Ehlan was still gasping softly, but Kaz was fairly certain that she was stable now. Her core probably wasn’t producing as much ki as it used to, but what ki it made was clean, and it seemed to be settling into a spin that was only slightly off balance. He didn’t think he needed to do anything to attract attention to her, since Hod was checking in on her regularly. In fact, it might be best if she had a little while to recover on her own before anyone else saw her.

That meant Kaz was free to follow through on his original plan, so he pulled his new knife from his belt. The tip was slightly blunt, making it difficult to stab through the hardened leather, and then the dull edge made cutting a slit equally challenging, but fortunately he wanted the smallest hole he could possibly fit through, so soon enough he was sliding on his belly beneath the edge of a loose flap. It was strange not to have Li sitting on his shoulder, or complaining about being forced to get off while he maneuvered his way out, and he found his eyes locked on the thread of ki that bound them as he climbed to his paws on the other side.

It was dark, since the torches were set up by the doors of the huts, which faced each other in clusters in order to minimize the number of torches needed. Last time, Kaz had been able to take the well-lit path that led through the centers of these clusters, but now he stayed in the shadows, trying to avoid being seen by anyone.

The den was even quieter now. He could see that some torches had been allowed to burn out, and while there was some soft chatter, no one was training or walking around. The guards were still pacing along their routes, but it was easy enough to throw himself over the low wall after one passed by, yawning.

On silent paws, Kaz made his way between huts until he reached the stone wall. There were even fewer core-lights in the huts now, and from the odors drifting to him, he guessed it was time for the evening meal. He identified the scent of roasting fuergar meat, but it smelled like it was on the edge of spoiling, so he guessed Hod really hadn’t lied when he said they were down to the last of their provisions, and had nothing to spare. He was glad Li had seemed satisfied with the rock she ate, and he hadn’t had to steal anything else for her.

When he reached the carving, Kaz found exactly what he feared. The passage was open, just slightly, but enough so he could see the red light gleaming from the stairwell beyond. Lianhua must have been worried that she wouldn’t be able to open it from the other side. She had even propped a rock in between the wall and the door to prevent it from closing accidentally, though he doubted the multi-ton swiveling door would be stopped by anything so small.

Kaz slid his fingers into the opening and tried to pull it wide, half-expecting to hear the loud scrape of stone against stone, or to be forced to use ki to strengthen his arms enough to move the massive slab, but it moved as readily as last time. He slipped through, then tugged it until it bumped against the rock Lianhua had left, which thankfully didn’t crumble to dust beneath the impact.

Turning, he began to run down the stairs, jumping two or even three at a time in his haste. He had no idea how far he was behind the human female, but he hoped she was going slowly and using caution. If so, he might even be able to catch up with her before she reached the bottom of the stairs, if they were particularly long.

Of course, he had no such luck. He soon saw a faint fog of fulan spores rising up to meet him, and had to pause to pull on the mask he had stored in his pack. Hopefully, Lianhua was using her shield, and as long as the spores were the worst thing she faced, and she was only protecting herself and Li, it should last for several hours. Unfortunately, the mask blocked Lianhua’s scent as effectively as it did the fulan, so he wouldn’t be able to track her by smell as long as he was wearing it.

Kaz counted ninety-nine steps by the time his paws reached the flat stone at the bottom. There were no visible guards, either kobold or the mysterious mosui, so Kaz would have to follow the shimmering trail of ki that led to the dragon, which had flattened, and now led down the passage to his left.

He wanted to race forward, continuing his mad dash toward his friend, but Kaz’s innate sense of caution told him to think before he went on. Since Li and Lianhua weren’t conveniently waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, he would have to venture forth into mosui territory, and he wasn’t ready for that at all.

First, he knelt and pulled his father’s knife from his pack, exchanging it for the one Zyle had given him. Once he removed the triangular blue stone from its tip, once again sending a spark of blue ki arcing between the blade and stone, it fit perfectly into the sheath.

In fact, the two weapons were nearly identical in shape, and the blades were almost exactly the same length and width. If you didn’t look too closely at the blade, and if the hilt wasn’t in such excellent condition, the weapon might even be dismissed as a common knife, nothing special at all. Kaz wondered if that had been the meaning behind Zyle’s cryptic remarks when he gave the battered old weapon to Kaz in the first place. That was a question for another time, though it reduced the pain of the old male’s betrayal by a fair amount.

The blue stone refused to attach to the battered knife, even though it was the same size as his father’s, so Kaz slipped both items back into the pack, along with the broken knife, the seed, and the firestarter. He didn’t have any firemoss left, having used it all to start the pyre for Scov and Davik, so he drew his light rune in the air and fed power into it. It didn’t take much, now, to keep the light burning, but he kept the amount he gave it to a minimum, creating just enough light to keep him from walking into a wall, since there were no plants at all to light the way with either ki or their own innate luminescence.

Once he had both light and a weapon, he started forward, following the slender chain that linked him to his dragon.

=+=+=+=

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Though Kaz didn’t know how it was possible, there was no ki on this level. The few plants Kaz saw were stunted or infested with fulan, and none of them gave off even the faintest hint of power. A few fuergar flitted at the edge of his vision, but they were as undersized as the plants, and their fur was uniformly white, rather than the many shades of brown or the metallic gleam that Kaz was used to. Their eyes seemed smaller than usual, too, and he was fairly certain they were red, though it was difficult to tell in the brief glimpses he caught.

Once, the tongue of a lopo flashed through the air above him, and he barely managed to dodge out of the way, but it was puny - barely the size of his head - and had no core either, which explained why he hadn’t noticed it before it attacked. It was still dangerous, of course, and after that he kept his knife out, ready to parry any further attacks.

There was no sign of the mosui, or any creatures larger than the fuergar. Kaz did catch a few whiffs of a deep, rank scent that made him wrinkle his nose against it, and as he followed Li’s trail, these traces became more and more common.

He did notice an unusual number of pits in the floor, some of which had scratch marks indicating that someone might have used tools to dig or enlarge them, but how that had been done, Kaz didn’t know. Even iron picks had little effect on the stone of the mid-levels. In the end, all that mattered was that there was always enough room on one side or the other to go around, if he couldn’t jump over, so he continued on.

Until the trail ended. The ephemeral connection led down a wide passage, vanishing into the solid stone wall at the end. Kaz stood, staring at it, anger and frustration filling him. Why had Lianhua come down here? More importantly, why had she taken Li with her? The dragon still hadn’t woken, and Kaz was becoming concerned that Lianhua had actually done something to her, or that something had happened to one or both of them. The only good thing was that while the mask made it difficult to smell anything but the strongest of scents, he was almost certain he would have noticed the distinctive aroma of blood, so hopefully both females were intact.

He would have to backtrack and try to find another way around the blockage, but Kaz hated the thought of it. So far, these all looked like natural tunnels that had simply been widened at some point, which meant they didn’t necessarily lead anywhere at all. They could just as easily end up turning back on themselves, causing him to waste still more time going back to find yet another path that might take him in the right direction.

Why had Lianhua gone down the stairs? Hadn’t he explained that they could try later, when they were closer to the Deep and had an escape route? If she had told him she was going to go whether he liked it or not, he would have been unhappy, but he would have tried to go with them even without Li’s camouflaging skill. It hadn’t turned out to be that difficult to remain undetected as he passed through the den, though he suspected that that was due in part to the fact that the Redmanes were eating at the time.

No, he never should have told Lianhua about the map. That was his mistake from the very beginning. He knew how desperate she was to find proof that her theory was correct, and an opportunity to investigate without Gaoda watching over her had probably seemed like the greatest of good fortune. But beyond all that, why, why had she taken Li?

He had gone a good way back down the passage leading to the dead end when he stopped, wrinkling his muzzle against a particularly powerful whiff of the foul scent that seemed to cut right through the protection of his mask. He was certain it hadn’t been that strong when he came through before, and his eyes narrowed as he pushed a bit more ki into his light. The sphere of illumination spread, revealing a turn not far ahead and to the left. He had walked by it last time, since this tunnel led more directly toward Li, but now that he had to try again, it was as good a place to start as any.

Except for that smell. It was definitely coming from that passage, and Kaz didn’t like it at all. It might be a better idea to go a little further, and take the next path left, which was both wider and had a higher ceiling than this one. As an added benefit, it didn’t stink.

When he started to walk by, his ears perked up, and he hesitated, staring into the darkness. Was that a sound? Something beyond the usual skittering and scratching. More of a… whimper? A whine? It was high-pitched, like a puppy, and Kaz found himself taking a step toward it. He hadn’t noticed any pups in the Redmane den, but what if they had just been out gathering, and when they returned for dinner, one of them found the open stairs and went down? He certainly would have done so when he was little, in spite of knowing he shouldn’t.

Kaz shook his head. The odds that a kobold puppy had wandered in the exact same direction he had were vanishingly small, but he had to go somewhere, and Li’s trail led slightly left of straight. He could at least check, and if the tunnel turned the wrong way, or he didn’t find anything within reasonable hearing distance of such a quiet sound, he would come back and take the wider path.

He had to duck his head to enter, which made it even less likely that Lianhua would have gone this way, since she would have had to bend over even more, but he continued on, trying to watch his link to Li as well as keep an eye out for anything that could have made the whimpering cry. His nostrils flared beneath his mask as another trace of the foul odor filled them, and he hesitated. He didn’t want to find out what produced that stench, and he’d already come quite a ways.

He turned, ready to abandon this side passage, when another high-pitched squeal reached him. It was clearer now, and it didn’t quite sound like a puppy, but it also didn’t entirely sound unlike a pup. A particularly young or frightened kobold might make that sound, so he turned back and took a few more steps down the passage.

And the ground fell out from under him. His paw ripped through something that felt like zhiwu webs, and he dropped through a cloud of gray dust that had been scattered over the filaments to conceal them. His limbs flailed, one hand catching at the lip of the pit on the way down, but it slipped away. He tumbled through space, for once landing on his stomach, rather than his tail, but as he desperately gasped for breath, he decided that all in all, he preferred impacts to his rear over having the breath knocked out of him.

The dust settled around him, and he was glad that his mask seemed to be filtering it out as well as it did the fulan spores. He didn’t know what it was, but something about its color and consistency set off alarm bells in the back of his mind.

Eventually, he realized he’d lost control of his light and it had gone out at some point during his fall, but he was still able to see. His chest finally loosened up enough that he could catch his breath, and he managed to roll over, his freed arm flopping limply to the side.

Two dark blotches were visible above him, which slowly resolved into kobold heads backlit by a dim red glow. One of them turned to the other and muttered, “He doesn’t look like he’s unconscious.”

The second one shook his head, and something metal clinked. “I think he has something over his nose. Doesn’t matter. Pup is already doomed. This way, he’s just going to see it coming.”