Silence fell as the kobolds gathered there took in what Idla had said, and the rift in the Magmablades began to heal as the stolen Woodblades shifted back toward the Magmablades they had grown up with. No matter how angry and confused they might be about the revelations, these were the kobolds they had considered their friends and family until a few short minutes ago. As Idla suggested, they wouldn’t stand idly by while the Magmablades were slaughtered.
“And how long have the Goldblade chiefs hated the Magmablades?” Lianhua asked softly, meeting Idla’s eyes. “A hundred years? More? How clearly do you remember those past lives? Or were you, Idla, strong enough that all you have are feelings, an almost irrational urge to destroy what those before you wished to see ruined?”
Idla glared and responded, but Kaz was busy staring at her core. Now that he knew she had to have eaten at least one core in her life, could he tell? There was none of the contamination, the reddish crust, that he saw with cores tainted by fulan, just a brilliantly churning ball of golden fire, nestled deep within Idla’s abdomen. It didn’t look misshapen, either, but perhaps that was because whichever core won the battle had had plenty of time to completely subsume the other?
Kaz’s eyes narrowed as he took an almost involuntary step closer to the Goldblade chief. There! Just as she moved, turning toward Kaz as he approached, there was definitely something, but it wasn’t in her core. His eyes traveled up, tracking the channel that ran along her spine, looking at the ki that flowed to each of her organs. It was difficult to see within the fierce light of her power, but there was something there, something like a series of threads that linked to her primary organs. These threads traveled up, merging and tying into… her necklace. More specifically, each thread disappeared into one of the rune-etched beads that hung from the chain, hidden among the more standard gems and carved bones.
“Can you even take that off?” he murmured, stretching out his hand to touch the bead linked to Idla’s heart.
A sharp whistle pulled him from his almost mesmerized examination of the connection between Idla and the beads. Kaz yanked his hand back as a knife flashed through the space where it had been, and a snarling Goldblade male slid into the gap.
Idla barked, “No!” even as Lianhua reached out and grabbed Kaz, pulling him behind her. Li whistled again, then roared, the deepest, fiercest roar Kaz had ever heard coming from her small body. Everyone froze, staring at the hovering dragon, and then Idla raised her hand and threw a powerful ki-bolt at Kaz’s friend.
Kaz didn’t even have time to think. As he had done once before, he reached out and took hold of someone else’s ki, though Idla’s burned and fought in a way Lianhua’s hadn’t. It felt like his hands might blister from the power, as he tried to figure out what to do with it now that it was under his control. The golden light of the foreign ki blazed as he held it, bucking and writhing like a woshi in water, and he didn’t dare let it go, but he couldn’t return it to Idla either.
A thought struck him, and he shifted his view, allowing his own core to fill his vision. One layer, seamed with silver. A second layer, glittering with partially dissolved mana. Then a layer of pure, unsullied core, and, at last, the empty space surrounding the seed. Kaz thrust the power he held toward it, funneling the gold down the cord that had been quietly siphoning off his own gold ki since the day it formed.
The cord, then the seed, flared, and Idla’s ki vanished into it, falling to the pool far at the bottom. For the first time, the level of that pool rose visibly, lifted by the sudden deluge in a way that the steady flow of Kaz’s ki hadn’t managed. Kaz imagined that he could even see ripples forming there, ripples which continued to expand as Kaz grabbed what felt like two or three more bursts of ki thrown by the Goldblade chief.
Dimly, he realized that the Magmablades were taking advantage of the confusion, some trying to escape as others lunged for the few remaining Goldblades. His own attention was entirely taken up by the assault on Li, and directing Idla’s raging ki away from the dragon.
And then there were no more bolts, no more ki flung toward Li with the intent to harm, and Kaz shook his head, then his hands, feeling as if he’d just dipped them into scalding water. Li’s weight settled onto his shoulder, her tail wrapping snug around his throat, and she huddled as close to him as possible, making a sound that sounded more like furiously boiling water than any sound she’d made before. A dark cloud roiled from her mouth, and when it touched Kaz’s fur and gathered in glittering droplets, he realized it was actually mist, water vapor so dense it looked like smoke.
“Are you all right?” Lianhua’s worried voice broke through Kaz’s distraction, and he looked toward her, managing to nod. He pushed a little more blue ki into his hands, and they cooled instantly, though the skin still felt tender when he flexed his fingers. On his shoulder, Li’s angry noises began to die down, and they both looked around at the results of a single minute’s madness.
Fully half of the kobolds who had been standing there were now down on the ground, and Kaz could see some kind of white powder settling around them. Chi Yincang held something that looked like a narrow reed, and more drifting plumes of powder fell from the tip. Idla’s guards were on the ground, one of them bleeding from a wound above his ear, and Raff stood behind Idla, holding her arms, though she no longer seemed capable of fighting back. The Goldblade chief’s body was nearly empty of ki, and her core swirled dimly, its golden light reduced to a bland yellow glow.
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Lianhua was beside Kaz, and when she realized that she had his attention, she said, “Kaz, what did you do?” Her eyes were wide, and she almost looked afraid. Of him.
He shook his head. “I just- She was trying to hurt Li, so I stopped her.”
“How did you stop her?” Lianhua asked, leaning down to take his hands in her own. She examined the tender, swollen flesh, wincing in sympathy. Her fear dropped away as she took a small container from her pouch and began to smear thick cream onto his skin.
“I don’t know,” Kaz admitted. “I took her ki, I think, but then I didn’t know what to do with it, so I dropped it into… something that could hold it.”
Lianhua glanced toward Idla’s drooping body, then whispered, “Kaz, you nearly drained her dry.”
His hands twitched, and he stared at her. “I just took what she threw at Li.”
“No, you didn’t,” Lianhua murmured. “Before, she felt like a cultivator in the late Foundation stage. Most female kobolds feel like they’re in early or mid Refining, while the chiefs tend to be early Foundation, but Idla was strong. Almost certainly stronger than me, though my training would probably allow me to defeat her in a direct battle. Now, though, she’s late Refining at best.”
Kaz pulled his hands away, though they already looked and felt better as Lianhua’s medicine began to work. Stepping over to Idla, Kaz looked at her core again.
Lianhua was right. It wasn’t just that Idla had used almost all of her ki, her core itself seemed to be damaged. It wasn’t nearly as bad as when Kaz nearly shattered his own core, but there were faint fractures in the surface of it, which were preventing the ki from flowing correctly. Fortunately for Idla, the cracks didn’t seem to go very deep, but as long as they were there, she would never be as strong as she had been before.
But that didn’t bother Kaz nearly as much as what the absence of ki revealed in the rest of her body. Before, the power within her had obscured the links between her necklace and her organs, but now the connection was stark. Five beads, each bearing the gleam of adamantium, had been carved with runes that even Kaz could recognize, thanks to his new ring. The runes for wood, fire, earth, metal, and water ki were linked to Idla’s liver, heart, pancreas, lungs, and kidneys by shimmering chains visible only to Kaz.
Cautiously, Kaz plucked the chain that stretched from the ‘metal’ rune to Idla’s lungs, and the chief’s breath hitched painfully. She gasped, and Kaz immediately drew back, afraid that he might hurt her further if he continued.
“I think this necklace is just another form of the bindings the mosui used,” he told Lianhua as she came up beside him. “I just don’t know who’s controlling it, or why she’s wearing it.”
Idla’s eyes flicked up to him, and her mouth opened as if she would offer a reply. A spark of silvery ki jumped down the chain Kaz had touched, and the Goldblade chief gasped again. This time, her knees gave out, and she would have fallen if Raff hadn’t caught her and gently lowered her to the ground instead.
“What’s goin’ on with her?” the big man asked, sounding genuinely worried. “I had to smack a couple of her guards, but once you started doing whatever you did, Blue, this one just froze up. Didn’t even fight back when I grabbed her, so I’ve just been holding on in case she started to get any ideas.”
Kaz crouched beside Idla, who was twitching on the ground, foam gathering at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes stared into his, horrified and frightened, but she didn’t lift her hands to pull off the necklace.
So Kaz did. He wasn’t sure what would happen when it was removed, but he was sure that if he left it on, Idla was going to die. So he wrapped his fingers around it and tried to lift it off, but it clung to Idla as if it was part of her, rather than a simple piece of jewelry. More ki pulsed from the stones, each of them lighting up with the color of their type. Kaz surrounded them with his own ki, blocking whatever they were trying to do, and ripped the necklace away.
Idla’s body arched, her eyes wide as the chains stretched, then snapped, the broken ends dissolving into mana and drifting away. Her heart stuttered as her lungs froze in her chest, but Kaz pushed his own gold ki into her channels, pulling back just before his ki entered her core. Idla took a deep, rattling breath, her eyelids flickering closed, and Kaz sat back, still unsure if he had done enough.
Cautiously, Li edged around on Kaz’s shoulder, extending her long neck so she could look at her erstwhile attacker. She tilted her head, examining the chief, then gave a defiant whistle.
Kaz chuckled, reaching up to stroke the edge of one delicate wing, and said, “No, I don’t think she’ll try to hurt any of us again. I don’t understand what happened, though.”
The dragon gave several sharp clicks, twisting her head to look at Kaz, then sending him an image. In it, a larger-than-life Kaz stood between Li and a glowing golden kobold who shot streams of equally golden fire at the dragon. The Kaz-figure grabbed hold of the brilliant flames, twisted them, and pulled on them, feeding the resultant rope into his own core, where it vanished. This continued for a bit, as the gold kobold faded to yellow and then burst into pieces.
“That didn’t happen,” Kaz told her absently, but he was trying to put what she was telling him together with what he had experienced. Was it possible that Idla hadn’t continued to attack, but rather that Kaz had stolen her ki, much as the humans, his pouch, and the mountain itself had done to him multiple times? If so, what did that mean?
Li hissed in response, but it was half-hearted at best, and when Lianhua rested her hand on Kaz’s shoulder, the dragon didn’t even bother trying to bite her.
“The others are coming back,” Lianhua said, and Kaz’s ears twisted, picking up the sound of questioning howls and approaching paws.
He stood, readying himself. When the Goldblades arrived and saw their chief unconscious on the ground, things were not going to go well.