The fleeing kobolds noticed Sonder immediately.
Her shadow was above them as they scrambled.
One of them looked up and screeched while panicking.
And then the whole group broke apart, darting down a side street.
"Please don't make this harder," said, then jumped off the platform.
The barrier dissolved beneath her as she landed, and she strode forward, staff tapping once against the ground.
Instead of conjuring another pure barrier, she decided to cut off the kobolds by raising a wall of dirt.
The kobolds skidded to a halt. One of them slammed into the wall so hard that he knocked himself off his feet.
Another fell backward, hissing, clutching a bundle of cloth.
They turned as one to face her.
"You can't take it," one of them rasped. His voice shook, but there was no fear in it. Only greed. "It's ours."
Their eyes glittered with a feverish intensity she'd seen before in the beastfolk's brother.
"It chose us," another one added.
She stopped a few paces away, hands visible, staff grounded.
"I'm not here to kill you," she said firmly.
Her eyes flicked to the bundle. "I want what that is."
The kobold holding it snarled and tore the cloth away.
The shard caught the light.
It pulsed faintly, veins of shadow creeping just beneath its surface.
Sonder felt the answering pull from the shards in her satchel surge sharply.
The shard twitched in his grip.
The kobold holding it stiffened, eyes glazing as the glass darkened, shadows crawling up his arm like ink in water.
That decided it.
Sonder raised her staff and immediately channeled her magic, compressing it, shaping it with a precision that made her spirit ache.
The ground shook briefly as she shot a bolt, just a thin blue line, at the hand of the kobold who held the shard.
The shard-holder screamed as his fingers were cut and both his fingers and the shard fell to the ground.
The kobold would have never let go of it on his own accord, and Sonder had to patience.
Before the shard could hit the ground and be snatched up by any other kobold, Sonder stretched out her hand, and said, "Jol", the Dico word for pull, one she had learned long ago."
The shard flew into her hand, cutting into her palm just a bit, but there was no pain. In any case, it was nothing comparable to tthe pain experienced by the kobold whose fingers she cut off.
The other kobolds lunged at her.
A flick of her wrist summoned a gentle but irresistible push of air that rolled them backward against the wall, pinning them there without harm.
"Enough," she snapped.
A surge of violence ran through Sonder's chest, sudden and alien.
Once more, images flashed at the edge of her mind, destruction, domination, the simplicity of ending everything that resisted her.
Her grip on the staff spasmed.
For a terrifying heartbeat, she wanted to obey.
She stepped forward, her staff pointed at the helpless kobolds.
The darkness surged upward, clawing at her mind, whispering promises, commands, inevitability and then… stopped.
Sonder straightened slowly, and thought of something peaceful, shard clenched tight in her fist, its darkness overcome, but not quelled.