The two Sunshy approached the pod warily. Warby darted ahead, a flash of brown fur and excited squeaking, tail slapping the water. As the hatch creaked open, a stream of mist and stale air hissed out.

Sela kept her spear raised, muscles tense. Ilkin had an arrow notched in his bow, eyes narrowed at the widening gap in the metal.

Vazko emerged, one hand raised as he blinked into the light. He was about to ready his blade, only to sheathe it when he saw the weapons trained on them by the Sunbraves.

Menna coughed as she climbed out, Vazko offering his free hand to assist. The dank smells of the tunnels and pod clung to the tangled mess of her hair. Bruises and rust stains marked her from being tossed about. But she felt genuinely relieved to be in the open, breathing fresh air, and not sealed into a metal sphere underwater. She was smiling until her eyes followed Vazko's and landed on their armed welcomers.

Menna held up both her hands. "Um, hello?! We're not hostiles! We're Shy, like you!" She started blabbering nervously, seeing that Vazko seemingly had no intention to speak up.

"Oh, sorry if I assumed you're Shy and you're not, or don't like people assuming what you are…"

"Well, you're obviously not Sunshy," Sela cut her off. "What brings you pale ones this far from the Deep?"

Ilkin lowered his bow and stepped forward, putting himself between Sela and their visitors.

"Look, sorry if we welcomed you with our sharp and pointy bits in your faces. Can't be too careful out here. Maybe we can start with introductions at least? I'm Ilkin."

Vazko gave a curt nod. "We hail from Obsidara. I am Commander Vazko of the Deepguard," he stated formally, his hand resting on his blade's hilt.

Ilkin let out a short breath. "Deepguard huh? You've really gone out of your way then." He offered a hand to the Deepshy.

Vazko grasped the Sunbrave's forearm, stepped onto the dock, and straightened up into the stiff-backed posture Menna had learned to recognize as a defense mechanism.

"Hi, Menna Thistlebranch," she offered, climbing out of the pod hatch by clinging to Vazko's belt. "Shard scholar at Umbryss Academy. I'm actually a Middleshy, although my mother was a Deepshy. I just moved to the Deep… has it been a month? Feels much longer…"

Vazko tapped Menna lightly on the elbow to let her know he could take over speaking. "We're here partly by accident. We activated this dormant pod at a junction belonging to an abandoned Deepway route. Found ourselves emerging in the river, and then the currents took over."

"That's quite a story!" Sela said, clearly skeptical.

"I know it sounds far-fetched," Menna admitted. "But we can explain how it all happened."

"You rode that thing all the way here?" Ilkin asked, incredulous. "On the Greystone River?"

Menna glanced back at the waterpod. "You mean the Silverthread? More like got carried away by it, to be honest."

"Oh, right. Greystone is what the humans named the river," Ilkin mused. "So, it does lead back into the Silverthread in the caldera…"

Menna's brow furrowed at the unfamiliar term. "Wait. What… or who, is a 'human'?"

Sela exchanged a look with Ilkin, then turned back to their guests. She finally let a bit of her guard down, a hint of amusement softening her features. "Now, that's an even taller tale… and yes, you two are definitely fresh out of the caldera."

"Lucky you avoided getting trapped! But then, that means the humans haven't messed with the river outlet!" Ilkin concluded.

Sela elbowed her fellow Sunshy in the side as she extended a hand to Menna to help pull her up to the ridge.

"My name is Sela. Come with us. We can talk at our camp. But try anything funny…" She turned toward Warby and tapped his nose with her finger. The water rat grinned, displaying sharp dagger-length incisors. "And let's just say Warby isn't picky about his snacks."

"Understood," Vazko calmly affirmed.

Sela and Ilkin had already managed to construct a proper shelter out of one collapsed ruin. They plastered the scattered stones together with mud and mashed reeds, then carefully tamped the floor flat with clay. A stretch of bark-fiber canvas served as roofing over one quadrant, while another was woven from dried blades of grass coated with resin. The rest was open to the light filtering through the forest canopy and twists of ivy.

Menna sat on a stool crafted from stacked and smoothed acorn caps, her satchel open beside her. Vazko stood guard by the entrance, assessing the shelter and surrounding ruins.

Menna carefully unwrapped the bundle of documents in her satchel. She had swathed them in her scarf to protect the sheets and scrolls of parchment from the damp of the tunnels. She also held up her slide rule, which had been useful in computing for their shard charge use and navigating the tunnels.

Sela leaned over close enough to study the maps on display, eyes widening over the unfamiliar names and routes. Ilkin hovered beside her, turning the sheets around, trying to make sense of them.

"These symbols. They aren't standard Shy notation," Ilkin pointed to the notations.

"They're archaic," Menna explained, spreading the scroll wider, weighing down the corners with pebbles. "From a system that predated the Deepways. We only found a few discarded records, old cargo manifests and repair logs, that even mentioned it. Some ancients referred to it as the caldera link. We suspected it once ran under the Silverthread."

Ilkin leaned in, tracing lines that cris-crossed the river. "You're saying we Shy used to stretch across both halves of the caldera?"

"Seems so. But…" Menna continued. "At one point our ancestors had to move. These were apparently cargo and escape lines, transferring resources and Shy from kobold-held territory to the safety of what we now know as the Deep."

"You got the pod to work, just like that?" Sela asked while fiddling with the slide rule.

"More or less. It just needed a fully charged shard."

"You mean, we could have been nipping in and out of the kobold caverns all this time!?" Ilkin exclaimed. "But then… how'd you end up out here?"

"We didn't mean to," Menna clarified quickly. "When we got in the pod at the junction, we thought we'd end up on the other side of the river, somewhere near the Ember Foothills. We had no idea there'd be another route along the river, exiting the caldera. All this…" She swept a hand to indicate the ruins, the dock, and the woods beyond. "Wasn't on any of our maps."

Menna hesitated before continuing. "There's someone else who might've taken the right pod route to cross the Silverthread. But from the junction there, he may have also ended up on another route leading out of the caldera, probably docking elsewhere."

She reached for a folded slip of paper tucked into one of the logs, a requisition slip with a name and signature, and showed it to the Sunshy, "A Deepshy named Veyran. Maybe you've come across him?"

Ilkin's mouth opened, but he suddenly pulled his lips taut.

"This Veyran, you only know him by name?" Sela asked, attempting to sound casual. "You haven't met him?"

Menna paused, her eyes darting to Vazko, seeking a cue. He responded with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. "He was the last person to request these records before me," Menna continued. "His notes suggested he was pursuing a similar trail."

Ilkin glanced toward Sela, taking his hands off the documents and moving aside.

Sensing that the conversation had struck a nerve, Vazko took a step closer to the pair of warriors. "I believe you're holding something back," he stated.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Sela's eyes flashed, meeting his steely gaze. "The same could be said of you, Commander."

Vazko tensed at the challenge. "Touche, Sunshy," he let out a breath, gazing out into the ruins.

"Very well. We are your guests. So, we won't repay your hospitality with opacity." He relaxed his arms by his sides, turning back to face the Sunshy.

"Veyran… is my brother. Now, will you share with us what you know of him?"

Sela crossed her arms. "He was with us," she revealed through pursed lips. "We were kept captive at Greyhold, the human settlement beyond the Veilwoods."

Ilkin cut in. "Humans are like giant Shy, more than 10 times our size," he explained. "Mean, ugly, cruel things. Mostly."

Sela nodded grimly and continued. "They trapped Shy who get too close to the caldera rim. Stole our shards and gear. We were then locked up and forced to work on their strange magic-starved devices."

"Greyhold…" Menna echoed, her eyes wide, picturing towering figures and stone walls. "But… you got out?"

"We just did. Thank the shards!" Ilkin sighed.

"Unfortunately, Veyran stayed behind," Sela revealed. "As far as we know, he's still with the humans."

"But… why would my brother stay? You make it sound like he had a choice." Vazko pressed.

"He did. He chose to stay to make it easier for the rest of us to escape," Sela explained.

"Now I'm not sure if the Deepshy we're discussing is my brother. What happened to him there? What happened to you all?" Vazko kept probing the Sunshy, his normally steady voice carrying an edge that Menna had never heard before.

Sela and Ilkin shared one of those loaded glances between people who had been through the worst together.

"We survived. Made do. Despite all that the humans did to us. Tried our best to make a life," Sela shared, her words clipped, holding back a flood of dark memories. "We're still trying."

"But you two aren't the only ones who escaped Greyhold?" Menna asked.

Sela's shook her head. "No. The others are at our camp further south. But it's not just Shy who've escaped, there's also a group of kobolds, and one human."

"One of your captors?" Vazko clarified.

"He's different. He risked everything to help one of us escape, before the rest of us could."

Vazko needed a moment to process all the new information, looking toward Menna for a lifeline.

"Since we're openly sharing…" Menna offered, noting Vazko's distress. "There's another Shy we're hoping to find. Maybe you saw him at Greyhold? A Sunshy named Sylven."

Sela blinked. "You're looking for… this Sylven?"

Menna nodded. "All the Sunbraves in the caldera have been trying to track him down since he didn't show up at the last Concord Crossing. I last saw him at Mossgrove, then he went off with his mount to kobold territory and hasn't been seen since. We wondered if… he was taken."

"He was," Ilkin said bluntly. "But you probably wouldn't be talking to us here now if Sylven didn't get thrown in with us."

"You know him!?" Menna's shoulders slumped, tension visibly draining away. "Thank the Shards. I thought..." She trailed off, took a deep breath and focused back on the present, knowing now that her friend was still alive. "Is he here? He can vouch for me. We're… friends."

"He was here." Sela said, stressing the 'was' with a certain intensity. "You just missed him. He and the others headed downstream. They should reach our other camp in a few days."

"Perfect timing!" Menna groaned.

"But at least now we know he's well and safe," Vazko gave her shoulder a squeeze meant to be reassuring. "And we know more about what happened to Veyran as well."

"That's true. And… I can just imagine the brutal teasing I'd get if he'd seen me crawling out of that pod, looking like I'd just been wrestled by a river toad, maybe smelling like one too."

Sela's expression remained unreadable, but her tone with Menna had shifted.

"Then maybe, not seeing him right away is for the best," she affirmed. "Tell me, have they also been searching for other Shy gone missing?"

"According to the Sunbrave scouts, prior to Sylven most disappearances were attributed to predators or falling in the river," Vazko related. "Speaking for the Deepguard, I regret to say that the Deepshy haven't paid much attention to those who've vanished from the surface.

"Even your brother?" Ilkin asked.

"He left for the surface and was last seen there. And apart from Veyran, the missing have all been Sunshy," Vazko explained. "Sylven's disappearance was taken more seriously because he vowed to return in time for the Concord Crossing. Also, they were suspecting a kobold attack."

"Ha!" Sela couldn't help but chuckle. "You'll see that Sylven's become particularly… friendly with our kobold allies out here."

Vazko cocked an eyebrow. "Well, we may have originally set out in search for Veyran and Sylven. But now I also want to know what else we've lost and abandoned here." His gaze swept the ruins. "And do what I can to help in their recovery."

"Now I'm starting to see the resemblance," she said, studying the Commander. "But I still don't think your arrival here is by accident or a coincidence."

Menna looked at the moss-coated walls of the ruins, the marks left behind by long-forgotten Shy. "You know what? Neither do I." she said.

"So, you said you study arclith. What can you tell us about this?" Sela asked, showing Menna the river shard.

The gentle rocking of the boat mimicked the river's rhythm, lulling Sylven's senses, but not enough to feel fully relaxed.

Across from him, Brynnal was ready with a pole he could use to push them away from rocks or reeds. Vikka sat at the back, one hand gripping the oar they used to steer, eyes focused downstream. Uiska stood up on his haunches right at the front, nose and whiskers twitching in the wind, fur slightly damp from the spray.

"We'll reach the cave by dusk if the weather holds," Brynnal called over his shoulder. "Assuming the boat holds, too."

"It will," Vikka replied, now better able to hold simple conversations in Shyspeak. "Kobold knots don't come undone."

"I don't doubt your work," Brynnal muttered. "Just… everything else about this boat."

Sylven smiled. Their morbid banter, ironically, helped ease his mind.

The landscapes they had trekked earlier blurred past them in reverse. Carp and trout cautiously dived out of their way, while curious catfish swam right up to check on the river intruder. A broad selection of birds of prey flew overhead, eventually deciding to keep a cautious distance upon seeing the imposing form of the kobold riding the strange craft.

Sylven lay back on his supply pack and took a deep breath of fresh river air.

"I'm not sure why, but there's something that… feels wrong about all this," he said aloud.

Vikka turned to him. "Wrong how?" she asked.

"Things have been far too easy recently. I keep waiting for the next blow," he admitted while scanning the banks.

"It'll come," Vikka said simply. "That's how life works. But haven't we all been hit with enough blows for several lives already?"

Brynnal pushed aside a water hyacinth in their way. "You think Mara and the others are alright?"

Jerrik nodded. "They'll have shored up the watch and defenses. They won't wait for us, or for bad news, to get moving."

Sylven frowned. "Let's just hope that bad news hasn't already found them."

Uiska chirped, a sharp, urgent sound. He scrambled upright on his hind legs, ears pricked. All the Shy's eyes snapped to the riverbank.

"Something there?" Vikka asked.

Uiska squeaked again, then tentatively settled back down, whiskers still working the wind.

"There's an animal tracking us," Sylven said. "But it hasn't shown any threatening behavior. Probably not a predator. But let's stay sharp."

They drifted on. The warm sun beat down on their faces, making it difficult to keep from dozing off.

Jerrik spoke up after they rounded a tight bend. "This looks familiar. We're near the spot where we got that big shard Sela used to tame Warby. We'll be safe back at camp before we know it," he reassured the team.

"Which camp do you mean? The cave? The ruins? With our tribes back in the caldera?" Brynnal pressed. "Where can we be truly safe? After being held by those humans, I don't think I'm ever going to feel safe the same way again, knowing they're out here."

The boat bobbed slightly off-center as they navigated another tricky stretch. Uiska squeaked in protest as the spray sloshed onto his fur, leaving him dripping. His long whisker trembled with indignation.

"Easy, Uiska" Sylven murmured. "It's just water."

Uiska snorted and shook off the droplets. He resumed gnawing on a stem of rivergrass, moving to the rear to bask until dry.

Jerrik picked up the extra oar. It was taller than him even at just half the size of the one Vikka was using. "Your pika always that grumpy about water?"

Sylven shrugged. "It's his first time floating on it."

"That's… reasonable." Jerrik nodded, stealing a glance at the kobold crouched at the prow, wondering what occupied her thoughts.

Vikka hadn't spoken in a while, but her gaze swept the banks with purpose. Has it really been too easy, as Sylven suggested? Do the abilities that Mirys revealed to her have anything to do with it? Have they been kept safe from danger thanks to their communion with the Veilwoods? She knew in the bones of her tail that it did.

She wasn't a Shy, but somehow felt like part of their tribe now. She knew their bonds were boosting her abilities. Should she tell Sylven? He might understand, but what about the others? She was feeding on their energy without asking—like a parasite. She dreaded how the Shy might react to a kobold drawing from their own collective strength, without letting them know. So much had already been taken from them all, that exploiting their friendship in any way could break the fragile fellowship between their species.

As the raft rounded another bend, Vikka made the decision to tell the Sunbraves. As soon as they got back to camp.

Rhiannon adjusted the strap of her travel bag, careful not to jostle it too much as she picked her way along the rocky slope. The weight inside shifted slightly, then she felt a telltale bump against her hip.

"What is it this time?" she asked with irritation.

"I'd appreciate it if your steps weren't quite so… vertical," came Veyran's muffled voice from within.

"Not my fault your friends picked a hideout at the top of a cliff," she muttered.

She scanned ahead. The ridgeline was quiet, no movement in sight. Still, that didn't mean they weren't being watched.

"Let's get this over with," Rhiannon said under her breath.

"Agreed," Veyran poked his head out of the bag. "Whatever reception awaits us, we can't avoid them."

"They need allies and answers. We can provide both. And more importantly," she patted the other satchel, "we've got power."

Veyran's gaze lingered on the lode under the human's hand. "More than they'll know what to do with," he whispered to himself.

The raft drifted into the curve of the riverbend, cliffs rising on one side and forest pressing in on the other. From this angle, the cave looked like nothing more than a shadow in the rock, a dark fold where two rock faces came together, half-concealed by hanging moss.

Sylven narrowed his eyes, catching the faint wisp of smoke wafting out, barely visible in the fading light.

"Cave camp's still hidden well," he pointed out.

"Wait," Vikka said suddenly, tapping Brynnal's shoulder.

They could just make out silhouettes moving around the narrow entrance. One was bearded and broad-shouldered, unmistakably Garret. The other form hinted at flowing robes and wavy hair. And was only slightly shorter than the man.

"Another human!" Jerrik gasped, sitting up.

"What in the shards are they doing here?" Brynnal tensed, ready to jump out, almost forgetting they were in the middle of deep water.

They kept silent as the current carried them forward. The Sunbraves and Vikka used their oars and poles to guide the boat into the thick reeds clustered at the bend north of the cave. Whatever fleeting peace they'd found on the water had been shattered.

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