Once he started, Kaz didn’t stop until he reached one of the massive rib bones buried within the beast’s torso. His knife slid through bone almost as easily as the spongy flesh, but he shifted his angle away from the ribs, knowing that the core was in the other direction.
Meanwhile, the monster continued to flail around, the bizarre, amorphous body surging around him as the hole he created became a tunnel, glistening with acidic slime and quivering globs of discarded meat. The remaining heads howled outside, and once or twice a talon reached into the hole after Kaz, trying to dig out the intruder causing the abomination so much pain.
Li’s small body was still too fragile to bear under the occasional compression as the monster thrashed, so she stayed outside, watching what Kaz was doing through his eyes just as anxiously as he watched through hers. Thus, Kaz knew when Chi Yincang was thrown off of the thing during a particularly powerful convulsion that also closed Kaz’s tunnel around him.
Immediately, Li flew to the other side of the beast, darting in and out near one of the remaining heads, causing its body to curve away from Kaz and open up the space around him again. His refined lungs would allow him to continue holding his breath for some time, but Kaz forced himself to breathe in the fetid, stinking air that filtered in through the hole anyway. He remembered the first time he had done this, and that abomination was less than a tenth the size of the one he was currently carving his way through. Once he reached the core, he had no idea how long it would take to get out again, so he needed to be able to survive for as long as possible until help could arrive.
Raff and Li were both growing slower as they tired, and Kaz focused on the pulsating flesh that still lay between him and the huge core he could just make out through the ki-dense body. Lifting his knife in a hand that shook only slightly, Kaz made two long strokes, releasing another flood of milky fluid. With the familiarity of repetition, he cut a square around the crossing slices, then plunged his arm in to cut away the back side of the four large triangles. They squelched out as the monster writhed and howled again, and Kaz used his paws to push them back behind him as he started the process over again.
Again and again, Kaz repeated his actions, his attention more on Li than his own situation. The only times he slowed were when the monster turned so that the passage closed up around Kaz, leaving him in hot, rank darkness, not even his ki-light able to shine through the solid mass. Each time, however, Li quickly taunted the monster into bending the other way, releasing Kaz to return to his gruesome task.
He wasn’t even aware he’d finally reached the core until his knife ground to a halt against something that resisted much more than mere flesh. The monster’s shrieks and howls filtered through its body in an all-encompassing cacophony, but now they rose to a new pitch as Kaz closed both hands on the Woodblade’s hilt and struggled to cut the glowing stone with it.
Like all the fulan-infested cores Kaz had seen, this one had an eerie glow, the rusty color of fulan spores, rather than the clear ruby of a healthy core suffused with red ki. From a distance, he had been able to see the knobby, misshapen mass, but not differentiate colors. Now, however, he could tell that a good part of it had probably started out as red, but there were several masses attached to it like parasitic growths.
In fact, as he struggled to cut away one of these, Kaz could see that all five colors were represented in this warped core. He thought the red was the base of it, but there were clearly demarcated portions of black, white, yellow, and even blue.
Tugging his knife out of the central red section, Kaz instead focused on the smallest piece, the blue. It was little more than a rounded hump coated in contamination, and when Kaz sliced it away, his link with Li showed that one long, narrow neck which had continued to writhe even after the head was removed had finally gone limp.
Gritting his teeth, Kaz switched to the next bulbous protrusion, a sickly orange-yellow swelling, and shaved off piece after piece until another head and a pair of limbs ceased to fight. Now, Raff and Chi Yincang, who had finally made his way back after being tossed deep into the city, were able to easily excise the dead portions of the beast. Li, who was panting in exhaustion, even flew up and out of the way, content to allow the two males and the emboldened kobolds to attack the dying monster.
When the white section of core was cut away, the woshi head fell silent, its fall crushing one last building. Then the black chunk split, creating a crack that went deep into the center of the main part of the core, and the body surrounding Kaz finally went limp and quiet. With the last of the resistance went whatever muscular tension still held the tunnel open, and in spite of Kaz’s light orb, he found himself once again locked in slimy, smothering darkness.
This time, however, he hadn’t used up all of his ki to crush the core - primarily because it was simply too large to do so - so he had enough strength to turn, watching through Li’s eyes as the dragon flew around to perch near the opening through which Kaz had entered. The shimmering ribbon hanging in the air between them became his lifeline, and he followed it, slithering through blackness until his questing hand touched something hard that grasped at him, then closed around his wrist.
Raff hauled Kaz out into the light with a grunt and a series of sounds that Kaz tried not to think about too hard. Kaz slid down the side of the fallen monster until he landed in a puddle of goo that was already turning an opaque white as it dried. His eyes burned, and he gasped for air, not because he was truly breathless, but because compared to the stench he had just escaped, the noisome air of the cavern smelled pure and sweet.
Li tried to settle beside him, but shied away from the thick fluid at the last moment, whistling and clicking at everyone around to,
It was Lianhua who did so, however, trusting her fuulong silk robes to protect her as she scooped Kaz up into her arms and carried him away. She called for water, and Kaz heard paws scratch at the ground as several someones scurried away. He tried to open his eyes, but found that though Lianhua’s ki was as clear and crisp as ever, there was something wrong with his physical eyes, and he could only see the faintest blur of light and dark.
Gentle fingers touched him, stroking a soft, clean cloth across his eyes, nose, and mouth. Li landed on Lianhua’s shoulder, staring down at him worriedly, and Kaz winced at what he saw through her eyes.
If Kaz’s fur had been bleached and brittle after his short time in the mid-level shiyan, now it was almost white. It fell off in clumps, leaving bare skin behind, and Kaz was just glad to see that that skin was intact and almost its normal blue shade. It didn’t feel painful and hot like it had last time, either, so it was just his fur that had been damaged by the slime, not his body itself.
Except for his eyes. When he managed to blink them open, Li showed him pale, milky orbs, lacking any of their usual blue shade. Even the pupils were nearly lost behind the damage. Kaz realized that the reason he had only been able to see ki inside the monster wasn’t simply because his ki-light was blocked, but because he had become all but blind. At the sight, Lianhua drew back, gasping in horror, her hand lifting to her mouth.
“Oh, Kaz,” she whispered, and he tried to stretch his lips into a human smile for her. His ears and tail didn’t want to obey him, and when he tried to speak, to reassure her, he found that his throat, which had nearly recovered from the earlier howl, was now utterly unable to produce sound. He must have swallowed some of the acidic fluid as well, and he could only be grateful that his organs were refined enough to resist even internal damage.
At Lianhua’s words, Raff came over to see what was going on, and let out a string of curses, most of which made no sense to Kaz. Even Chi Yincang looked grim, rather than inscrutable, but Kaz was too busy silently sending images to a panicking Li to worry about the humans’ reaction.
His current situation was bad, there was no doubt, but not as insurmountable as the humans seemed to believe. Kaz had been pondering Qiangde’s memories, and he was almost certain that they were why he was now able to speak to Li. There was one other ability Qiangde had used, twice in fact, that Kaz believed he could use to solve his current problems. Meanwhile, though, he had an idea how to turn the situation to his own advantage.
First, he guided blue ki into his throat, pushing out the dark shadow of damage that hung there. Soon enough, he curled up on his side, hacking and coughing up black specks of contamination. When he thought he had done just enough, he turned his sightless eyes to Lianhua.
“I want… to leave,” he gasped out, tugging the Woodblade from the sheath at his waist. All of his leather items - belt, sheath, and backpack - were once again bleached and battered, and the sheath split along one side when his hand shook as he drew the blade. He allowed his fingers to tremble even more, almost dropping the knife.
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Lianhua looked confused. “Leave?” she asked, stroking one of the last bits of fur clinging to his head tenderly, then looking even more horrified when the fur crumbled into a sticky, crunchy mess on her fingers.
“The… mountain,” Kaz said, pointing toward what he now saw as a blazing tower of ki in a dark world. It stood across the plaza from where he currently lay, and all five colors of ki shone there, quiescent but shining with power. Before, he had barely been able to see it, thanks to distance and the many other sources of ki in the city, but now, using his ki sense and Li’s eyes, Qiangde’s memories told him exactly what it was.
Lianhua turned her head, staring blankly for a moment. For the first time, Kaz actually saw her ki gather in her upper dantian, spreading down to her eyes. Was that how she sensed ki? She blinked, then said, “What is that?”
Kaz struggled to sit upright. “The way… out,” he said. His throat already felt quite a bit better, and he longed to repeat the process with his eyes, but he didn’t want to give away the game too soon. Instead, he growled the words, trying to make them sound hoarse and painful.
On Lianhua’s shoulder, Li ducked her head, hiding it beneath one wing. She was giggling softly at his acting, and didn’t want anyone to notice, but fortunately, Lianhua misinterpreted the action and reached up as if to embrace the dragon.
“Poor Li,” she murmured. “We’ll take Kaz to the healer who’s been treating Yingtao. I’m sure he’ll be fine in no time.”
Li dodged the motion, leaping from Lianhua to Kaz, in spite of Lianhua’s abortive motion to catch her. Kaz almost ruined everything by lifting his arms to catch the dragon himself, but managed to hold still as Li slammed into his chest with far more force than necessary, her little claws pinching painfully as she scrambled up his bare skin to his shoulder. Unfortunately, when she tried to settle into her spot on top of his pack, one of the straps snapped, nearly dropping her to the floor. She barely managed to hang on, and Kaz almost fumbled his knife while trying to catch her and the pack.
Someone tugged at the weapon gently, and Kaz turned his blind eyes toward the pull, ‘seeing’ Raff’s thick cloud of mana filled with tiny sparks of red ki. “I’ll get that before ya hurt someone, Blue.” Raff said with unusual gentleness, and Kaz reluctantly allowed the human to take the Woodblade.
His father’s knife. Kaz had known for a while now that he would have to give it up, but it was still hard. His first real memory of it was inextricably bound to Rega’s death, and it only reminded him of all that she and Ghazt must have suffered, and the tribe his father had lost. How much sorrow must Ghazt have felt every time he held it, believing that all of his kin were dead?
With a soft sigh, Kaz let his hand fall to his belt, tugging at the sheath until the old leather gave way. He dropped the pieces to the ground, saying, “Please. Leave.”
Li’s eyes and Kaz’s ki sense told him when the three chiefs approached. All of their cores were dim and exhausted, showing that they had been fighting right alongside the rest of their tribe. At their sides hung three bright flames of ki: black on Tisdi’s hip, white strapped across Avli’s lower back, and a golden line traced Idla’s upper leg.
When Idla shifted, Kaz readied himself for an argument, but the Goldblade chief only sounded tired and sad when she said, “We’ll need both pieces of the Magmablade, and young Gram as well. Teck, go get Ija and the pup. Make sure Ija brings the rest of the Magmablade.”
Claws on stone told Kaz which way to look, and he said, “Ratre. Need.”
The male who had been standing just behind Idla hesitated, and Li saw him look at the Goldblade chief, checking to see what he should do. Lianhua looked at Idla, saying, “Ratre is one of the males who traveled with us from the mid-levels. He and Kaz are friends.”
Idla’s fingers tapped at the hilt of the sheathed knife strapped to her leg, but she nodded decisively, and the male turned and ran. He was small, like his son, Dett, but very fast, and he lifted his voice in a howl even as he went.
Kaz fumbled at his pack, feeling like someone would call him out on his pretense at any time. Honestly, he already felt much better, and only his fur and his eyes revealed the damage he’d taken. Still, he let himself shiver and huddle, bowing his shoulders as if bearing up under a terrible weight.
she said in response to this thought.
Kaz responded with an image of herself as she had looked when she very first put on the illusion ring. The fuergar baby she resembled had been covered only by a light down, its belly plump, and tail barely a hands-width long. It was very cute, but a far cry from the mighty dragon she liked to imagine herself.
A memory formed in Kaz’s mind: Li as she had appeared when she first hatched, tiny and damp, with bits of shell and the contents of his pack stuck to her, hissing wildly until she managed to snap at his nose, drawing blood.
Li clicked at him. she said smugly, imagining her much larger self biting off the nose of a patchy, bleached kobold.
Kaz shook his head, amused, but looked up as he sensed the approach of two more powerful cores. Without his eyes to distract him, it seemed that his special vision was growing stronger, perhaps even becoming something more like what Lianhua had. He didn’t need to look to know that the kobolds running toward him included Ija, and the Magmablade was holding the new Woodblade chief in her arms.
Kaz started struggling to his paws, and Lianhua grabbed his left arm, while Raff grasped his right. Between the two of them, Kaz’s paws actually left the ground for a moment, as if they couldn’t decide whether they should allow him to walk, but he yipped at them sharply, and they lowered him to stand on his own.
At the sight of him, Ija halted, clutching Gram to her almost convulsively. Li showed Kaz the expression on Ija’s face, which had started out hard and angry, passed through horror, and had now settled on pity.
Kaz held out a hand, turning toward her as if following the sound of her claws on stone. He allowed his eyes to open wide, showing off the blank white orbs, which actually hurt for a moment as they started to dry, causing him to blink rapidly.
“Cousin?” Ija asked, almost whispering, and Kaz nodded. He actually felt a bit bad about manipulating her this way, but it was necessary that they all believe he was all but ready to join the ancestors. Certainly, a male who couldn’t see was one who would be useless to most tribes.
He held out the hilt he’d taken from the pouch inside his pack. Fortunately, even though there was a good amount of slime inside the pack, the pouch had responded easily to Kaz’s ki, granting him the severed hilt of the Magmablade.
Stepping forward, Ija held out the matching blade, bringing together the two pieces of the broken knife for the first time in more than a dozen years. The blade was wrapped in many layers of cloth, some of them clearly originating outside the mountain, and when Ija reverently unwrapped it, it shone a soft red in Kaz’s vision.
He let out a soft whine of relief. The only thing Kaz had worried about was that the broken Magmablade would be unable to fulfill its function. Still, he had very much doubted that Idla and the others would actually allow the blade to be rendered useless, at least as long as they still hoped to produce a new Woodblade tribe and find the missing Woodblade itself.
Raff rested a careful hand on Kaz’s shoulder, then pressed the hilt of the Woodblade back into his hand. “Do what you’ve gotta do, my friend,” the big human murmured. “We’re with you.”
Kaz stepped forward, croaking out, “Gram?”
The puppy let out a long, high-pitched whine, and Ija lowered him to the ground. Kaz crouched down, staring out straight ahead as if he couldn’t see the puppy’s brilliant blue core right in front of him. “I’m here, Kaz,” Gram finally managed to whisper, staring up at Kaz’s eyes as if entranced. There was more than a bit of whimper in his voice, and Kaz wished he didn’t have to frighten the puppy.
Leaning forward, Kaz laid the knife on the ground, then slid it toward Gram hilt first, his fingers barely lingering on the blade as the puppy accepted it. “Do you remember what I taught you?” Kaz asked, no longer bothering to draw his words out, though he still growled them slightly.
Gram nodded, then seemed to realize Kaz couldn’t see him, and said, “Yes.”
“If you share your ki - your power - with Chix, he won’t be sick any more,” Kaz told him. “But that will make you weaker. It would be better to find someone else with a lot of Wood ki to help him, so you can focus on the Tree.”
Gram nodded jerkily, then whispered, “Yes,” again.
“Pay attention to the voice in your head, too,” Kaz said. He was almost certain that the Voice the Irondiggers listened to was actually Nucai, and the voice of the blue power within the Tree was something else entirely. Something far more benign than the ancient servant of the dragon emperor.
“It will tell you who can help the Tree, and who can’t,” he went on. “And don’t let any other tribes join in the howl. The Goldblades and Waveblades didn’t mean to, but they were hurting the Tree.”
“I know,” Gram said impatiently. He reached up and touched his head. “The voice told me already.”
Kaz snorted a little laugh. The pup was going to be a handful, that was certain, and Kaz was glad of it. He hoped Ija and the others would remember the old Woodblades, and allow the puppy to be himself, not what they wanted him to be. In fact-
Kaz leaned forward until his snout almost touched Gram’s fluffy ear, and said, “Don’t let the other chiefs control your tribe. There’s a male named Ratre who knew the old Woodblades. He’ll help you rebuild the tribe the way it should be. Let the Woodblades be Woodblades again. I think the mountain needs them more than we know.” Gram nodded vigorously, fur tickling Kaz’s nose until he had to pull back and force down a sneeze.
That done, Kaz held out his arms, inviting Raff and Lianhua to help him up again. He pointed a shaky finger. “Time… to go,” he rasped, and the kobolds stepped aside respectfully as Kaz and his friends walked through the gore-soaked plaza toward the great archway that was meant to contain the passage out of the mountain.