“If that thing comes down on the city, it’ll crush us all,” Lianhua called. “We need to either get it to land in the plaza, or chop it into small enough pieces that it can’t do as much damage.”
Kaz actually felt a hint of amusement break through the absolute terror he had been feeling ever since he realized what they were facing. He slid the Woodblade back into its sheath. “It wants me,” he told her. “Let it come and get me.”
She turned and looked at him, eyes dark and conflicted, before giving a single nod. “Don’t go far into the open area. We want it to take the path of least resistance, which is landing somewhere that’s already clear. If you run out into the middle, it’ll have to come down on at least a few buildings in order to avoid squashing you.”
Kaz felt his ears heat. He had envisioned doing exactly that, racing out into the very center of the large circle they’d seen when looking down on the city from above. She was right, though. If this thing wanted him alive, it would be very careful to avoid him, but wouldn’t care about anything else.
“Chi Yincang, as soon as it’s settled, I want you on it. Cut off those wings so it has to stay down. Raff, keep the heads occupied, and if you can get rid of a few, that would be even better.” Lianhua looked over at Chi Yincang. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll shoot whatever I can from a distance. Just focus on killing it.”
The two males nodded, and Lianhua looked over at Kaz. “What can you do?” she asked. It was clear from her tone that she meant no insult, she was just genuinely unsure.
So was Kaz. He stared up at the hovering monstrosity, which was still calling for him even as the heads that weren’t busy speaking snapped at kobolds firing ki bolts at it from openings in the sheer walls surrounding them. Even as he watched, a pair of kobolds were knocked from a precarious perch, howling as they fell.
Something roiling and terrible came into view as the thing ponderously turned in midair, and Kaz pointed. “I can destroy its core,” he said simply.
Lianhua halted at the end of the wide road, where gray stone met white bricks which flowed toward the center to mingle in a complex pattern with bricks of the other four colors. She released her bow just long enough to sketch the rune for ‘shield’, and ki shimmered into place around her. She immediately began to cultivate, pulling mana in from all around her, and Kaz backed away from the humans as he felt all three of them begin to pull on his own ki.
Looking at Kaz, Lianhua nodded and shifted her bow into readiness. “Good,” she told him. “But whatever you do, don’t let it get hold of you, at least not until it’s grounded. I don’t even know where something that big could have come from, but let’s not give it a chance to grab you and go back there.”
Kaz nodded, then stepped out onto the first pure white stone. The humans split up, each circling away around the edge of the plaza as Kaz pumped golden ki into the largest light orb he had ever created.
“Get back,” he told Li, who still clung stubbornly to his neck in spite of him silently urging her to fly away.
“By risking yourself?” he asked, showing her an image of his worst fear: him being engulfed in those huge jaws, and Li along with him.
Kaz looked up just in time to see his vision about to come true, or close enough. A pair of enormous, slavering jaws in what might once have been a yanchong’s face was descending toward him on a grotesquely long neck. The mouth was large enough to easily engulf his whole body, and he suspected that was what was about to happen, since the angle was perfect to simply scoop him up into that horrific cavity.
Pushing ki into his legs, Kaz leaped backward, nearly slamming himself into the wall of a building behind him, but also managing to avoid the gaping jaws. The body of the thing came behind the head, six wings beating in a frantic effort to lift its ungainly bulk back up and prevent it from smashing face first into the city.
Somehow, three pairs of legs managed to settle into the open circle ahead of Kaz. The sheer weight of it should have shattered the bricks, while the ridiculously long talons on four of the feet should have torn furrows in the stone, but they didn’t. Instead, what had seemed like a huge, empty space became suddenly filled with thrashing horror, and Kaz dodged left, then right, then leaped straight up as another head was followed by two clawed feet.
The thing howled in frustration, all six throats vibrating with clashing calls, and a tail swept toward Kaz, knocking over several large buildings with contemptuous ease. The wings flapped, taking the roofs off of most of the buildings nearby, and then Chi Yincang was there, dropping from midair and slicing into the base of one wing with a single stroke of his long weapon.
The monster howled again, this time in pain, and a head wove around on a long, sinuous neck, teeth as long as Kaz was tall bared as it aimed straight for the dark human. But Raff stepped out from between the remains of two buildings, sword blazing as it swung, and the head rolled away, eyes still staring wildly as the stump spouted a thick, clear fluid. An acidic stench followed it, driving away the clean scent of water and metal.
As Chi Yincang turned to slice at another wing, somehow managing to stay firmly atop the monster’s back as it thrashed, Raff dodged in and out, carving off one piece after another. Soon, the stones of the plaza gleamed, wet with the translucent white goo the abomination used instead of blood.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
And then the kobolds came. Emboldened by the damage the humans were doing, ki bolts flew from the buildings nearby. This wasn’t the disorganized melee that Kaz was used to, either. Unified barrages of power flew through the air, striking together. Often, the bolts seemed to splash harmlessly from the furred, scaled, and slimy hide of the thing, but every now and then, a volley would land in an eye or an open wound, and the thing screamed in fury.
Another wing flew off, almost flattening a nearby building. Kobolds with rich golden fur scurried away, many of them still surrounded by shields, though a few were half-carried by other females or their males.
Lianhua stepped in to cover them, launching arrow after arrow at the ice-crusted binyi head that lunged toward them. One of her arrows hit its eye, and it blinked, rearing back as fluid streamed from beneath the eyelid that snapped shut over the injured orb. Raff took advantage of the moment to leap from a rooftop, whirling his sword as if it weighed no more than a hollow janjio bone, and the head flew off, following the wing.
All three wings were missing from the left side of the terrible amalgamation of beasts, and there was no way the bulky body could lift off the ground. Two heads were gone as well, and while it had only started with three tails, that number was now reduced to one. It was time for Kaz to do his job.
He didn’t want to waste any ki, but his body was already far more powerful than it had been only a few weeks before, thanks to his body cultivation. He used his own powerful muscles as he raced across the plaza, moving so quickly that the world seemed to slow around him.
There wasn’t far to go, since almost the entire space was filled with the monster, or at least severed pieces of it. As soon as he was back inside the circle, one of the remaining heads caught sight of him, a gooey yellow eye rolling as a woshi head twisted on its relatively short neck to face him. Its mouth opened wide, and for a moment it seemed as if Kaz would throw himself into its yawning maw. Then he pushed ki into one leg, arms wheeling as he bounded up through the air, completely out of control.
Li finally lifted from his shoulders, but her rear claws remained hooked in Kaz’s fur, wings beating wildly as she hauled him back on course to come down between a patch of lank green fur and an equally scabrous section of scales. Only when Kaz landed safely on all fours did the dragon let go, rising up to blow a wild cloud of water vapor around him, concealing her kobold from sight.
the dragon howled, and droplets of water fell down around Kaz. He felt his water ki draining away into their bond at a precipitous rate, but he didn’t begrudge it, even though using up all of one color of ki always made him feel a little unbalanced.
It took Kaz a moment to ready himself for the next step, but then he darted out of the cloud, using the claws on both hands and paws to help him stay on top of the monster. At this range, if he fell off, it wouldn’t matter if the thing was supposed to bring him back alive or not. A twitch of its enormous body and he would join the rest of the slime smeared across the plaza stones.
He had landed closer to the front of the body than he’d hoped, so he had a long way to go to reach the lower abdomen. The half-blind binyi head swung toward him, and he could feel the frigid air rolling off of it. The bite of a normal binyi could cause a kobold’s body temperature to drop sharply, often resulting in death, and it felt like this one could do the same with sheer proximity.
But Chi Yincang was there, his whirling weapon slicing away a frosty chunk of meat from the tip of the nose, and when it jerked back, Raff sliced at its neck with his glowing sword. Then Chi Yincang began to circle Kaz, striking away the tail, then two clawed paws that tried to sweep Kaz from the monster’s back. Each time, Raff followed Chi Yincang’s blow with one of his own, the two working together to unbalance and then chop away at the monster.
Kaz barely noticed, other than to be glad that Chi Yincang was there. He doubted very much that he could have reached his goal without the human running interference. More importantly, Li decided Kaz was safe enough that she didn’t have to continue producing her vapor, which was a very good thing, because neither of them had much black ki left in their central dantians.
Kaz finally stopped in between where the first and second set of limbs attached to the long torso. The first set was the only one without claws, looking more like an insectile limb than a fleshy one. The second set had resembled the scaled greenish limbs of a binyi, but they were slower and softer than the others, so Raff and the repeated barrages of ki bolts had whittled them down to little more than slowly oozing nubs.
There was an open wound where these limbs met the body, and Kaz pulled out the Woodblade, then stabbed it down into the mushroom-like flesh inside. Fresh ichor spurted, and one of the heads spun around to snap at him, but Chi Yincang and Raff were there, forcing it away and hacking off another chunk. Even injured as it was, however, the atrocity continued to fight, and Kaz took a moment to look around before he set to work in earnest.
Chi Yincang was only a few feet away, his face and hair covered in clear or milky gore. He was still pulling in mana and refining it as quickly as he could, but it had been at least ten minutes since the battle started, and his middle dantian was noticeably depleted, though he hadn’t slowed down at all.
Raff was in a similar situation. The fact that he used mana directly allowed him to continue fighting, but his blows were noticeably weaker, sometimes sticking inside the creature’s flesh instead of lopping off large chunks. He was also moving more slowly, and Kaz flinched as the tail smacked hard against Raff’s chest armor. The big man simply wrapped one arm around it, however, and hacked away with his sword. Having it so close to him wasn’t optimal for his large weapon, but Raff managed it through sheer strength and stubborn determination, grinning as he did.
Lianhua and the kobolds, meanwhile, were continuing their assault from a distance. Many females were arrayed along the rooftops and on broken walls, shooting ki bolts into any weak spot they could see. There were a number of males there as well, ready to pull their females back if they were injured or used too much ki, and those who could use a bow and arrow or even slingshots and stones did so, though the small projectiles were little more than a nuisance. Still, they howled in triumph each time a blow was struck, and showed no sign of breaking.
Satisfied that there was nothing else he could do to help them, Kaz brought his arm down, carving out a chunk of quivering flesh and throwing it down onto the stone of the plaza.