling to them. A cave, sheltered by a rocky overhang. A chamber filled with happy voices, not just speaking, but singing. A warm chorus that tugged at her heart. She woke shaken, breath tight in her chest. These weren’t her memories. They belonged to another … and not just any kobold, they felt like the memories of a queen.

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The following night, the party set up camp in a hollow beneath a fallen tree, the massive roots sprawled out enough to provide cover from above, the trunk forming a natural wall against the wind. It would likely be the last night that the kobolds could still fit in with the Shy camp without totally crowding them out.

Uiska and Brynnal sat at the edge of the fire, Sylven and Mara conferring over their scouting reports with the rest of the group.

"Path ahead leads to a stream. Terrain gets harder. But no obvious threats,” Brynnal succinctly summarized.

Sylven raised a hand. “Uiska’s picked up on another trail. Neither Shy nor human..." he noted while looking at Vikka and the kobolds.

As Vikka turned to her group, she saw it happening again. The others weren’t paying that much attention to Sylven or the Shy, just intent on her.

What did they want? Her opinions? To make decisions for them? The pressures of unwillingly holding sway over others were getting to her. She hadn’t chosen this role, why had it chosen her?

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Veyran had spent enough time with the arclith lode to know something was off about it. Not in a dangerous way, but the energy it gave off weren’t entirely familiar to him.

He had lived his entire life around arclith. He knew how it should feel, how the veins in the Deep pulsed in a certain rhythm. This wasn’t the same.

He glanced toward Rhiannon. She sat at the far end of the study, her fingers fidgeting with a smaller arclith shard they had chipped off from the motherlode to aid in her instruction. He realized that he had kept her waiting, and her patience would soon wear thin.

Their lessons had grown more intense. She learned quickly, not just the fundamentals, but even the intricate nuances of the arcane. In a few days, she’d progressed from simple cantrips to full-on spells. And yet, every time he taught her something new, he could feel her testing the limits, calculating how she could magnify the magic to human scale. He was worried how her pushing boundaries could trigger a surge, yet somehow the lode held steady.

He looked back at the arclith. He was sure of it. This didn’t come from any mine or deposit the Deepshy had tapped. But if it hadn’t come from the Deep, then what were its origins?

His thoughts were interrupted by Rhiannon moving towards him. The speed at which she could cross the room always gave him a jolt. Before she could resort to more aggressive or physical means to prompt him to start the next lesson and stop stalling, Veyran rushed to climb over the drawer to perch on her desk. He sat atop a stack of books as she stood over him, watching his movements with an air of idle curiosity.

She continued to toy with the arclith shard in one hand. It was nothing to her, just a nervous tic. Veyran clenched his teeth in frustration. The shard was the size of his forearm. Back in the Deep it would fetch a fortune and be handled with reverence. Here, it was just another trinket in her collection. The casual way she handled it set him on edge.

Veyran felt constantly reminded of his size. The many small slights weren’t outright insults but mere microaggressions, and yet they stung all the same. There was the way she spoke down to and handled him. In the way she nonchalantly lifted objects around him that even two Shy working together could never budge. The way she loomed over him with that condescending, indulgent smile, as if humoring a clever pet. She would set a scroll down too close to where he sat, forcing him to dodge to the side to avoid the impact. She’d reach for things just over his head, making him duck and try to regain some dignity by immediately straightening up and adjusting his posture.

When it came to lesson time though, it was his turn to be the one in charge.

"Your hands are too stiff," he chided, watching her botch the casting motion.

Rhiannon scowled. "If my hands were any more relaxed, I’d drop the damned shard."

"That’s why you need to practice until you get it right," he rebuked.

"These hand exercises don’t seem to be doing any good,” she moaned. “Are they truly necessary?"

Veyran smirked from his perch, the closest he could come to looking down at her. "And you’re the expert now?"

Rhiannon clucked and pointed her finger at his face. "You’re insufferable."

"And yet," he said, watching as she tried again, "here we are."

Her fingers executed a near flawless sequence of movements. The truth was, mastering the gestures provided only marginal benefits to casting, helping focus the flow of energy on specific targets. Veyran wasn’t even sure if they properly translated to beings of human size. But drilling Rhiannon on the importance of being able to aim true and concentrate on fixed points was probably a good idea, given her tendency for overextending. And it bought him time.

"You’re certain this spell has been properly adjusted for my proportions for me to even notice an effect when I attempt it?" she asked mockingly, sounding more amused than suspicious.

Veyran rolled his eyes, not letting her rattle him.

"If it wasn’t," he mused, "do you think I’d waste our time and energy going through all the trouble to teach it to you?"

Rhiannon let out a low chuckle, setting the shard down with a dull thud beside him. The impact sent a faint tremor through the desk, but Veyran didn’t flinch.

"You do want to hang on to your pretty little limbs after all," she mused. "I was beginning to wonder."

She leaned in slightly, resting her palms on the desk, bringing her face dangerously close to his, a gesture that might have come off as intimidating if only he would give her the satisfaction of admitting it.

"You’re very sure of yourself, Deepshy," she murmured. "But tell me, if this spell goes awry, what’s the worst that happens to me? A singed eyebrow? A ruined dress?"

He crossed his arms and tilted his head, unflinching. "That depends. Are you afraid of vanishing into thin air?"

She laughed at that, pulling back. "Hardly."

“Don’t let me hold you back then,” he challenged her.

Rhiannon closed her eyes for a moment, centering herself as she cast, miming the gesture she’d just mastered. Her form blurred, turning both translucent and amorphous. She couldn’t help but hold her breath as the spell played out, waving her almost indiscernible fingers in front of her face. Panicking at the illusion of her body fading away into nothing, she lost her nerve, breaking the flow of arcane energy from the shard feeding the magic into her body. She blinked and gasped, shifting back suddenly to her fully corporeal self.

She pushed off the desk, shooting up to her full height again, and Veyran had to fight back the vertigo hitting him from the sudden shift in perspective.

To meet her gaze, Veyran had to step away and look up, his neck bent almost all the way back.

“Well, the worst that could have happened,” he said calmly, “is you’d learn the hard way that magic doesn't care much how big you are.”

Rhiannon thought she was the mistress of this game. That just because she was taller, stronger, and held all the advantages that she was the one in control.

She wasn’t wrong. Not yet. But she also wasn’t as invulnerable as she thought.

There are power struggles, and then there are battles of attrition. And Veyran knew how to survive by drawing things out.

She reached out to grab the arclith lode in its box. "You’ve stared at that thing more than anything for days already," she remarked, stretching lazily against the side of her desk. "Should I let you sleep in its box?"

Veyran didn’t bite at the bait. He didn’t look at Rhiannon, keeping his eyes on the lode. "It’s unusual. We need to know what sets it apart. You must tell me more about where it came from."

"Unusual means valuable," she retorted. "Maybe I should hold back from letting you know more about it until you also have more to share with me in exchange. Let’s not pretend you aren’t just as greedy for knowledge as I am."

Veyran finally looked her in the eye. "Seeking knowledge isn’t greed."

Rhiannon gently patted him on the head in an almost affectionate, if patronizing, gesture. "No, but hoarding it is. And you want to know all there is about everything, just as much as I do."

She lowered her head closer to his, reaching out and nudging his chin lightly with a single finger—just enough force to make him stumble backwards.

Another reminder of his place under her thumb. Another casually cruel move in the game. But the more he let her believe she was winning, the easier it would be to bring her down.