Kaz turned to see everyone staring at him, some of the kobolds looking cautiously hopeful, while others seemed quietly hostile. Strangely, these emotions were equally mixed among all the kobolds, not any one particular tribe, and two groups seemed to have formed, red and gold-furred kobolds mingling on both sides.
Li settled on Kaz’s shoulder, her wings buffeting his ears until she settled down. The dragon didn’t lower her head or her wings the way she usually did, however, giving the angry group of kobolds back glare for glare.
Idla, Tisdi, Avli, and Ija stepped up beside Kaz, though they, too, seemed divided. Idla was definitely part of the angry group, while Avli yipped an almost cheerful greeting. Tisdi and Ija both seemed torn, though Kaz doubted they were unhappy with him for the same reasons.
“How dare you climb the Tree!” Idla snapped, sharp teeth visible as she lifted a lip at Kaz. He was certain she wouldn’t actually hurt him, at least not until he fixed the Tree, but she was definitely displeased. Fortunately, once he was out of the mountain, it wouldn’t matter whether or not this chief liked him.
Avli sighed. “Didn’t Raff already explain?” she said. “Kaz needed to see if there was anything up there which might be causing the Tree’s illness.”
Behind her, Raff was nodding rapidly, and gave Kaz an apologetic shrug. Kaz was glad that the human had come up with an excuse for their impulsive behavior. He just wished he’d had enough presence of mind to realize it would be necessary before he started climbing. It was a good thing that Avli had conveniently told him what Raff said, though from the sparkle in the Mithrilblade chief’s eyes, Kaz suspected she was well aware that he’d needed the help.
“Still, the prohibition against climbing the Tree has been in place for as long as there have been howls to carry it,” Tisdi said in her gentle voice. “It would have been best to ask for permission. We certainly would not have permitted the humans to ascend.”
Ija cleared her throat, though she seemed reluctant to step in. She was in a strange place, as unconfirmed leader of a tribe that had essentially ceased to exist, and she had her own reasons to be both angry at and grateful to Kaz.
To Kaz’s surprise, however, she set all of that aside, and bowed her head to him, tribe member to chief. Her fists clenched at her sides, and her core was spinning more quickly than usual, but her voice was almost neutral when she spoke. Obviously, she had a great deal of practice at hiding her own emotions and doing what she must.
“You said you wanted the Magmablades here, and they have come,” she told him. “Please, teach us how to care for the Tree.”
Kaz bowed back, equal to equal, which caused his cousin’s eyes to open wide in surprise. Then he turned toward the less hostile portion of the Magmablades. He recognized several of them, including Acha, Sika, Rudu, and all of the puppies. Kyla grinned at him from beside her father, and Kaz almost shook his head. It seemed that the pup had managed to avoid being seen again, because it didn’t look like she was in trouble.
Kaz shifted his vision deeper into that place where ki overwhelmed flesh, and pointed to each of the Magmablades who had a visible spark of blue ki. Almost all of them were from the hidden den where he’d been taken, and several of them were puppies. He was glad to see that many of those puppies were older, and had probably been out gathering when the den was discovered, but these were definitely among the warier portion of the group he finally separated from the rest.
Once he had seventeen kobolds arrayed around him, fifteen of whom were female, including both Ija and Kyla, Kaz said, “All of you are true Woodblades. You bear the power of that tribe, and through you, the Tree will be renewed.”
He felt a little uncomfortable as everyone focused on him. What he said was true, but he still felt like a fraud. He was only mostly sure that what he was about to do would work, and his words seemed more than a little pretentious. Still, the selected kobolds were all looking at each other with varying levels of surprise and pleasure, so Kaz hurried on.
“Come up and circle the Tree,” he told them, and they did so. There was a bit of shuffling, as some females didn’t seem to want to stand next to each other, and in the end, there was still a good-sized gap between little Gram and the female on the other end of the line. Given that so many of the participants were young - though Gram was the youngest Kaz had called forward - they had to leave more space between them than the Goldblade and Waveblade females who had tried this before.
Reluctantly, Kaz stepped into that gap himself. He really wanted them to see that it was possible to do this without him, and a few of them actually had more blue ki than he did, though not more ki overall, so he thought they could. Still, he was almost certain that it would be important for there to be no significant gaps in the circle, at least this time.
“Now, think about the power inside you, the same way you do when you create a light,” he called, wishing now that he’d given them instructions before half of them vanished to the other side of the massive trunk.
With a whistle, Li flew off of Kaz’s shoulder, sending him what she saw as she circled around the Tree. A few of the females on the other side were too busy glaring at each other to listen to Kaz, and another one looked like she was getting ready to attack the Tree, not heal it. All of their cores were cycling more quickly than usual, but there was at least as much red ki rising up from them as blue, and Kaz didn’t think that was a good thing.
Turning to Gram, Kaz crouched beside the little male. Gram’s core was as saturated with blue as ever, but the pup’s ears were flat, and his tail tucked. He was usually so fierce that Kaz was sad to see him worried, but more importantly, Kaz needed the puppy’s pure blue ki, and Gram was currently suppressing it, whether he knew it or not.
“Do you know why you’re here?” Kaz murmured softly.
Gram gave a half shrug. “Because I’m blue?” he asked, lifting his arm to show the bright sapphire color of his fur.
Kaz shook his head. “Do you remember what I told you about how you can help Chix?” he asked. This time, Gram nodded eagerly, so Kaz went on. “This is part of that. If you can do this, you can definitely help Chix. But you have to push your ki - your power - out.”
Gram’s ears were practically glued to his head. “But males don’t have power.”
Kaz grinned, then held out a hand. Summoning only his blue ki, he created a small, gentle orb of light in the palm of his hand. Taking Gram’s small hand in his own, he poured the light from his hand to Gram’s, then closed the puppy’s fingers around it, allowing the light to go out so the ki dispersed into the little hand as he did so.
“I have power,” Kaz told him. “And so do you. I told you before, and what did you tell me? About what you would do for Chix?”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Gram was still staring at his closed hand, eyes huge. “I said I would do anything to help him,” he murmured.
“Then do it,” Kaz told him. “Just like I did. Feel the power in your core, call it up into your hand, and-”
A shaky light bloomed in Gram’s hand as his small fingers opened, and his bright blue eyes grew impossibly large. He looked up at Kaz. “I did it,” he whispered, and Kaz nodded. Behind them, murmurs swelled as some of the watching kobolds realized that Gram had made the light this time, not Kaz.
Kaz set his hand on Gram’s head, gently stroking the wiry fur, then stood back up. Turning to Idla and Tisdi, he said, “Do you know the howl the Woodblades used? The one the kobolds tried before?” He had thought it was just part of the tradition when he saw it earlier, but now he suspected he knew why the Woodblades had done it that way.
Idla and Tisdi exchanged glances, but nodded. “Both of us tended to the Tree when we were young,” Tisdi said.
Kaz winced, thinking about how much damage their much-stronger cores must have done when they tried to give ki to the Tree, but gestured for them to step forward. They did, but he stopped them before they actually reached the Tree.
“Tisdi, stay here. Idla, go around to the other side. Make sure everyone there is listening.” Li showed him that the two females on the other side of the Tree had nearly come to blows by now, and though Kaz didn’t know what was wrong between them, he did know that Idla’s presence would make them stop.
The two great chiefs exchanged glances, and then obeyed. When they were both in place, Kaz called out, “Everyone send your energy to the Tree, and howl!”
At first, it was a cacophony of sound. Some of the females seemed reluctant to raise their voices at all, while others tried to drown each other out. But slowly, Tisdi and Idla’s howls began to guide the others. Tisdi’s sweet, high-pitched tones perfectly accented Idla’s deeper voice, and they howled together, each pitched to work together with the other, not overcome it.
As ki rose from the gathered kobolds, the others instinctively altered their howls until a beautiful harmony rose. Once the howl was established, Kaz waved Tisdi to silence, and when the Waveblade’s voice stopped, Idla’s ceased as well. The howl faltered for a moment, lacking leadership, and then from beside Kaz, Gram’s small voice soared, higher than any of the others, guiding them all.
Kaz looked over, lowering his own voice so he could hear Gram’s better. The puppy had his eyes closed, and his hands were pressed against the bark of the Tree. Blue ki flowed from him in a stream, and the faltering thread of blue still within the Tree reached out toward him. That reaching seemed almost reluctant, like it had been hurt too many times to trust, but still sought something it no longer believed it could find.
The moment the two came together, the Tree lit from within. More threads stretched out of the central channel of flowing blue, gingerly touching each of the other kobolds ringing the trunk. It pulled away from a few, not always the ones with the least blue ki, but rather the ones who had more red. Kaz noted which ones they were. It would be best to find replacements who might have less ki overall, but whose blue wasn’t so overwhelmed by the other colors.
Moment by moment, the blue ki within the Tree grew stronger, while the kobolds surrounding it grew weaker. At first, Kaz wasn’t worried, but when Gram stopped his howl and whimpered, Kaz realized that the Tree wasn’t letting go. Like the archway above that had tried to drain Kaz, the dying Tree seemed determined to take every bit of ki possible, no matter what happened to the donor.
Kaz felt his howl shift, tearing at his already raw throat. He wasn’t used to talking, much less howling for extended periods of time. The sweet, lingering notes of the offering howl had been relatively gentle, but this was not. Closing his eyes, he reached out.
Something deep within the mountain resonated. It knew Kaz, and Kaz knew it, in a way far beyond simple familiarity of form. The ki of the mountain was made up of all five types, just like Kaz’s, and more, some part of Kaz’s ki was bound to the mountain, one piece of a much, much greater whole.
For a moment, that feeling of wholeness, of finally being complete in a way he couldn’t remember ever feeling before, nearly swept Kaz away like a clump of dry moss thrown into an underground waterway. Only his link to Li, her certainty of who she was, of who Kaz was, kept him from being lost. The small dragon bound to his core was not going to allow anything to separate her from her kobold, and that included the mountain in which Kaz had been born.
Instead, the mountain reached for, and found, something else within Kaz. The seed. Golden ki, excess and nearly bursting from the ki-crystal within the Tree, flooded into that seed as if the mountain’s power was a stream breaking through into a new cavern. The tiny pool in the deepest part of the seed began to fill with precipitous haste. Kaz suddenly found himself serving as a channel, linked as he was to both seed and mountain, and he felt like he would be crushed between them.
Then, as if something was finally coming awake after a long sleep, Kaz felt whatever the blue Wood ki was linked to notice him as well. It touched him, felt how he was struggling, a tiny speck in a monstrous flood, and buoyed him up. In doing so, it used up far too much of the energy it had just taken from the new Woodblades, and as if in response, the golden ki pulled back as well. The two touched, no longer mindless, monstrous power, but two entities who cared for one another.
Both forces pulled back, and there was far more awareness behind both than there had been when Kaz first touched them. The gold had been overwhelmed and lost, while the blue had nearly flickered and gone out. Now, the gold, which Kaz thought of as the mountain, seemed almost apologetic, while the blue shed gentle gratitude.
With a whimper, Kaz opened his eyes, finding that Li was once again on his shoulder, her tail looped tightly around his throat - a throat which felt raw and shot hot agony through him each time he swallowed.
To his left and right, kobolds lay sprawled on the stone. He could see their cores throbbing as much as spinning, however, and knew they were alive. In fact, while their channels were utterly empty of blue ki, he thought that as their cores spun, sending fresh ki through their exhausted bodies, there was a little more blue in each cycle than there had been before.
Gram let out a long, pained whine, and Kaz turned to the puppy, seeing that Ija was already holding him. She turned a terrible glare on Kaz, and he tried to speak, but only managed to cough, a rough, wet sound that left the taste of blood in his mouth.
Li hissed, and though she, too, sounded tired, she still managed to produce a credible amount of steam, as well as a few droplets of water.
Kaz lifted a hand to keep the dragon from jumping down, presumably to defend Kaz if Ija came for him, but just then Gram whimpered again, and Ija instantly forgot Kaz. “Are you all right?” the former Magmablade asked, lifting Gram’s head.
The puppy coughed, then turned his head, looking toward the Tree. Something shifted in his core, and to Kaz’s amazement, he realized that there was a minute thread of blue ki now binding the puppy to the massive plant. Kaz wasn’t at all sure that was a good thing, but thinking of the gentleness of the intelligence behind the blue ki within the Tree, he didn’t think the pup was in any immediate danger from it.
“I’m the Woodblade chief,” Gram said hoarsely, and Ija blinked. Gram’s head rolled to the side so he could look at Kaz, now uncertain. “Aren’t I?” he asked.
Kaz had intended to make one of the strongest of the former Magmablades chief of the new Woodblade tribe, since it was a position he most definitely didn’t want. He hadn’t yet worked out exactly who or how to do that, but he suspected Avli, at least, would support him. This was entirely unexpected, however.
“Are you?” he asked, then immediately felt stupid. He was too busy coughing up a glob of bright red blood to take it back, however, so he just nodded.
Gram sat up, staring at Ija. “A voice just told me I’m the chief now,” he declared, more certain this time, and both Idla and Tisdi, who stood nearby, stared at him in astonishment. Both of them lifted their hands to the hollow of their throats, where their necklaces had once hung, and not even Idla seemed to be able to refute Gram’s statement.
Ija let out a small, choked laugh, her eyes bright as she bowed her head to the blue puppy. “Then you are,” she said.