Maikana
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Chapter 32 – The dominoes fall
🕑 Added 2025-03-07 02:44:03 +0000 UTC“Before you go, please do gather your things from your chamber. Feel free to take the inkpot and pen with you, that little spirit is quite happy to be useful and I’d hate to see it get lonely. Plus, I’m sure you’ll have use for it.” Waving Kori off to gather things that weren’t really hers, but she would most definitely like to keep. “Oh, I suppose I should ask for the sash back.” Finally realizing that she isn’t actually wearing it, “Where is it by the way?” Eying her satchel in hopes it’s bundled inside.
“Oh… Umm… I was a bit mad last night… So, I threw it. In the maze. It should be easy enough to find though, just take the righthand passage, then two center and then the right again from the third intersection away from the entrance from the Clan caverns.” She can’t help but be amused as the mounting look of trepidation and unease comes over Ortik’s face as she describes taking a bunch of seemingly random turns. “Do you want me to draw out the route?”
“Please…”
A quick map drawn, earning her another level in her Cartography Skill.
<<Skill proficiency improved. Basic Cartography level 2 -> 3 >>
She’s still not happy with the name of the Skill, since no one can give her a proper answer as to what exactly carts have to do with maps. But letting it go, at least for now.
After a few minutes and with her few meager belongings quickly packed into her satchel, a change of clothes that she’s not going to mention if Ortik doesn’t, the inkwell, pen, the broad shallow bowl and fine sand she had used to practice her writing with, her slate, and a few odds and ends filling the satchel to bulging, she departs Ortik’s residence alongside Korse.
I’m going to miss having such a large room to myself… I thought it was too big when I first got here, but now it’s going to feel cramped back in the brood chamber.
With the heat of anger drained and passed, Kori can’t help but let the emotions those flames been holding back break through. “Why?” Tears finally beginning to flow. “Why can’t I do this?”
A gentle hand on her back as they walk through the tunnels and caverns leading back to the young ones once again home, “I do not know, Kori. I wish I had an answer for you, but I do not.” Attempting to comfort her as she slowly breaks down. “Magic is a mystery few have the clarity to understand and even within its disciplines there is little understanding of why some may use fire magics and others wind. Or why Ylst was blessed with all four of the primal elements.” Pondering before he continues, unsure if what he intends to say will be helpful or just more hope to be later dashed. “Perhaps this is just more of the same. A fire mage seldom can learn water magics, perhaps you are unsuited for the path of a mage or shaman, but another we have yet to find.”
“But what else is there?” Clearly confused, as she’d only ever heard of the two paths within Clan Emberscale.
“What else indeed.” The reply cryptic and unhelpful, but it succeeded in spurring on the young Kobold’s mind to think of what else there might be for her. The rest of the journey passes in silence as she tries to puzzle out how she could learn more.
Reaching the still empty brood chamber, several hours yet until the others are to return from their duties, Korse guides her towards his own workspace. “I have some work to do, but you are welcome to remain here with me if you would like.” She gives him a shake of her head, still stuck in her thoughts and her tears still forming at the edges of her eyes.
Entering her den, she’s surprised by the state of it when she crawls in, with much of the dust cleaned from the floor. Even the roughly Kobold shaped impression of compacted dust she had left behind earlier in the morning wiped away from her thin sleeping mat.
One of the minders must have cleaned it for me… I should thank them. Later.
She grimaces again when she recalls the sleeping mats that she had just left behind.
Wonder if I could have gotten away with taking those too. Not that they’d fit in my satchel.
Slinging her satchel off of her shoulder and setting it at the farthest side. Gathering a few of her things, using the shallow bowl in place of a shelf or table and placing the inkwell, pen, pouch of sand, and little pot of ointment within it to keep them organized. Looking at the crystalline inkwell, unsure if it is glass traded for on the surface or if someone had painstakingly hollowed out and carved a piece of quartz.
“Well little spirit, you probably can’t even hear me but this is home for now.” Leaning her slate on the wall behind her arranged belongings as she speaks, “I don’t know how much writing I’ll be able to do for now, I don’t want to waste the pages left in my book, but I’ll try to make good use of you so you can feel useful still.”
Sitting back on her now clean sleeping mat, the leather old and flat but well cared for, she spends some time just letting out her tears and bemoaning her inability to seemingly do anything right.
“Maybe I should just go be a trapper like everyone said before they found out my magic Ability Score was high.”
Sitting there, with her tail tucked around her legs, she begins to work on the skill that could lead her back to Ylst’s tutelage. Over and over, mana pools in her hand until she tries to wrangle it into a knot or a ring. Gentle Coaxing, forceful pulling, even trying to mold it with her other hand, nothing seems to produce more than a non-descript blob.
At one point she thinks she’s made a little progress, instead of shaping the mana blob, she forms a second on the end of one of her claws and pokes it into the first where she wants it to grow. After nearly an hour of attempting this new method, she managed to get it to last long enough to add a third blob before two things happened. First, they all collapsed into the ambient mana. And second, her head began to pulse with pressure of controlling three separate mana constructs.
“Ow… I wonder if that was like that multi-casting thing that Ortik did?” Soon after the mana leaves her control the pain abates and her head clears. “I guess that’s not going to work… I’d need like six of those to get even the crudest of rings and then I’d still need to stretch the mana across the gap.”
She’s later reminded of the time as she begins to hear her siblings moving about the larger chamber, not in the mood to be social she remains in her little den, hoping none of them think to check if she’s there again after seeing her in the morning.
Oh… I kinda yelled at the chieftain in front of the entire clutch this morning.
Her hopes dashed quickly thereafter as Losq’s head appears in the entrance to her den, “Yup! She’s here again.” Yelled back out into the room when he sees her.
“Hi Losq. Can I just be left alone for a bit?” she pleads as she see’s her brothers excited expression. Clearly looking to hear the latest gossip.
“Nope!” Crawling the rest of the way in, though the space just barely fits the pair of them. “Come on, dinner’s soon and everyone wants to hear what happened. Well, they want to hear the rest of what happened. We all heard a lot of it this morning.” Moving carefully to not disturb her things, and staring at the little pile of possessions that she now has to call her own, he gently directs Kori until she’s by the entrance and starts pushing her out. “Don’t make me pull you out of here by your tail.”
“Fine, fine…” Not willing to call her brothers bluff, at least she thinks it’s a bluff, she crawls out into the main room of the brood chamber, most of her siblings already sitting about on the floor in small groups. Some talking, some wrestling, probably the warrior apprentices, and a few sitting in a circle holding strange pieces of clay with markings on them. “What’s that Itr and Qot are doing?”
“Oh, that’s a game that Aldr taught a few of us, learned it up in the Whatzakt’s taverns. It’s called Dominoes, it’s pretty fun.” A wide grin as he begins to explain the game to her.
Her troubles at least partially forgotten for a time as her siblings begin to teach her how to play. At first, she finds the game to be confusing, trying to use up all of her own ‘tiles’, which is apparently what the little pieces of hardened clay are called, before anyone else while not being able to see what they have in order to block them from playing. Though the biggest problem is that no one can agree exactly on the rules, since they’re not written down anywhere. After an argument occurred about whether you can draw a new tile before playing, Kori decided to ask Korse if she could have a piece of paper.
It takes nearly an hour of arguing and writing out the potential rules on her slate first, and clearing it several times to make changes, to get most everyone to agree on what the rules actually are. Kori then takes out her tome and uses it as a flat base to write on. Her siblings gathering around as they see the shiny inkwell, clearly not something that a youngling would typically have, and the gossip starts anew. Having to answer that she did not in fact steal it brings up the topic that she, and most of her siblings, had been trying to avoid all evening. Brought to a head when one of them calls out, “If you’re good enough that he gave you a fancy ink thingy, why’d he kick you out?”
Her face droops as she hears the question, but before she can say anything both Losq and Plk yell at the offending sibling, “Shut it Wlde!” Unfortunately for them the damage was already done and the effort to distract Kori ruined.
Plk tries to defend her yelling out, “Cause magic’s hard. It’s not like mining where you swing a pick and get your Skill, Wlde.”
A different voice calls out from the group, “Can’t be that hard if you can do it Plk!”
“Oh, that’s it!” A small orb of mana no bigger than a drop of ink races across the room, eliciting a yelp when it strikes Wlde. Though not doing much more harm than a flick of the claw would have.
And suddenly, the majority of the clutch of thirty-two young Kobolds were piling on top of one another, pulling tails, tripping, pushing, and occasionally biting in an all-out brawl. With a glance to the minder near the entrance only revealing a put upon frown and shaking head, clearly not intending to intervene, Kori sidles up to him. “They do this often?”
“Not usually this many of them, but yeah. You going to join them? I bet you could get a few good trips in before you’re the bottom of the pile.”
“Not really my thing…”
“Why not? You know they’re doing this for you, right?” Continuing to coax her onwards.
“They are? Why would they do that? They know I don’t usually join in.” Perplexed at the minder’s attitude.
“They’re worried about you.” Giving his young charge a glance that says her siblings aren’t the only ones, “And it’s a great way to blow off some stress.” Pointing over towards the near edge of the melee, “Plus, Wlde’s wide open over there while he’s got Plk pinned, bet you could tackle him before he even sees you coming.” Holding his hand out towards her, “I’ll hold onto your satchel for you. Go forget why you’re in a bad mood for a bit.”
With that final bit of cajoling, Kori gives in.
“I guess I’ve got nothing better to do tonight. And Wlde is wide open.” A mischievous grin coming across her face as she hands the minder her satchel.
“And don’t think I’ve forgotten how you used to fight; keep it at least relatively clean and try not to get hurt.” A final admonition as he see’s Kori giving in. His face blanches as he hears Kori’s final retort before rushing in and jumping on Wlde’s back.
“Don’t worry, I have healing ointment!”
