Kaz staggered as the pouch continued sucking a constant stream of ki from him. He tried to close the connection, but once formed, it seemed impossible to disengage, much like when he got too close to one of the humans while they were cultivating. The difference was, of course, that there was no real intelligence behind this, just a mindless draw that he could neither reason with nor stop.

Beside him, Lianhua seemed to realize that something had gone wrong, and she reached out, trying to take the bag from him. It clung to his fingers as if it had melded with his skin, and he yelped in pain, making her release the pouch and pull away.

“Kaz?” the human asked, “What’s-?”

Li hissed at her, and Lianhua stopped, eyes wide. Kaz just shook his head, gritting his teeth as he struggled to at least control the flow, limiting it to what he could maintain without completely draining his cycle. He had already lost a great deal of what had built up in his central dantian, and he felt cold and hollow without it.

The outflow of golden ki, which was his strongest color, slowed to a trickle and then stopped, followed by red and white. Black and blue continued to flow into the bag, but Kaz could see that the material, which had previously seemed inert to his special vision, now glowed brilliantly. Instead of a plain brown and tan, threads of every hue wound through it, creating a distinct pattern.

Finally able to catch his breath as his ki leveled out, though it was admittedly lacking in both wood and water at the moment, Kaz looked at Lianhua. “Do you see a rune in this?” he asked, holding up the offending item.

She shook her head, and Kaz pulled off his ring, handing it to her. He was curious if it would show her the same rune he saw, or Kaz’s rune, since it was filled with his ki.

Cautiously, she lifted it to her eye, peering through the blue gem. A crease appeared between her brows, and she said, “There are at least two here, but I would need to write them down to figure out what they are. I think one of them is the ‘emperor’ rune, but it’s a little different. The crossbar is lower, more like the symbol for the third emperor than the first.”

Kaz still couldn’t drop the pouch, but the stream of black ki was manageable now, taking only half of what he produced with each cycle of his core. All of his blue ki was still draining away, however, and he thought it wouldn’t finish for a while.

Folding the bag into his right palm, Kaz knelt, picking up the rest of his treasures and stuffing them back into his pack. If the pouch he held really was a storage item, he didn’t want to put any of these things into it until he was sure it was working properly. He would find something he didn’t care about to test it, once it finished powering up. That was, if he even decided to keep it. Hopefully, it would never take this much ki again, but he was lucky he had stored so much in his central dantian, or he might have been drained to unconsciousness before it finished.

Shrugging the pack onto his back, he held out his empty left hand for his ring, which Lianhua promptly deposited in his palm. His far too human palm. For a moment, he gripped it tightly, feeling it dig into his flesh as his chest clenched again. Then he forced himself to slip the ring back on his finger and look at Lianhua, feigning normalcy.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked, half-surprised to find that his voice cooperated.

She nodded, and there was a hint of excitement in her eyes that wasn’t entirely appropriate. She had been trying to get in to see Nucai for five days, and this might finally be her chance.

Returning to the entry room, the two of them put their clothes back on, though Kaz was a little awkward, since the bag took up most of his right hand. By the time he finally managed to tuck in his loincloth properly and put on his belt, Lianhua was ready, too. They went out into the hall, and after the heavy heat of the baths, the cooler air struck them, making them both gasp softly. On Kaz’s shoulder, Li attempted to burrow into his fur, but it was still too short for burrowing, which displeased the little dragon.

The shared moment was enough to bring them together again, however, and Kaz and Lianhua exchanged smiles as Kaz gently tugged Li down, snuggling her against his chest as he pushed a bit of the red ki he had managed to recover out to his skin, warming them both. The trio set off down the hall, past Lianhua’s room, and to the closest platform in what Kaz now knew was called a ‘transfer station’.

A husede now waited at the transfer station on each level, ready to help anyone who couldn’t operate the devices themselves. Ironically, Raff was the only one among the humans who could use mana in the way the platforms were designed to accept, and neither Lianhua nor Chi Yincang had red ki, so they couldn’t activate them the same way Kaz did, either.

Each platform could only travel to a location with a rune matching the ones in the ki-crystals that were embedded in the surface of the device. This kept platforms from trying to be in the same place at the same time, but it meant that if a particular platform was already in use, everyone else had to wait until it was available.

It used to be that only a very few husede or mosui were assigned to run the platforms at each transfer station, but now anyone with mana could and did use the platforms, which had caused confusion and irritation for the first day or so. Now, new rules had been created, not to limit access, but to make sure that people were served in the order they arrived.

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When he saw Kaz and Lianhua, the husede bowed deeply, his hands crossing his chest. “Where may I take you?” he asked respectfully.

“Council level,” Kaz answered, stepping onto the small square. The central level of the ‘tower’, which had once been Zhangwo’s living quarters and lab, had been taken over by the new council. No one lived there any longer, but each council member had their own space, and the lab had been made into a meeting area.

The husede bowed again, and joined Kaz and Lianhua on the platform. His hand descended to the column in the middle, pressing one of the buttons there as mana filled the column, and the world froze around Kaz in the way he had come to expect. It was strange that he was the only one who seemed unaffected by the red field that surrounded the devices as they moved between levels, but he was, and he saw the dim mana-fog of other people waiting at each of the two levels through which they passed on the way to the center.

When they reached their destination, the red ki fell away, and everyone else seemed to jerk back into motion, resuming whatever they had been doing when the husede began feeding mana into the pedestal. Li rested her head on Kaz’s arm, and Lianhua smiled and thanked the husede, who nodded back.

Kaz led the way through the halls, following both the path laid out in his memory, and the feeling that told him he was growing closer to the heart of the mountain. Soon, they came to the large open area where tunnels branched away, and Li had once hovered, indecisive, before following Lianhua’s trail toward Zhangwo’s rooms.

Lianhua had to bend over quite far as they followed the shrinking passage to Zhangwo’s quarters. She went ahead of Kaz, so she could set the pace, and he saw her touch her neck a few times, as if checking to make sure the collar was really gone.

When they reached the entrance, Lianhua passed through it with an audible sigh of relief, and then straightened, looking around. As far as Kaz knew, this was the first time she’d been back here since the day of the battle, and things had changed.

There hadn’t been enough time to get rid of all of Zhangwo’s personal items, but they had been shifted aside or moved to another area so that the table on which Lianhua had been placed could be shoved into the center of the room. Five chairs sat around this table, one for each council member, and Thabil was currently seated there, speaking to her son, Qiyi. The two looked up as Kaz and Lianhua entered, and Qiyi pushed back his chair and stood.

Thabil laid down the pen she had been holding and nodded to Kaz and Lianhua before leaning back with a small grimace of pain. Kaz was fairly certain the husede, whose body was rich with mana, should already be mostly recovered from the injuries she’d taken when he knocked her out in order to convince her companion to take Kaz to the ki-cannon. She played up the extent of the damage every time she saw him, though he wasn’t sure what she hoped to gain by doing so.

Lianhua’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the husede, but she stepped forward with a polite smile, offering the two gray dwarves a small bow. “We’ve come to speak with Nucai,” she said, already starting past them on her way to the door on the other side of the room.

Now Thabil did stand, with an alacrity that belied her earlier pretense of discomfort. She and Qiyi both moved to intercept Kaz and Lianhua, though they didn’t actually go so far as to try to grab them.

“Nucai has said he doesn’t want to be disturbed,” Thabil said quickly. Beside her, her son held out his arms to block their way, and his skin was noticeably paler than it had been when they entered.

Lianhua’s smile grew tight. “Well, we’re about to disturb him,” she said. “If you let us by, we’ll be polite about it.”

Thabil looked toward Kaz, who usually served as an intermediary between Lianhua and the council. Not that Lianhua had asked for much except access to Zhangwo’s records, but the human had been quite insistent about getting into the mirror room as well. Kaz, who understood just how powerful and frightening Nucai was, had managed to convince her that such an attempt was unwise unless Nucai agreed beforehand, and she hadn’t tried again once Nucai himself refused.

Kaz shook his head, his own eyes narrowed as he looked between the husede. “I need to ask him some questions,” he told Thabil, more than a hint of a growl in his voice. “Move aside, or be moved.”

Most husede would have taken this as an empty threat, since every one of the dwarves had mana, and at least some level of body refinement as a result. Male kobolds, on the other hand, had nothing but the strength of their muscles and their innate cunning, so in a contest of strength alone, a strong husede child could beat a grown kobold warrior. Thabil had been defeated by Kaz twice before, however, and between him and Lianhua, there was no doubt that the two husede, who had no real martial training, would lose.

Thabil’s lips tightened into a pale silver line, but she took hold of her son’s arm and pulled him with her when she stepped aside. Kaz and Lianhua moved past her, and Lianhua pulled open the door leading into the small, dark room containing the floor to ceiling mirror that served as a communication device between this city and wherever Nucai actually resided.

Glittering crystals lit up as they stepped inside, and Kaz firmly closed the door in the faces of Thabil and Qiyi, whose expressions held equal parts anxiety and curiosity. Lianhua turned to look at the mirror, already pulling her little book and a pen from her pouch. Quickly, she began to sketch, and Kaz peered over her arm at the image appearing on the page.

First, she captured each of the runes carved into the dark wood of the frame, then she drew the general shape and proportions of the mirror, and Kaz’s fingers twitched as she did. The corners weren’t quite square, as she’d drawn them, and the feet on which the frame perched had shadows indicating that something else was carved there, which Lianhua completely failed to capture. In fact, while she drew the outline, and filled it in enough to evoke a sense that it was a dark color, there was no depth to it at all, and Kaz was certain he could have done better if he had a chance.

The surface of the mirror was already shifting, however, and as Kaz watched, Lianhua’s fingers slowed, then stilled completely, her eyes staring blankly down at the page. Looking up, Kaz met Nucai’s irritated gaze, and a chill lifted the fur along his spine.