Straightening, Vega glanced from the males holding Kaz to her elder daughter. “Do it,” she barked, and Ija nodded. Kyla looked from her sister to Kaz, and her small fists clenched at her sides before she turned and hurried over to her father’s side. That male set his hand gently on the puppy’s head, and she leaned into him as they both turned and walked away.

Ija stepped in front of Kaz, and her core spun, throwing out ki in waves. It almost seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting, and to his astonishment, Kaz realized that she was compressing her core to force it to produce more power. She wasn’t as good at compressing ki as Lianhua, or even Kaz, and she didn’t have a central dantian that would allow her to store ki for later use, but it was by far the closest Kaz had seen another kobold come to cultivation.

She held out her arms, eyes closing, and Kaz both felt and saw her power saturate the air around her. A good deal of it simply floated off, quickly becoming undifferentiated mana, but more touched Kaz and everything around him. He suddenly felt as if he had donned one of Lianhua’s spiritual bamboo masks, smells fading as if they were hours or even days old.

Kaz’s eyes widened. Li’s camouflage had a similar effect, at least to some extent, muffling or dulling the smell and sounds she produced, even as a sort of illusion hid her from view. It stayed with the dragon, though, and only lasted as long as she had enough ki to maintain it.

But Kaz had seen, or rather smelled, something exactly like this once before. His aunt, Rega, had used it to cover the retreat of the Broken Knives from their den when the core-eater began killing them. Kaz had only been able to track them by forcing so much ki into his nose that he caused it to bleed. Before she died, Rega said she used ‘forbidden magic’ to save them, but usually, kobolds referred to ki as ‘power’. Only the humans, particularly Raff, used the word magic, and Kaz had never heard it from anyone else.

If this was, in fact, the same thing Rega had used to hide their tribe, then no one would be able to track Kaz and his abductors by scent. He assumed he wouldn’t be taken to the main Magmablade den, either, so the odds that anyone would find him before they did whatever they planned to do were slim to none. Of course, they were reckoning without Li, and had no idea that Kaz himself was far more than he seemed.

As Ija’s arms fell to her sides, her shoulders slumped, and she sighed, clearly exhausted. She looked back at Vega and said, “It’s done.”

Vega gave a deep sniff, her graying muzzle opening slightly so she could take in the smell of the air surrounding them. Finally, she gave a satisfied nod and looked after her mate and Kyla, who had disappeared down the tunnel behind Kaz.

“Good,” she said. “I have to be very visible when they discover their little Woodblade puppy has vanished, but no one will miss you, if they even noticed you were here. Take him back to the hidden den, and I’ll rejoin you when Idla is done fawning over the humans.”

Half of the males shifted toward Vega, while the ones holding Kaz remained with Ija, but they all paused as Ija said, “Won’t the humans go looking for him as well?”

Vega gave a growling laugh. “You weren’t old enough to meet any humans before the Breaking, but I met more than my share. They can barely tell one kobold from another, and they certainly won’t care if a particular one goes missing. I’ll simply offer to send a Magmablade back up through the mountain with them if they complain.”

Ija nodded, and the two females turned away from each other, Vega heading back toward the Goldcoat den, while Ija continued on down the tunnel. The males split, half following each female, leaving one walking between Kaz and Ija, two holding onto him, and two more following behind.

The group was nearly silent as they walked, the click of claws on stone seeming as muffled as the faint, dusty scent they left behind. Kaz could still smell it, but judging by the amount of ki it required for him to do so, no normal kobold would be able to tell they passed this way.

Still, Ija led them through the winding tunnels as if she believed they were being followed. They moved quickly and with purpose, but Kaz could tell they’d also doubled back on their path several times. He would have been thoroughly lost if not for his innate sense of direction. None of them spoke, and other than a few token efforts to pull away, Kaz didn’t even bother pretending to fight. After all, they were doing exactly what he wanted them to do.

No new totems announced that the last turn was any different from the dozen before, but almost as soon as they took it, two strong, red-furred males appeared from beside them, blocking their way. Their long knives were bared, but when their torchlight merged with Ija’s ki light, they immediately lowered their weapons and stepped back, bowing deeply.

Ija nodded to them, but still none of them spoke, or even exchanged a quiet yip of greeting. Instead, Ija led her group past the two guards, and then the pair after that. The next challenger was a female, who looked distinctly relieved to see Ija. She and the male with her stepped aside, and for the first time Kaz saw a real reaction to his presence among the others. As this female’s eyes met his, blue to blue, hers widened in surprise and something else. It didn’t look positive, but it was gone too quickly to be identified, and then they were past, and Ija was pressing her hand against an all too familiar image carved into the wall ahead.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

It was, of course, a map, though it looked unfinished. The image was rough, and Kaz could see the scrapes of chisel marks that had never been smoothed out. The little figures scattered throughout the mountain were just slightly rounded rectangles, and the mosui city was tiny and dominated by the blocky rectangle of the tower that passed from top to bottom.

The only part that looked complete at all was the second city, placed within the wide base of the mountain, filled with squares that were recognizable buildings. At the center of this city was another rectangle, but it was much more slender than the tower above, and its top disappeared into a round mass of rough lines.

A single blue ki stone glinted at the center of this singular column, and it was this that Ija touched. Her expression tightened in concentration, and then a tiny, brief spark of blue ki jumped from her finger to the stone, and the wall swiveled in place, revealing a staircase. Unlike every set of ancient stairs Kaz had seen before, no red glow illuminated these, and they were rough and uneven. They didn’t look broken, just incomplete, like the map.

Still in silence, the group passed through the opening in the wall, and the last male pushed it closed behind them with the ease of long practice. Only then did they all relax, and Ija actually shook out her hands and arms, as if she had been grasping something tightly for a long time, and her muscles were tense and sore.

Turning to the two males holding Kaz, she nodded to them, and they obediently released him, stepping away slightly, though they continued watching him as if he might lunge for the female who moved to stand on the step beside him.

“I’m sorry,” Ija murmured, and Kaz nearly showed his very real reaction to the words. In his experience, females didn’t apologize to males, and though he now knew his experience was insufficient to judge his entire race, he still thought this was strange behavior.

Ija clearly knew it, too, because weary amusement showed in her eyes and the tilt of her head. “My father is half Woodblade and half Goldcoat,” she said. “And we have no den mother. That means Father raised me and my siblings, and he taught us to respect both males and females.”

“Then let me go!” Kaz burst out. He wasn’t actually ready to go back, not yet, but he wanted to see how this new cousin would respond.

Ija’s shoulders hunched. “I can’t,” she admitted reluctantly. “Mother is still chief, and most of the tribe supports her. All I can do is offer you an apology, which is as worthless to you as to me. Still, for the sake of your mother, I give it.”

Kaz felt his legs tremble beneath him. If Ija truly knew who his mother was, then she had to be the first person he’d ever met who actually liked Oda.

“My mother?” he asked hoarsely.

Ija laughed bitterly. “Don’t pretend. Anyone who ever met your father can see him in you, and while those who never knew you were born might be fooled into believing you’re the lucky product of two parents with some Woodblade ancestry, Ghazt was a favorite among his cousins, one of whom is my father. They grew up playing together, and I met Ghazt several times after he joined our tribe. Plus, though Oda hid you from Vega until the Breaking, she couldn’t help but flaunt your existence as she left the Deep. We’ve known about you for years.”

“Oda… hid me?” he asked, mind whirling. That would explain why he was never allowed to leave their small den unless he was going out with his father. He now realized that while Katri’s pink fur revealed that she had some Woodblade heritage, Kaz’s bright blue color proved that he was a Woodblade, at least as far as the Deep was concerned. That meant that while Katri could go to the city and be introduced as Oda’s pup, Kaz couldn’t, at least not without revealing that Oda had abducted Ghazt.

Ija hesitated, looking uncertain for the first time. She had seemed angry, not only at the situation, but at Kaz himself, but now that anger drained away into confusion. “Of course,” she told him. “If Mother had known about you sooner, she would have taken you away. She certainly wouldn’t have allowed Oda to take you when she left.”

Kaz shook his head, as confused as Ija. “But Oda was the chief. How could your mother take me?”

Ija’s topaz eyes opened wide, and she began to laugh. “You don’t know anything, do you? That’s why you came here, acting as though you were just some random male who happened to be guiding your little group of humans. You have no idea what chaos you brought with you.”

She continued laughing until the males around them began to shuffle awkwardly, and then wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I wonder if you’ll be Oda’s revenge, or her greatest failure, among so many others,” she murmured, staring at him. He almost thought there was a hint of fond bemusement in her tone and her eyes.

Kaz, too, would very much like to know the answer to her question, but he didn’t dare respond. So far, his cousin seemed inclined to react well to his ignorance, but there was no reason to make her believe he was the idiot Li sometimes called him, even though he felt like one at the moment.

Drawing in a deep breath, Ija let it out in a long, slow sigh. “Well, little cousin,” she said at last. “Let’s get you home, and introduce you to the rest of the family. There are a lot more of them than there were when you left.”

Turning, she headed off down the stairs, her small orange ki light bobbing in time with her steps. One of the males near Kaz reached out as if to take his arm and pull him after her, but Kaz hurried to follow on his own. He had had enough of being restrained, even if that restraint was far less effective than anyone else believed. He was also very, very tired of being lied to, and he hoped that wherever Ija was leading him, he would finally find a little truth.