Sonder didn't follow the Chackara through the gate.
She stepped aside, away from the surge of scales and spears and roaring voices.
Instead, she lifted herself off the ground, until she hovered well above the city, high enough not to worry about arrows.
From there, she could see the city spread out, like a bowl of clay beneath her.
She folded her arms and watched.
The Chackara moved through the city like a flood bursting through a dam; fast and organized in their capture.
Shield lines swept through streets while spear-armed soldiers flanked alleyways, cutting off any routes of escape.
There was shouting. Orders snapped in sharp hisses.
Most of the city fell quickly.
Doors were smashed. Barricades torn down. Wild kobolds rushed out in frenzied packs, shrieking and throwing themselves at the invaders with weapons and claws.
And they died.
Again and again.
What struck Sonder most was how violently they fought, but how meaninglessly.
They didn't flee when wounded. Didn't retreat when outnumbered. Didn't drop weapons when surrounded.
They fought until they couldn't move anymore.
Until spears punched through torsos or were trampled beneath shields and bodies piled against walls and alleys clogged with the dead.
Sonder's stomach twisted.
Every time the result was the same. Total annihilation. No surrender cries. No pleas. Not even fear, not really.
Every pocket of resistance met the same fate.
Defiance until the end.
She leaned forward slightly on the platform, scanning the city and the rooftops.
There was a humming.
A low, constant pressure in her skull. It didn't point in a clear direction.
Every time a kobold fell, the sensation sharpened for the briefest moment.
In the moment, Sonder felt no shame or grief, only a desire.
Later she would come to regret this.
She did nothing to stop the fighting.
She didn't call out, or descend to do anything; to take the kobolds another way or to stop the Chackara from killing them.
She only thought that it wasn't her place to.
She had caused this, but it didn't make it hers to command.
The Chackara hadn't come because of her alone. They had been circling this city long before she arrived. Waiting. Grinding themselves down under a under the pressure of a war that hadn't moved.
From above, she finally saw something different.
Not at the center of the city, but fleeing.
Moving against the flow.
A small group of kobolds were pulling away from the fighting with frantic purpose. They weren't attacking. They weren't defending.
Something in Sonder's satchel thrummed against her.
She straightened on her platform.
"Found you," she whispered.
A sharp purpose burned in her.
She turned the platform, angling it, eyes locked on the fleeing group, with dark intent in her veins.
And she dove.