Sonder stepped out into the camp.
The air around the camp was thick with the humidity of the swamp and the smoke from cooking fires.
An army marched on its stomach, after all.
The reptile-men paused in their tasks to stare at Sonder, most with a sort of unease.
They were stiff with the anticipation of battle, but it never came.
Sonder, a mage who had torn through the captain's tent, now walking freely, and peacefully.
And most of what she saw in response was weariness.
The Chackara were not celebrating the coming victory against the Shemmi.
They were not sharpening blades with eager hands or boasting of future triumphs. They were exhausted and hollow-eyed; quiet with misery, yet dutiful.
Their armor was scuffed, unclean, and their spears were unused.
Many had makeshift bandages wound around limbs or tails from the few skirmishes they had lived through.
A few slumped near fires, as though fighting the city behind them had drained something vital.
It didn't look like a proud siege but a burden.
Sonder drifted along the edge of the camp, unnoticed now that no one dared approach her.
The more she studied them, the stranger it became. There was no eagerness in their watchtowers or perimeter lines. No thrill of battle.
They watched the city as though compelled.
Forced.
"Not by the captain," Sonder thought. He had been tired too. Tense, but not bloodthirsty.
Maybe those who commanded him? The generals of the Chackara?
Maybe not.
"A shard? Maybe," Sonder thought. She knew that they did compel people if exposed for long enough. And maybe she was just wildely grapping a hold of any ideas or clues she had of their whereabouts.
She moved farther until she found a deserted stretch of trampled grass, a spot out of reach of Chackara eyes. She knelt and slipped her satchel open with care.
The two shards, hers and the one taken from the beastfolk's brother, shimmered darkly.
She placed them on the ground.
The moment they touched the earth, a prickle ran through her fingers as though she wanted to take them again.
But she waited and watched them, perhaps longer than she should have.
There was nothing.
Then, as she went to put them away again, there was something, just barely. So subtle she almost dismissed it: their edges shifted. A twitch, a nudge, almost like a compass needle caught in a new magnetic pull.
Both shards angled the slightest fraction… toward the city beyond the siege lines.
She leaned in closer.
Again, the faint scrape of dark glass against grass. A crawling urge. Toward the kobold walls.
Whatever the Chackara believed about the Shemmi being liars or cowards or this being their land was not her concern.
No matter how awful. No matter how unjust.
Vell would say that this wasn't his concern, and so it was also not Sonder's.
She repacked the shards carefully and rose.
She would have to invade the city herself, but it would be dangerous.
Just as the Chackara captain said, who would be able to stop her?