Margaret woke just as the sun began to warm the horizon. Her alarm was set for five every morning except Sundays, but she rarely needed it, nor did she sleep in on Sundays. Unlike the previous morning, she woke up without a wild panic attack. Truth was still asleep, and while she hadn’t moved much during the night, her toothy lizard mouth hung open and a small damp spot showed where she’d drooled on her pillow.

A small, blue butterfly floated in through the open window to perch on the drooling kobold’s nose, and Margaret wished her phone had come with her to the new world so she could take a picture. That’s what good friends do, she thought, save embarrassing blackmail to torture each other with for years to come.

Truth’s nose twitched a few times and then the kobold sneezed. Only, with the sneeze came a tongue of flame. The flame was closer to a buffed up candle than flamethrower, but it was still enough for Margaret to completely leap out of bed. Truth blinked and attempted to lick her lips as she sat up with a yawn.

“What?” she asked.

“What do you mean, what?” Margaret answered with just a touch of heat. “You sneezed and you breathed fire!”

“Oh, that.” Truth didn’t seem the least bit concerned by this development, which told Margaret it was a fairly regular thing. “Kobolds are long descended from drakes or wyverns or something. I never really paid attention to those lessons. All we can manage is that tiny flame, not really even good enough to get a fire going with, you still need some pretty fine tinder and kindling.”

Truth’s almost bored delivery as she crawled out of bed calmed Margaret back down to her normal level of worried, which was more manageable. Suddenly, Margaret was hit with an epiphany and she had to ask, “Wait, so is that why I got the fire quintessence from the chief and nothing from the boar?”

“I dunno, that’s all new to me. Makes sense, though. Kobold’s are creatures of fire, originally. Pigs are just pigs.”

“So... if I want more quintessence to learn new skills, I need to find creatures with an... alignment?”

Truth just shrugged. “Works as well as any other theory, I guess. Good thing you got the death one from his artifact, you don’t want to go hunting for anything death aligned.”

“Pia, any master list of quintessence out there and creature alignments?”

‘Yes to the first, no to the second. Though around here, you're most likely to find water or flora. Possibly air. You’re most likely to find aligned creatures in areas that embody their element. Like a mountain cave for earth and darkness. Being this near the sea, you might find something water aligned, and plant alignments should be fairly common.’

Margaret relayed the information to her friend.

“Be nice if she could talk to all of us,” the kobold groused.

“Can you do that, Pia? Is there a skill or something?”

‘Not that I’m aware of, Margaret. That said, my databanks are very limited in the grand scope of the universe.’

“She says no, but there could be something you don’t know about.”

“Alright then,” Truth nodded. “Off we go.”

The crew ate a relaxed breakfast of eggs, sausage, and some type of porridge. Afterward, they headed to the square that the guard from the night before had told them about. True to his words, the square was filled with refugees.

“This is really giving me Mos Eisley cantina vibes...” she muttered to herself.

Honor cocked his head at her. “What is a Mos Eisley, Ms. Margaret? Should we be on guard?”

Blushing that she’d been heard, Margaret shook her head. “No, no, no. It’s just that there are a lot of different types of people here, it’s a bit much to take in at once.”

On cue, one of those different types of people cautiously approached Margaret and her escort. He was older, with a head of grey hair and a full beard. The only non-human feature he sported was a pair of long pointed ears. Light, curly, stylized markings adorned the few bits of skin that were exposed on his face and hands, but Margaret couldn’t tell if they were natural or cosmetic, like a tattoo.

Outside of the ears, he looked like a fairly normal human, if humans topped out at three feet. The diminutive man even made her kobold friends seem huge. Margaret had seen plenty of three-foot-tall humans before, but those had usually been children. This man looked like a very slender, fully developed man, in miniature.

Knowing what question she would ask, Naps leaned in close and gave the kobold equivalent of a whisper. “Gnome.”

The gnome man walked right up to Margaret and bowed his head. “Excuse me, my lady. I was wondering if perhaps you had need of some laborers for your estate? I am the elder of a gnommish clan that has many talented workers and craftsmen available for very reasonable rates.”

The gnome even spoke the trade language, rendering Pia’s translation unnecessary. Margaret closed her eyes for a second and thought to herself, It can’t be this easy, there’s got to be a catch somewhere. She wanted to kneel to talk to the gnome eye-to-eye, but she wasn’t sure what the cultural norms were, and didn’t want to offend him, so she just made eye contact and spoke.

“Well, I don’t have an estate, per se, but I do have an offer for your clan.”

A few hours, some light negotiations, one-stop at a general store for some foodstuffs later, and Margaret’s little group was escorting twenty-nine gnomes and seven trolls back towards her village.

The trolls made her a little uneasy at first. They were imposing figures, standing eight to nine feet tall with a slightly hunched posture and lean, muscled bodies covered in grey-green skin. Long, gangly arms reached all the way to their knees and ended with hands that Margaret imagined could grip two basketballs at once each with their long, taloned fingers. They all had similar facial features, though they were easy to tell apart. Long, narrow faces with long, narrow, pointed chins and long, narrow, hooked noses. Pointed ears that seemed much longer and pointier than was necessary for great hearing completed the look.

All it took for Margaret to completely get over her unease was to see the little troll girl in the only complete family in the group. Little by troll standards, the girl was nearly as tall as Margaret. She kneeled in the dirt near the fountain in the square, playing with a rag doll with gangly arms and oversized ears just like hers. Margaret’s heart melted and she took in the ragtag bunch of trolls without a second thought.

Margaret worried that her potential new citizens would decide to stay in her village, but they seemed ecstatic to be offered homes and work, even without the promise of wages. In fact, she worried for a second time that everything was working out just a little too well. When their group reached the point where their path left the main road into the woods, they were met with the sounds of battle in the trees. Margaret muttered, “Flipping figures.”

As soon as her kobold companions heard the sounds of battle, their posture shifted. Besides holding their weapons at the ready, their movements sharpened, Honor focused forward while Truth and Naps kept their eyes on the sides, watching so they would not be flanked.

The gnomes huddled together and cast furtive glances through the trees. The trolls looked wary but much more relaxed. The refugees had no weapons between them, only thin packs containing the sum of their meager possessions, but the trolls’ giant hands could be considered weapons on their own.

Twilight was beginning to dim the forest, so the battle was more a blur of moving shapes until the group came closer to it. Margaret briefly considered turning back, but any hostile forces this close to her village was bad news and they needed information on the combatants at the very least.

When the fighters came into clear view, the two different groups were painfully obvious. One was a mix of races, some Margaret had seen and some new, but they all dressed as stereotypically evil as possible. Whether they wore robes, leathers, or plate, they were all in black with bone accents. Apparently the heretics all shopped at the same armorer.

The other side was the exact opposite: one race with a variety of clothing and armor. Margaret first took them for centaurs, with the bottom half of a horse and the upper half of a human, but she quickly realized her mistake. It was the antlers that gave it away. Instead of horse, their bottom halves were the four-legged body of a deer. The torso of a human sprouted from the deer half’s shoulders, with two distinct differences. All of them sported long, furry, deer-like ears, and antlers sprouted from the heads of the men. They stood an average human height, to the top of the head, anyway. The antlers of some of them would have scraped door frames back home.

“Honor, I don’t want to assume, but-”

“Yes, the ones in black are the enemy,” he finished for her.

“Can we help them?”

All three kobolds nodded. “We need to,” Truth added. “If the cervids lose, we will be the heretics’ next target.”

The cervids divided their combat roles by gender. The men fought the front lines with longswords and shields while the women fought from the back with bows. Margaret and the kobolds moved quickly to where the archers were positioned. The archers shot short glances at them but remained focused on the heretics in black.

A few cervid men had retreated behind the archers because of serious wounds that, without treatment, would likely soon end their lives. Margaret aimed towards the center of the group and loosed a heal. Two nearby archers wheeled on her with arrows drawn, but thankfully they noticed the spell’s effect before they shot.

The heal didn’t bring the men back to fighting condition, but blood quit flowing as skin began to knit back together. The wounded fighters passed out, no longer quite on death’s door.

Once she was sure the cervids wouldn’t attack her, Margaret shouted, “I can give your fighters a defense buff too, if they can bunch up for a second!”

A couple of the archers shared a look, then one shouted a command that Margaret didn’t understand and the fighters responded without even looking. They slowly made their way toward the center of the battle while keeping their attackers at bay. The second that Margaret thought they were all in range, she shot a Toughskin at the group. Thankfully, the Interface agreed, and all the fighters glowed briefly before charging back into battle.

Honor spoke from her side, asking, “Shall we assist, Ms. Margaret?”

She didn’t hesitate, answering quickly, “Go, just watch yourselves.”

Honor and Naps vanished amongst the combatants. They further exaggerated their shorter statures by using their tails as a counterbalance to run in with their backs parallel to the ground, reminding Margaret more than a little bit of armed raptors. They darted in and out, striking quickly, then retreating. Fighting among larger allies in a chaotic battle, their tactics changed completely from what Margaret had seen earlier.

Truth’s tactics didn’t change, she still stuck to Margaret like the two were in a three-legged race with their ankles tied together. She used her bow more defensively, looking for allies who were struggling and loosing arrows to give them breathing room for a moment.

The heretics were relentless. Most enemy forces would withdraw once they realized winning the battle was unlikely, but this enemy seemed intent on fighting to the last one of them. Thankfully, Margaret’s Toughskin spell was having an effect on the battle. Not only were the cervid melee warriors more resistant to damage, they realized it now too. They took the increased defense as an opportunity to fight less cautiously, throwing themselves into the battle with increased fervor.

Unfortunately, some of the enemy fighters noticed Margaret’s contributions as well. A thin whistling through the air, a thick thump, and Margaret found herself staring in wonder at the feathered stick growing from her shoulder. Sticks don’t grow feathers, do they? Wait, I don’t grow sticks, either...

There was a pressure against her back, then a sharp pain in her shoulder. No, it’s been hurting, but now it hurts worse! It wasn’t until Truth came around in front of her, holding an arrow slicked red with her blood, that Margaret’s pain-addled mind realized what had happened. She looked at the arrow, looked at the hole in her shoulder, looked at Truth’s worried face, pointed a finger at the ground and whispered, “Heal.”

The dome of blue light swelled then faded around her, the edge hitting most of the injured cervids that had been on the receiving end of her last heal. Pain that had knocked her silly faded to a cold tingle, like having a hand or foot fall asleep. Blood obscured the actual skin, so she gingerly felt the wound with a finger, relieved to find intact skin underneath.

The cervids had a clear upper hand in the battle now, though there were still over a dozen of the mixed heretics left. Eyes narrowed, she raised both hands and chanted, “Bone spike. Bone spike. Bone spike.” Each cast threw out multiple spikes, thanks to her area-of-effect ring, and each spike shot unerringly towards a target. Quick enough enemies that were paying attention could potentially dodge the bone projectiles, but these targets were otherwise engaged and physically drained. Every spike found its target.

Margaret’s barrage didn’t instantly kill every enemy, but the cervids didn’t waste the opportunity, either. In moments, it was all over but the cleanup.