Kaz woke after a long, dreamless sleep, finding that at some point during the night Kyla had curled up next to him, and Mei and Li were tangled together between Kaz and Kyla. It was the smell of meat cooking that woke them all, and the sight of Kyla’s perked ears and twitching nose made Kaz bitterly regret his own transformation. He could still smell the meat, but the scent was subtly wrong, flat and shallow, and not feeling the muscles that turned his ears was like missing his ears entirely, in spite of the fact that he could hear reasonably well.
As he sat up, the flap of the tent was brushed aside, and Lianhua stepped out into the sunshine. She held a small bundle of cloth, and headed straight for him.
“These are Yingtao’s,” Lianhua said, handing Kaz part of the bundle, and passing the rest to Kyla. “She’s a bit taller than me, so we’ll have to pull them up quite a bit, but it’ll be better than what you’re wearing now.”
Kaz and Kyla both reached protectively for their loincloths. Kaz wore the fuulong silk cloth that Lianhua had given him, and it had defended his body, as well as preventing his clothes from disintegrating along with his fur and multiple backpacks. It was much more comfortable than fur or simple leather, too, and the Copperstriker female who crafted it for him had done an excellent job of sewing the edges with a few extra stitches and stones.
Kyla, of course, wore a more traditional loincloth, but as the daughter of a chief, it was beautifully decorated. Like her backpack, it was made of niu-fur cloth, rather than leather, and small polished bones, stones, and gems were sewn on it in a simple but pretty pattern. It was plain compared to the elaborate loincloths some chiefs affected, but far nicer than anything else Kaz had seen outside the Deep.
Lianhua smiled. “Kaz, I have a bit more of that fuulong silk, or we can cut off a piece of it to make something less bulky to wear beneath your robe.” Her amethyst eyes twinkled. “Many men who can’t afford to wear fuulong find that they can scrape together enough for protective undergarments.”
Meanwhile, Kyla had shaken out the bundle Lianhua had handed to her, and her loincloth was already in a puddle around her paws. She stroked the pale green material, which had a pattern of small squares embroidered around the hem in a mixture of emerald and jade green. She looked at Lianhua, then started to push her arm into one opening.
“Wait, wait,” Lianhua said, laughing softly. “You put on the linen one first. That’s the plain one.”
Kyla’s ears lowered. “Is that why there are two? You change your clothes at least twice a day, so I thought one of them was for sleeping.”
Pink rose in Lianhua’s cheeks, but she took a simple robe the color of white agate from Kyla’s hands. Holding it out, she helped Kyla slip into it, then tied a cloth belt around the pup’s waist, tugging the excess material up so it hung down over the belt and the hem was a few inches above the ground.
The green robe went on over that, but this one had two belts. The first was a simple strip of bright green fabric, which was used to once again pull up the hem to the right position. The second belt went over the folded robe, and was both thicker and wider than the first. When Lianhua was done, Kyla’s inner robe only peeked out at neck and wrists, and much of the young kobold’s fur was concealed beneath layers of fabric.
“I don’t like it,” Kyla whined, plucking at her rear. “My tail is trapped.”
Lianhua looked like she wanted to hug the little kobold, but after a glance at Kaz, who always drew away from such physical contact, she lowered her arms. “I know,” she said. “But while we’re in town, it’s for the best. Maybe we can get some altered once people get used to the idea that you’re a friendly kobold. Honestly, just wearing human clothes should help with that.”
She turned toward Kaz, ready to help him as well, but he held up a hand and pulled his own bone-white under robe around him. Reaching beneath it, he reluctantly allowed his loincloth to drop, then tied the first belt.
“Yours should be shorter than Kyla’s, since you’re male,” Lianhua instructed, and Kaz pulled up his robe until it hung several inches above the ground, baring his lower legs and feet. “Now the outer robe. You only have one belt, so technically the robe shouldn’t be pulled up, but we don’t have time to hem it.”
The outer robe was a blue so dark that it was almost black. It was similar to the color of Vega’s eyes, which made Kaz shudder, but it complemented his new fur and skin color. No embroidery decorated the edges, and the belt was a simple strip of green cloth the same color as Kyla’s robe. It might even have been crafted from the same piece of cloth.
Once the two kobolds were dressed in their human finery, Lianhua stepped back, eyeing them approvingly. “Now we just need a cloak for Kyla, but Kaz, I think we’ll just leave you as is. People will be so busy looking at you that they won’t even notice they can’t see Kyla’s face.”
Raff looked up with a soft snort. “Well, that’s true enough. But what should we do about our little dragon friend?”
Lianhua grimaced. “She can hide under Kyla’s cloak, or she can wait outside town. There are still several days before the moon is dark, so she should be safe if she hides in a tree at night.” She looked at Li, who was already expressing her displeasure with both of these options. “We’ll check the shops in town and see if we can come up with something better before we reach Cliffcross. We can only afford to stay in Wheldrake for one night, though, so we’ll have to make it quick.”
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Kaz stroked Li, who was hissing and bubbling in such a way that mist was beginning to soak his new robe. “You keep mentioning the dark of the moon. What is that, and why is it so dangerous?”
Raff and Lianhua exchanged glances, and Raff shrugged before returning to stirring the small pot next to the fire, which smelled like it held something similar to yesterday’s porridge. A few skewers of meat hung over the flames, steaming softly.
Lianhua sighed and took out a book. It wasn’t one of her usual notebooks. This one had a piece of bright red cloth stretched across the cover, and it was painted with a series of partial and complete circles.
“You may not have noticed, but the moon is currently waning. That means that each night, the visible moon is a little smaller,” Lianhua said, opening the book. She flipped to an image of the same circles Kaz had seen on the front. There were eight of them, painted in silver, with a full circle on the left, and a bare tracery of ink on the right, representing emptiness. The circles above and below, set along the outside of a larger circle, showed anything from a sliver to a three-quarter-full area of gilded ink.
“When we arrived, the moon was a little over a quarter full. That gives us about a week to get to Cliffcross before the night of no moon. The nights immediately before and after no moon are dangerous as well, but the night of the Gate is the worst,” she said, pointing to the almost nonexistent circle.
Seeing their looks of confusion, Lianhua asked, “Do you remember the story I told you? About the twelve animals who live in the Emperor’s palace?”
Dragon and kobolds all nodded.
“That’s a myth,” Lianhua said, “but there are some elements of truth to it. We have records that speak of the night of no moon as nothing but a dark night. In fact, it was considered the best night to gather certain plants, or map the stars. But at least a millennium ago, things began to change. Something appeared once a month, when even the faintest sliver of the moon vanished. It was a darkness, nothing more. A blot in the sky where there should have been stars.”
She turned the page, and Kaz drew in his breath at the delicately lovely illustration spread across the pages. It was a map of the sky; dark, but filled with specks of paint, each one precisely placed. Most were white, but some few held a red or yellowish hue. And there, on the upper right, was a blotch of thick black ink, revealing no stars through it.
“Over years, that blemish in the sky expanded, and then it opened, and monsters began to appear.” Lianhua turned another page, revealing a monster that stood above the beautifully painted trees. It looked something like a yanchong, but its maw unfolded like that of a lopo, revealing a multitude of teeth in concentric rows.
“But so did the Divine Beasts. They descended from the sky, attacking the monsters. Their battles could lay waste to a forest, but no monsters survived to assault nearby cities and towns.” Another page, then another and another. Paintings of majestic beasts flashed by, until Kaz placed his finger on one that looked familiar, and Lianhua laughed.
“Yes, that’s Xu. He was the Divine Beast who started as a dog, or possibly a wolf. He was one of the friendliest of the great beasts, often going out of his way to avoid damaging human homes and farms.”
Xu was as large as the house he was pictured protecting, while a tiny human family huddled inside, and a monster with tentacles and too many eyes attempted to reach them. Xu walked on four legs, not two, but his head and hindquarters could have belonged to a kobold.
Lianhua touched each of twelve images, naming the Divine Beasts shown there, and explaining which of the animals in her myth they had come from. As she touched the twelfth, her face darkened. “And this is Tu, the Rabbit. She was the first to disappear, but not the last. She was probably the weakest of the Divine Beasts, and it’s assumed that she died fighting one of the monsters who came through the gate, but we’ll probably never know for sure.”
She shook her head. “One by one, the others vanished. The Rat, the Goat, the Rooster, the Pig, even Xu, the Dog. Only She, the Snake, Loong, the Dragon, and Hu, the Tiger, remained.” Lianhua turned another page, then a second, and a third. They were each filled with dense lines of runes, and it wasn’t until half the book had passed by that another picture appeared. This one showed the creature Lianhua had identified as a tiger, as well as the familiar shapes of a dragon and a snake, all fighting against something high in the starry sky.
“Then one night, there was a huge battle. There are conflicting stories about where this battle took place, but many agree that it was over a great mountain.”
Together, they all turned to look toward the shape of Kaz’s mountain. Often, the trees under which they walked were so dense that it was barely visible as a shadow, but here in this open area, it loomed, stark and tall, rising into the clouds behind them.
“Yes,” Lianhua murmured, “Shensheng is often mentioned as a possible location. Wherever it was, the remaining Divine Beasts pushed back the invaders, but in the process they were all injured and fell to earth. None of them has been seen since.”
Kyla’s eyes were huge. “So now the monsters just come from that big spot every time the moon goes out?”
Lianhua opened her mouth as if to correct some part of that, but then just nodded. “Yes. The greatest of the human cultivators spend their time fighting a constant battle against the creatures that come through the Gate. Fortunately, those monsters are usually small, and sometimes the darkest night passes as peacefully as any other. Still, it’s best to be among other people when the time comes.”
Kaz stared at her. “I thought cultivators were trying to… ascend?”
She looked down, refusing to meet his eyes. “They are. Some of them hope that they can pass through the Gate and destroy the place the monsters come from, or perhaps close the Gate itself. Others use the cores of the monsters to create powerful pills and elixirs which help them become stronger, in order to seize more authority in the mortal world. These two groups mostly balance each other, and there are never many of the highest-ranked cultivators at a time. When someone becomes too strong, whether intentionally or accidentally, they vanish, and we believe they have ascended to another plane. Perhaps the very one where the Heavenly Emperor built his palace.”
“We’ve got mages doin’ the same thing,” Raff said. “There’s a whole school of ‘em in Cliffcross, studying the Gate. Not many of ‘em actually do much fighting, though. At least not unless there’s an incursion near the city itself. Even then, unless there’s a particularly powerful monster, they leave it up to soldiers and mercenaries like me. They’re too important to risk, y’know.”
The male unfolded his length from where he had been crouched near the fire. “Oatmeal’s ready,” he said. “Eat it while it’s hot, before it sets up like a brick. It’s not as tasty as Chi Yincang’s rice porridge, but that and a bit of meat will keep you goin’, and we need to move. If Lianhua wants t’go shopping in Wheldrake, we need to get there as soon as possible. The shops close up as soon as it starts to get dark, so those who live outside of town can get home.”
Lianhua nodded, and they all turned toward the fire.