glowfic | One Curious Kobold

It's winter, and all is well with the tribe. Their new magic, an ability to make portals from one place to another, which was found by one of their members during the early-summer trip to meet with the other tribes in the area, let them both build up a decadent food stockpile and move to a much deeper part of the cave system without the worry of being unable to find their way back out. No-one has had to go hungry, and even the fiercest ice storm doesn't reach them; they are as content as kobolds can be.

Well, aside from their new mage, that is. She's bored, and curious. Making portals to known places is straightforward enough, with the magic she found, but that's far from the limit of what it can do... so one day, she slips away, portals off to a different cave system - one can't be too careful, after all - and experiments.

Temperature roughly the same... gravity roughly the same... air the same, not into stone or underwater or in a volcano or on top of a mountain... but, instead of patterning it after a place she knows, what happens if she only specifies those things, and lets the innate patterns of the spot she's casting on do the rest? Particularly this one part, which seems to specify the world...

She finishes the spell, and hesitates for just a moment before activating it.

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She looks a little confused at the mention of illusion magic, but nods and relaxes a little when Franklyn's done talking. "Other of other of human?"

"The other people involved with the Mars move-magic?"

Headshake. "Human of no of magic. Trouble human."

"They don't know where Mars move-magic is. We will keep it a secret until we have people living there."

She nods, "good. Tell more? Trouble is of...?"

"Several kinds," Franklyn says "Violence and fear. Some trouble humans believe their god hates magic. Some are afraid of magic. Sometimes trouble humans will hurt magic humans, but sometimes they do stuff that is like... kicking the magic human out of their tribe. Not all magic human are perfect, but the trouble humans will be bad to the good ones too. Magic humans are kept good by the Lighthouse" he offers the English word "that is recent, but good, different from... what it was before."

Franklyn face gets a weird distant look, very unlike every face he made before.

"Sorry," He says "The Mars thing is a Lighthouse thing."

Edited 2015-10-31 04:35 (UTC)

The kobold makes a small sympathetic noise and moves to offer the human a hug.

Franklyn hugs back "Thanks," he says brightly then in a sad tone "Those people are gone now and we have been fixing their mistakes, what they did to people... to me. One of my brothers is a major part of that."

More hug. The kobold looks curious, but stays quiet.

Franklyn gets the meaning, through some combination of copied and native talent, and since he already started talking about it...

"There was a bad person with a bad mind magic. He manage to get me one one day and he made my power go bad, it was like every person around me screaming in my head..."

She makes another sympathetic sound, and nudges his hand with her nose.

Franklyn smiles, albeit there still a bit of that distant look in his eyes, tentatively he scritches the kobold.

She grins, just a little. "Franklyn okay?"

"I am," He smiles fondly continuing the scritching "it just... it was bad, and other people were hurt too, but they are healed or in the way to get healed. Thanks for being so nice."

Edited 2015-11-01 02:20 (UTC)

She nods, "okay is of important."

Franklyn nods and says "I think everything is going to turn out to be okay, eventually and I am one of the lucky ones, my family is safe and alright."

Another nod. "Time do of help. Kobold world, one year do of big of trouble... three of hand of year? four of hand of year?" she shrugs, "many of year, no is of trouble, kobold is of okay."

"Do you want to talk about it? You don't have to."

Hmm. "Know-magic do of say of tigerperson?"

Franklyn tilts his head and focus his magic... he shudders and his hug becomes a bit more protective.

"Tigerperson are big, aggressive... and don't think kobold as people."

She nods. "Many of time, tigerperson is of okay of kobold - kobold is of small of danger of tigerperson, kobold do of hide, tigerperson no do of try of do of thing of kobold. Year do of trouble, no do of food of tigerperson... kobold do of eat of many of thing, kobold is of okay; tigerperson do of eat of few of thing, tigerperson no is of okay."

Franklyn gently scritches the kobold, his hand shakes a bit.

"Did something... bad happened to your tribe?"

Nod. "Okay now. Kobold" - she taps her chest to indicate herself in particular - "do of go of tigerperson, do of say of kobold is of person, do of help. Move-magic, kobold do of big of hide, do of big of help."

Scritch. "At least it got better" he says sadly "Wish I could have helped."

Nod, hug.

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