“Nucai!” Qiangde roared as he entered the cavern where the Tree grew. The kobolds bearing him lowered the palanquin reverently, but Qiangde still hissed in pain as all of his broken bones were jarred again. He had managed to begin the mending process, but there was too much damage, and it was far too extensive to heal immediately. Besides, his body was less important than his core, and he could feel that straining beneath the demands he’d made of it.
The side of the Tree shuddered and split, the bark separating to reveal a tall, narrow opening, through which a tall, narrow being stepped. Like his creations, Nucai seemed to have been stretched out of proportion, all of him a little too long to be truly human any more. As always, he wore the robe of a scholar, which concealed the stunted wings sprouting from his back, but there was no hiding the length of his fingers and the talons that tipped them.
As soon as he reached Qiangde, Nucai kowtowed, his forehead impacting the stone with a sharp crack. Showing no sign of pain, the man said, “I have failed you, Master. My kobolds have rebelled. I will aid you in destroying them, and then I will offer my core to you to cleanse my disgrace.”
Qiangde waved his servant’s mewling away. “Why didn’t you warn me? You must have known this was coming!”
Without looking up, Nucai said, “I asked for an audience with you, Master, but I was too ashamed to tell anyone else. I didn’t know Lord Jianying was involved, so I thought it was only a momentary aberration that could be repaired by the removal of the leaders.”
Qiangde snorted, and a curl of smoke drifted from his nostrils. “A little more than that, given that at least-,” he did a mental check of his remaining court, and frowned at the results. “At least half of my dragons are dead, and most of the other half embattled or injured. Still, once I am recovered, I will crush Jianying.” And perhaps find out for myself what dragon tastes like, he thought vindictively, then gave a shudder at the thought. No, even he had his limits.
Nucai lifted his head just enough to strike it against the ground again. “I will do whatever I can to help ensure your victory, Master.”
Sighing, Qiangde limped past the former human. He had told the man to stop acting in such a subservient fashion, but the other refused to listen, and after two hundred years together, he supposed it wasn’t going to change. In any case, now wasn’t the time to speak of it.
“Help me to my roost,” Qiangde ordered, and Nucai finally looked up. Not even a red mark darkened his forehead in spite of the enthusiasm with which it had impacted the stone. The stone, however, showed a spiderweb of cracks fanning out from where the blows had fallen.
“But Master, will you even… fit?” the servant asked hesitantly.
Qiangde started to scoff again, but paused. It had been quite some time since he perched atop the Tree. Dragons never truly stopped growing, though the speed at which they grew slowed once they passed their first century or so. Certainly he couldn’t fly up the way he once had. His wingspan was simply too wide, even for the enormous cavern. Honestly, he had been finding his resting place in the kobold city a bit snug recently.
“I will fit because I must,” he said firmly. “There is no better place for cultivation in this part of the mountain.”
Nucai stood straight at last, though his wings created the illusion of a hunch on his back. He looked over at the kobolds who were still standing by, terrified but obedient. These were some of Dongwu’s kobolds, who had been created using a unique kind of Divine Wolf and some of Qiangde’s part-human offspring.
Dongwu had taken the longest to decide what form her kobolds would take, but the combination of human, wolf, and a small portion of dragon was truly promising, in spite of their relative physical weakness. These kobolds were intelligent, loyal, and adaptable in a way the others weren’t, and though Qiangde had been reluctant to allow his servant to use his own descendants, no matter how corrupted by humanity, it had been worthwhile. It was simply too bad that the ones without cores degenerated to their animalistic nature so quickly when they were removed from the high ki density within the mountain.
“Get some rope,” Nucai snapped at the kobolds. “And fetch your best climber.”
Instantly, they bowed, and all of them turned and fled at once. They were gone only thirty minutes or so, but during that time three more of Qiangde’s court died, and his connection to several more faded into a strange gray fog through which he couldn’t communicate.
When the kobolds returned, Nucai sent one up the Tree to loop the rope over the topmost branch. Once the end of the rope dropped to the ground, the servant had them rig a sort of seat at the bottom, and Qiangde sat on it. Allowing himself to be lifted up into the high branches was one of the most humiliating experiences of Qiangde’s life, and he silently added it to the list of things for which he would make Jianying pay in blood.
As soon as Qiangde reached the familiar confluence of branches which created a relatively open, flat area at the top of the Tree, he sent the kobold away. He could feel Nucai below him, back in his den beneath the roots of the Tree, no doubt watching over everything that was happening within the mountain, as was right.
It was Nucai’s task to watch and record everything, reporting only those things that Qiangde would actually care about, and he had eyes everywhere. In spite of his uncomfortable servility, Nucai was by far Qiangde’s most loyal servant, driven by neither Zhangwo’s self-interest, nor Dongwu’s disenchantment with a system that had failed to recognize and utilize her brilliance.
Qiangde looked around. It was difficult to tell how much space there truly was, since it was so filled with relatively small branches and the deep emerald of leaves. If only another Divine Plum had been ripe, Qiangde wouldn’t have had to resort to what he was about to do, but the Tree only produced one each century, and Qiangde had already eaten it.
Drawing in a breath, he felt the ki generated by the Tree and the ki crystals set into the ceiling and walls of the cavern. All five colors were there, but the two strongest were the ones he had hatched with: wood and earth. Dragons were usually fire, though a secondary element was fairly common, and as a result, neither of Qiangde’s parents had known how to teach him. It had taken him nearly fifty years to learn to fly properly, weighed down as he was by his attachment to the earth. Every time he tried to use his ki the way his parents said he should, he plummeted toward the ground, crashing more times than he could count.
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Still, he had learned, and each time he struggled to overcome the impediments of his birth, he grew stronger. By the time he was four hundred years old, he had acquired all five forms of ki. After that, his determination and willingness to do whatever it took had carried him onward, until he reached an entirely unexpected stumbling block.
Beasts could not ascend. Specifically, no creature born with a core could ascend to the next plane. There was something innately different between those who created their own cores through effort and training, and those who had them from birth. Whatever it was, it tied Qiangde to this world as surely as his earth ki had once brought him tumbling to the ground.
But Qiangde still longed to grow stronger, to escape the mortal plane on which he found himself trapped, and so he had begun to research those beings who could learn to form cores. The problem was that he needed a great number of them to study, and those who were appropriate subjects were almost universally arrogant and ambitious, requiring him to kill them or find a way to keep them contained while he tried to figure out what made them different from himself.
When that proved unsuccessful, he styled himself an emperor, and created an empire to support his claim. Then he simply ordered his subjects to submit to his experiments, and they obeyed! A century of research was enough to form a hypothesis, and then he left the empire in the hands of one of his descendents who had been born with a core.
In the end, he returned to the very mountain where he had hatched, and for the first time turned to studying his own kind. But it was only when he discovered the ki crystals within the mountain, and eventually learned why they were here that he truly began to gain a flicker of hope. There was a way, if he was only patient and ruthless enough to do what he must.
So, Qiangde planted the Divine Plum Tree. Using the ki crystals and his own native ki, he grew it until it became exactly what he needed. Only a few more short centuries, and Qiangde would finally be able to ascend.
But now Jianying threatened to ruin it all, stealing Qiangde’s chance at true immortality from within his very claws. And Qiangde would not allow it.
Embracing the feeling of scales covering his smooth, human skin, wings bursting from his back, and a long, undulating tail, Qiangde allowed himself to become Dragon again. He swelled until he filled all of the available space and then some, his neck curving awkwardly so it didn’t drape over the edge of the branch ahead. His back pressed against the ceiling, and chips of stone flaked away as rock cracked. Several of his barely-together bones cried out in protest at the sudden pressure, but he ignored the pain. Only one thing mattered.
He reached out with both foreclaws and grasped the columns of ki crystal that controlled the mountain. Instantly, his mind was filled with the millions of puny things that lived there, each vying for his attention. Some stalked and killed, while others hid and died, and Qiangde brushed them all aside with the ease of long practice.
Turning his attention to the runes he had burned into the stones long ago, he used a single talon to scratch one out and alter another. It was difficult to make such fine changes now that he was so large, but the columns were too far apart for his human form to touch both at the same time, and he didn’t have time to use that small shape to do what he must.
It only took a moment to determine that he was the only true dragon left alive within the mountain. Some of Nucai’s kobolds were still here, but they were difficult to ‘see’ this way. That had always been annoying, but he had never really seen it as a problem until this moment. Unfortunately, it meant that he couldn’t be sure how many of them there were, or exactly where they were hiding.
Qiangde’s changes took effect, a shudder passing through the ki filling the mountain. He had excluded the Tree itself, including his resting place and Nucai’s hidden den, but otherwise no creature with any significant amount of dragon blood would be allowed to remain within his mountain. The single cave at the very top where Qiangde himself had hatched over two thousand years earlier was the only other exception, but it was too far away for anyone to be able to use it to attack him.
The power stored within the crystals drained precipitously as Nucai’s kobolds fought back, using their own ki to stave off their sudden, instinctive urge to flee. The weaker ones, which were also the ones that were easier for him to track, were already running. The stronger ones only needed more time and more power to follow.
He tightened his claws on the columns, draining almost all of the ki from the Tree and the enormous ki crystals themselves. The Tree would need many years to recover, if it ever did, but in the worst case, Qiangde could retrieve the seed he had dropped and grow a new Tree. It would set back his plans by as much as a millennium, but time was the one thing he had in plenty.
“Ah, there you are,” a hissing voice spoke, and Qiangde tried to turn, only to find himself pinned in place by the press of the mountain against his back, and the Tree against his belly.
“We knew you had to have a way to control the core of the mountain,” the voice went on, “but we couldn’t find it. We were so certain it was at the top of the mountain, where you love to roost and pretend you own everything you see. But no, it was here, under our very noses, protected by your most loyal minion. If we had had any idea that this space was up here, it would have been obvious.”
A black-scaled kobold stepped in front of Qiangde’s nose, holding up another of the jade dragon statues. A fierce flame of white ki burned in the palm of his other hand, and Qinagde could almost feel the heat on his paws as statue and flame drew closer together.
“How…?” Qiangde demanded, and the kobold bared his jagged teeth.
“You continue to underestimate us, Qiangde,” he hissed. “By the time my ki grows too weak to protect me from your expulsion, you’ll be dead, and I’ll have changed these runes to allow my people back in.” The kobold gestured toward the blue column, where Qiangde’s talon had scratched fresh lines into the surface only a few minutes earlier.
Qiangde let out a low, hissing sigh of his own. He had used the Tree’s ki in an attempt to keep Jianying and his scaly minions at bay long enough to recover, and the Divine Plum and his own stored ki to repair his body. All he had left was what he had been born with: his core, teeth, and claws. His body might be broken and trapped, but he could still make sure that these kobolds, these amalgamations of human and dragon who wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for him, failed at their ultimate task. Without what rested in the heart of the mountain, Qiangde couldn’t ascend, and neither could Jianying. Besides, though Qiangde was reluctant to release the flesh, he was nearly certain that he no longer needed it in order to exist.
Nearly.
Faster than the kobold could possibly react, Qiangde’s head darted out, teeth closing around the traitorous creature. Crunching down, Qiangde attempted to crush him, only to meet resistance. Hands pushed against Qiangde’s teeth, forcing them apart in a way Qiangde would have sworn was impossible. Reluctantly, he pulled on his core, reinforcing his own jaws until the pressure holding them open started to give way.
Then something changed, the reptilian pulling ki from somewhere, maybe someone, else. Again, Qiangde’s teeth moved inexorably apart, and a slow, terrible heat began to build in his mouth. In moments, it felt like he had swallowed the sun itself, and his eyeballs began to steam in their sockets, rendering him blind.
In the pain-filled darkness, Qiangde made a decision. If he was going to die, he would take this impertinent, inconceivable creature with him, along with all of Jianying’s dreams. He reached down deep within himself, pressing and cycling his core harder than he had ever dared before. Over time, he had learned to take in some of the ambient ki of the world in the same way mortals could, but when it came down to it, he was a beast. Centuries of research had revealed that beasts and their cores were the very source of ki itself, and each beast was limited in their own capacity.
And Qiangde’s capacity was not infinite.
He felt something within him give even as his jaws finally closed, crushing the kobold with a final hissing shriek. The kobold died, but so did Qiangde’s body, leaving behind a broken core that fought to remember.
Remember that he had almost been a god.