It took another three hours of walking to reach the spot where Raff wanted to camp. Kaz knew because Raff explained that both the sun and moon actually moved across the sky during their designated time periods. When they were at their peak, it was the center of the day or night, and as they dropped toward the horizon, their time was ending. Kaz was left with far more questions than answers at the end of this conversation, not the least of which was, “Where do they go?” but Raff didn’t seem to have any more answers once he’d dealt with the most practical part of the explanation.
Lianhua recovered well during the walk, other than the fact that she had very little ki left in reserve. She would definitely need to rest, and rest well, tonight. Kyla, on the other hand, was clearly exhausted, even though Raff had carried her for the first part of the trip. She didn’t complain, though, just kept trudging forward, but her excited questions and occasional forays into the bushes slowly tapered off until she was all but silent.
They were all pleased when Raff told them they were nearing the campsite, and the whole party found another small burst of energy, allowing them to reach a wide open area with a stream running through it, where Raff called a halt. Kyla immediately went to sit by the water, thrusting her paws into the cold liquid, then yanking them back with a yelp.
“A fish!” she yipped, and Kaz understood the look of fear on her face. While many of the creatures that lived in the still water within the mountain were edible, few were defenseless. Renyu, for instance, were small individually, but where there was one, there were hundreds. They swarmed anything that entered their domain, tearing it apart with their oversized teeth. Tunyu, meanwhile, were tiny, hiding in even the smallest crevices, but they were covered with poisonous spikes that could paralyze an unwary kobold in seconds.
Raff had already started pulling out his bedding, but now he paused and walked over next to the pup. Staring into the water, he nodded. “Just some minnows. Make good bait, but not good dinner.”
Kyla’s expression shifted instantly. “They’re safe to eat?”
Raff scratched his beard. “Yep. Too small to bother with unless you’re desperate, though.”
The pup’s tongue lolled out, and she turned back to the stream, hands already outstretched. When the splashing began, Kaz just shook his head, laughing softly.
“She seems like a good… puppy,” Lianhua said softly, watching the young kobold pouncing on something they couldn’t see. A moment later, Kyla dropped a wriggling silver fish into her mouth and chomped down with obvious pleasure, and Lianhua turned away, nose wrinkling.
Kaz nodded. He was honestly surprised at how little trouble the pup had been so far. He had expected her to be demanding, like his mother and sister, but she seemed to be used to taking care of herself, at least for the most part.
“I don’t think anyone really paid much attention to her,” he said softly. “Except maybe her father. Ija was too busy with the hidden den, and I doubt Vega cared, so long as Kyla stayed out of the way. Vega didn’t even allow den mothers, so once Kyla was old enough to go off on her own, she could probably be gone for days without anyone even noticing.”
Lianhua’s face softened, and she shook her head. “That’s no way to grow up.”
Kaz thought back to his own youth, what he could remember of it. After Ghazt died, Kaz was left almost entirely on his own, since Rega was too busy caring for the rest of the tribe members and being den mother to spend much time with him alone. Once Oda started training Katri, Kaz didn’t even have his sister to play with, so if he wasn’t gathering or sleeping, he just wandered. Honestly, it wasn’t a bad life, and most of the time, he wasn’t even lonely.
“It’s better than being hated,” he said.
“Or feared,” Lianhua agreed with a sigh.
They watched Kyla catch a few more squirming fish, and Mei soon joined in as well. The young fuergar moved carefully, as though some of her injuries still hurt, but she caught a few fish of her own, taking them aside to eat. Kaz started forward, intending to check the fuergar if she’d allow it, but was distracted by a surge of interest coming from Li.
He looked up, seeing the dragon circling over the puppy and the rodent. Her eyes were intent on the water below, and before he could tell her to be careful, she dropped into a steep dive. To her credit, she nearly made it, but she misjudged the depth of the clear water, and splashed into it instead of skimming over the surface. Li tumbled over the small rocks that formed the bed of the stream, then came back up, spouting water and furiously embarrassed.
she shouted, spinning to splash both Mei and Kyla with her wings.
Leaning over, she took a large bite from the still-moving creature, and Kaz could instantly tell that she didn’t like it. She didn’t spit it out, however, but instead choked it down and went on to eat the rest of the fish in two gulps that seemed determined to bypass her tastebuds entirely.
Kaz waded into the stream, enjoying the wash of water over his own paws. He had been worried, but it was neither as cold nor as fast as the river, and a few of the terrified little fish brushed against his skin as they attempted to flee Kyla and Mei.
Scooping up the dragon, Kaz lifted her to his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Kaz felt cool water running off her scales and down his bare, furless back, shuddering at the unfamiliar sensation. He needed to do something about that, and soon.
Looking around, he saw that everyone else was busy. Chi Yincang had already set up one of the structures the humans called a ‘tent’, and which they had all taken turns sleeping in last night. Lianhua was disappearing inside it, no doubt to prepare for sleep, which seemed to require her to change both her clothes and her hair. Raff was gathering wood for the fire, and Kyla was still playing with the fish. This was as good a time as any.
Crossing to a space in between the tent and an old burned spot on the ground, Kaz sat down. He set Li in his lap, then turned his hands palm up and placed them on his knees. Closing his eyes, he tried to dismiss the sounds of splashing and footsteps, and focus on the space behind his eyes.
First, he thought back to the brief time he had spent as the former Diushi Emperor, Qiangde. He hadn’t yet told Lianhua about the vision he’d had when he touched the broken core that had once belonged to the dragon, mainly because he knew she would pester him with questions for the next day or more, and he thought it best to reach a place they could stop first.
The vision contained everything Qiangde did during the last few hours of his life. He had been a powerful creature, probably a Divine Beast, or even whatever was stronger than that, if there was such a thing. As a result, the ancient dragon had been able to do things that Kaz had never even dreamed were possible, including changing his own shape.
Kaz had had a faint idea of waiting until they reached the human city, then finding more rings like the ones Lianhua had given him, and exchanging appearances with one of his companions, possibly Raff. Raff seemed willing to do almost anything in exchange for gold, and Kaz had found quite a stash of gold when he decided to go and explore the lower levels of the mosui city after they had decided to leave.
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If there was one thing he had learned from Oda, it was not to steal from someone when you planned to stay around. Certainly, the husede had offered to give him gold and gems as thanks for his help in defeating Zhangwo, but he didn’t need them at the time, and he still thought trading for all of the devices the mosui used to control the captured kobolds and husede was a better deal. If even one of the husede was like Oda or Vega, those devices wouldn’t have remained unused for long.
By the time they left, however, Kaz had had plenty of time to think about things, and he knew he wanted to leave the mountain. From the old howls and what little Raff and the others had told him about their people, he knew they valued gold, mithril, adamantium, and gems.
Unfortunately, the mosui city’s main storage level was completely saturated with fulan, making it unsafe for any creature with a core. On the other hand, the levels above were clear enough that he was able to go and take as much as he thought he might need from there, and the husede were too busy elsewhere to notice a single kobold sneaking around. Kaz was only worried his pouch might run out of space, so even though he might have been able to take more without the loss being noticed too soon, he’d stopped at only a few dozen ingots. Hopefully, it would be enough.
He still thought it might be a good idea to trade his ore for some illusion rings, and then ‘hire’ Raff to allow Kaz to use his appearance, but Qiangde’s ability to transform physically would be even better. If Kaz could figure out how to do it.
Drawing in a deep, slow breath, Kaz thought back to the moments when he had been Qiangde, shifting from his dragon form to human, and then back again. It had seemed so easy when the ancient emperor did it, but Kaz had actually tried a bit the night before, and completely failed. Hopefully, that was only because he was so exhausted, and not because it was something only a dragon or a Divine Beast could do.
Kaz stroked her neck. “So you are. Perhaps you can teach me how to do it.”
Li preened, and Qiangde’s memories filled both of their minds again as Kaz and the little dragon focused on them.
He pushed away the agonizing sensations and the nearly-forgotten emotion of fear. His nearly two millennia of practice took over, lifting his mind away from his body, and, for one perfect moment, into that state which was as close to ascension as he had been able to achieve, in spite of all his effort. The body was nothing. Ki was all, and ki was anything. The only thing that could limit a true ki master was his own mind, and Qiangde’s mind had ceased to limit him long ago.
He shifted. His spine straightened, his wings drew in and vanished. Forelegs became arms, and hindlimbs became legs…
Kaz grunted. Something in him had changed, just for a moment. He was so filled with ki now that he didn’t think any part of him remained untouched by it. He had once told Lianhua that becoming ki must be the same as losing himself, but he felt just as much like Kaz as ever. More importantly, he was certain that Li would let him know if he was different.
Lifting his hand, Kaz examined it. It looked human, other than the thick, sharp claws and the pale blue color of his skin, but then, it always had. It wasn’t furry any more, but he didn’t think that was because his attempt at transforming himself was even partially successful.
Kaz chuffed a laugh. She was probably right, and not only had Qiangde turned back into a dragon during the memories Kaz had watched, but Kaz and Li regularly shared dreams where Kaz flew through the sky just like a dragon. The problem was that Qiangde didn’t think about being a dragon the same way he’d thought about being a human, and Kaz dreamed of himself as a kobold with wings as often as he dreamed he was a dragon. In both memory and dream, he simply was a dragon, and there was nothing more to help him understand how to make the change.
He thought about something else Li had reminded him of. Lianhua, telling him that what a cultivator could create was shaped by their image. What was Kaz’s image of a human?
Opening his eyes, Kaz looked at Raff and Chi Yincang, the only two humans currently visible. Raff had built his fire, and was now laying out his blankets. It seemed that he planned to rest outside with Kaz and Kyla tonight, rather than taking a turn in the tent. Meanwhile, Chi Yincang was cooking something on a spit, while a pot steamed on the rocks near the fire.
Looking between the two, Kaz kept finding his eye returning to Raff. He didn’t know what humans found attractive, though Gaoda had certainly told Lianhua that she was beautiful often enough. Of the two males, he decided that he liked Raff’s build the best. Besides the larger man’s abundance of body fur, he was broader and more obviously muscular than Chi Yincang, and Kaz thought that would be more intimidating at first glance. Of course, anyone who knew the two would quickly discover that Chi Yincang was far more dangerous, but Kaz still thought he would rather look like Raff.
Trailing his eyes over the human, Kaz thought back to the time he’d entered the mosui baths with the tall male. It was the only time he’d ever seen Raff entirely without armor or clothes, and he had been very surprised to see the thick coating of fur on his forearms, chest, and legs. Kaz remembered the way his back sloped, with no tail at the base of his spine, and the straight line of his lower legs, lacking the backward bend of a kobold’s limbs. And of course his ears were on the sides of his head, not the top, and they were so small and round…
“Oi, Blue,” Raff called, turning to look at him. He’d seemed completely focused on what he was doing, so Kaz was surprised to see that the human actually seemed to be uncomfortable. “If you keep starin’ like that, you’ll drill a hole right through me. Do you need somethin’?”
Kaz ducked his head, offering an apologetic yip. “I was just thinking.”
“Mmhmm. Maybe think while you’re watching the trees, then? It’s starting to get dark, and things’ll be wakin’ up hungry.”
Startled, Kaz looked up at the sky, seeing that it had indeed darkened noticeably. He hadn’t thought he’d spent that much time trying to shift, but where the sun had been resting on top of the trees, now only a bare sliver of it was visible, while the moon was beginning to rise on the other side of the camp.
He stood, brushing grass from his legs and tail as he did so. One of the most annoying things about the world outside the mountain was how much of it clung to him. Rocks didn’t stick, and though dust did, it was so small that it didn’t create irritating lumps that dangled from his fur and clothing. Not that anything stuck to the fuulong silk of his loincloth for long, nor did he have much fur left, but somehow every bit of grass, spiderwebs, flower ‘pollen’, and a hundred other things seemed determined to make themselves at home on his body.
As he began to pace slowly around the edge of the camp, he found himself thinking about how he moved. His tail swayed behind him, and his hips moved like this, while his knees and ankles bent like that. When some creature called softly from the gathering darkness, his ears swiveled toward it before his eyes, and his nostrils flared, drawing in a deep breath, sniffing for the smell of predators.
This was what it was to be a kobold. But his hands, his chest, the way his lungs swelled with breath, those were the same as a human. Now, without his fur, he could even feel the way the plants and small pieces of fallen wood dragged against his bare skin, just like a human would. And ki was ki, and ki was everything. Everything was ki, and Kaz was already very… nearly… human…
His core contracted, even though Kaz hadn’t consciously willed it to do so. A burst of ki flooded his channels, seeping out almost like it had after those channels were stretched and nearly shredded by the explosive force he emitted to kill the woshi spawn. Every part of him was ki, was filled with fresh ki, moving the old, adjusting, sending it back to his core to be passed through his cycle once again.
Kaz stumbled as his foot came down on a small rock, which pressed painfully into his skin. His ankle bent in a way that it shouldn’t, and his knee came down, his hands falling forward to catch him as he sprawled out, face down. Li, who had been unusually silent since before he got up, let out a small, exhausted whistle and tumbled from his shoulder.