Kaz was startled out of his cultivation - or at least what he was choosing to call cultivation - when Ilto returned. The young warrior had obviously forgotten that he had claimed he was going to bring Li more food, because he shook Kaz’s shoulder with an empty hand, causing the dragon to hiss.
Yawning, Ilto said, “Did you stay up all this time, Kaz? I was going to get some water and I saw you were still here.” He leaned over and picked up Kaz’s bone support and held it out. His rounded, fuzzy ears seemed to fold in on themselves. “I should have come to see if you needed help getting back to your hut. There’s only a few hours left before breakfast bell.”
Kaz blinked away the last of the disorientation that always seemed to come with the return to reality. He felt like he had made some solid improvements in his lung’s ki capacity, and strangely, he wasn’t tired at all. Was this why Chi Yincang never seemed to sleep?
He used the bone to support himself as he stood, but found that his paw didn’t hurt even when he put his full weight on it.
“It’s all right, Ilto. I just sat here all day, so I’m not tired.” And that had been disorienting in itself. He had never before had a day to do absolutely nothing. Sometimes he finished his tasks early and slipped away for a few hours or a night, but if his absence was missed, he always got in trouble. Even when he was with the humans, they usually had some task for him to complete, or Lianhua wanted to talk to him. Sitting in the center of a kobold den, surrounded by activity he had no part in, was a surreal experience.
Ilto hovered next to Kaz as they made their way toward Kaz’s hut. Kaz barely used the long bone, and his head didn’t hurt any more either, so when he reached the door he turned to look at the other male instead of going inside immediately. Ilto’s fur was dark brown, with an unusual pattern of lighter brown ovals over each eye and a pale muzzle. The fur itself seemed thicker than usual, as well, and his ears were definitely more round than pointed.
“You know,” Kaz told the other male, “you don’t have to help me so much. I think by the time we leave I’ll be fully recovered.”
Ilto shook his head. “No! Zyle told me to get you anything you need, and I will. I’m his helper, usually, so I’m very good at it. Plus,” he tugged at one of his ears nervously, “I just became a warrior a little while before all this started, and I heard how you fought that monster.”
He slashed his claws through the air, making little growling sounds. “You sliced it up with your bare hands when even Civ could hardly scratch it! I know Lianhua said you’re still a puppy, but I think you’re a better warrior than I am.” His brown eyes shone with admiration as he gazed up at Kaz.
This was an emotion Kaz had never had directed at him before, and he wasn’t at all sure what to do with it. Li had no such problem, and sat up on his shoulder, preening at the praise, though Ilto couldn’t know how she had helped in the battle.
“Oh,” Kaz said, “it was mostly the humans, you know. I just happened to be the right size to reach the thing’s core, and it nearly killed me in the process.”
Ilto shook his head even more vigorously, his curly tail wagging fiercely. He really was more like a puppy than a full-fledged warrior. Kaz could see why Zyle had decided to send him someplace that would hopefully be safer.
“Everyone has heard about humans,” the young male said. “They’re selfish but powerful, and they don’t care about kobolds. Even in the stories where they’re helpful, it’s only because there’s something in it for them. But you’re a kobold, and a male, and you still did as much or more than they did.”
Kaz coughed uncomfortably. “Oh,” he said again. “Well. I’m… going to get some sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning, Ilto.”
The other nodded, apparently unaware of Kaz’s conflicting emotions, and waved as he turned away. “Bright howls, Kaz.”
“Bright howls,” Kaz managed, barely choking out the words as Ilto bounded away. This farewell was used only between friends. Did Ilto consider himself Kaz’s friend?
Head spinning, Kaz turned and bent over, entering the dark confines of his borrowed hut. There was a fresh pile of moss waiting for him, and he caught Ilto’s scent on it as he laid down. It was strange to think of someone other than Rega doing something for him purely because they cared, and he stroked Li until she settled down against his belly, ready to sleep again.
“He’ll be disappointed when he sees what I’m really like,” he murmured to the little dragon, who responded with a faint hiss, irritated that he was talking when she wanted to rest. Kaz chuckled and let his hand come to a halt, resting just beneath her wings where he could feel the flutter of her heartbeat under his fingertips. It was far faster than his own, and he found himself taking shallower breaths in an attempt to match the rhythm of her breathing.
When he could tell she was asleep, Kaz gently pulled his hand away, curling more tightly around her as he thought about the last day. It was flattering that the young Sharpjaw thought Kaz was someone to admire, but he reminded himself that the only opinions that actually mattered were Li’s and his own. Li had her own quirks, but he knew she cared for him, and Kaz himself was starting to believe that he might be someone worthy of respect.
With that slightly awkward thought, Kaz turned his attention back to his inner self. The image of his core appeared before him, and now he knew that it was just that: an image. If Lianhua used books and words to help understand and control her power, Kaz used this, which made far more sense than his original belief that he was somehow seeing the physical core that rested in his abdomen.
Lianhua had said, or at least implied, that she could continually add to or alter the ‘books’ in her vision, but Kaz didn’t know how to change the image of his core now that it had solidified back into a sphere. Did he even need to? Compressing the ki within and gradually allowing his organs to become more saturated with ki as the amount he could generate increased seemed to be working.
It would take a while, especially once they were moving again and he couldn’t just spend all day working on it, but eventually he should fully temper his body. He had no idea what would happen at that point, but if Chi Yincang was a good example, he should be faster, stronger, tougher, and need less sleep and food. These were all good things, and would allow him to protect himself and Li better.
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When he carefully thinned the protective sheath around the parts of his channels closest to his middle dantian and his lungs, he found that while they still oozed ki, the tissues around them were already so filled with power that it actually pushed back, preventing the escaping ki from traveling deeper into his body. He felt a little weak as he altered the balance of his cycle, but it wasn’t bad, and he thought that he could have remained upright if he was standing.
In only another year or two, I should be able to stop reinforcing my channels altogether, he thought wryly, laughing a little at himself. He had no idea how long a human usually spent doing this, or if this was actually what a human would do at all, but it was certainly a slow process. Still, he could already see the difference, so he would persist.
Turning his attention back to his core, he spun it gently, feeling his cycle speed up slightly as he did so. Briefly, he wondered what would happen if he just flicked it like a pup with a rounded stone, sending it revolving wildly. Would the image translate directly into unbalancing his cycle, or would it maintain its tidy rotations as it threw more and more ki into his channels?
Someday, he might need to find out, but right now, he just wanted to see if his efforts had yielded any effect on the core. His gaze flickered over the seamed surface, tracing over what he was beginning to believe was some hardened form of pure mana. The silver joints between what had been the broken sections were certainly the same color as the mana that the humans drew in from the air. Had he somehow managed to compress not just ki but mana itself when he had been trying to hold the core together immediately after it broke? Lianhua didn’t seem to understand the connection between the two, so it wouldn’t do any good to ask her how mana had come to surround and permeate the core he wasn’t supposed to be able to see, so it wouldn’t do any good to ask. Kaz would just have to try to figure it out for himself.
Kaz shook his noncorporeal head and dived beneath the surface of his core. It seemed the same as it had been last time he looked, unless some of the silver ribbons binding it together had shifted, but there were too many to memorize, so he didn’t bother to try.
The second layer still held the remnants of whatever he’d made to keep his core together until the strange human repaired it. Kaz frowned at the tangential thought. Had the being been a human? The memory was strangely fuzzy, and when he tried to focus on it, his mind always wandered to-
Perhaps the chunks of whatever gray substance had formed during that episode were a bit smaller, and the color of the surrounding ki was a bit brighter? It was truly hard to say. It could also be that his image had simply become clearer once Kaz understood that it was an image, and the edges of the dark areas were no longer slightly soft. Whatever had happened, or not happened, it didn’t seem to be anything significant, so Kaz dove deeper still.
The third layer of core was beautiful. There was no other way to say it, and Kaz floated inside it, surrounded by gleaming shades of rich gold, silvery white, radiant black, brilliant ruby, and deep sapphire. He could feel the pressure of the condensed ki pushing against whatever he used as a body when he was in this impossible place, and it was like floating in a warm pool. The ki was ever-so-slightly thick, and lifted his immaterial fur away from his body as it flowed all around him in brilliant streams.
This layer was the first that was definably different, though it was more in the depth of color and the strength of the pressure against his skin than in anything obvious. Kaz thought he had never before seen such saturated shades of ki, and he actually had to close his eyes against the brilliance after a little while. Even through whatever was currently serving as his eyelids, a subtle glow and play of color continued, and he breathed in deeply, enjoying the way his surroundings spun when he did so.
It was only when he felt a tug on his paws that he remembered there was one more layer left to check. He opened his eyes and looked ‘down’, feeling fur that he couldn’t see being pulled toward the very center of his core. Cautiously, he allowed himself to be tugged along by the spin, watching as the interplay of color around him paled and thinned until it was nearly gone, leaving an emptiness in the center of him that wasn’t actually empty any more.
Something hung in the very middle of the clear area, simultaneously swallowing part of the ki being generated and guiding its spin at the same time. A particularly bright stream of blue flowed past him, traveling toward the outer layers, and Kaz watched it split and swirl as it went around one of the dark obstructions in the second layer. Those blockages slowed and caught at the ki, causing it to drift too far to one side, but the inexorable force of the central space quickly reoriented it.
Kaz couldn’t get close enough to see what the thing in the very middle of his core was, no matter how much he squinted and pushed more ki into his eyes. It was a strangely familiar sight, however, and he shuffled through one memory after another until he stumbled across one that clicked.
The seed. The hard, wrinkled, pointed oblong that had been in the middle of a soft, delicious-smelling thing Kaz had found in the dragon nest at the same time he acquired Li’s egg. When he looked at it with his ki-vision, it had something like this inside; a nearly bottomless pit that swallowed up every speck of ki he poured into it and produced only one single distant spark of power.
Now that he thought about it, the near-compulsion to eat the thing immediately after he picked it up was almost identical to what he felt when he held another creature’s core. Had Lianhua been wrong? Was the thing not a seed, but rather some kind of core? Had the sweet-scented outer part that Li ate just after hatching been the flesh of a living creature? Lianhua had said that it had its own ‘aura’, and if it was some kind of core, perhaps that would make sense?
Besides all that, how and why was this thing in the center of Kaz’s core? Honestly, he’d nearly forgotten about it, and when he was reminded, he had debated trying to sever his connection with it, especially once his core was repaired. He wanted to get stronger, and the seed drained away a not-insignificant portion of the ki he produced, preventing him from using it for his own growth. Yet here it was, at the core of his own mental image of his power, and it seemed to be helping him in some way, though at what cost?
Blinking, Kaz shook himself out of his vision, his merely physical eyes struggling to focus in the darkness inside his hut. Careful not to disturb the sleeping dragon, he stretched out his arm, feeling for the bleached and ragged pack that he hadn’t even thought about for the last day.
He snagged one of the straps with an outstretched claw and tugged it closer, wincing at the sound of leather dragging over stone. Once he was able to lift it, he did so, and found that his muscles didn’t even quiver in spite of the awkward position he found himself in. As soon as it was close enough, he set it down again, plucking at the leather cord that held it shut.
Kaz’s eyes narrowed. He used a particular knot to close his bag. He had ever since he realized that Katri was getting into it and taking some of what he’d gathered for herself, leaving him short of the amount he needed. Not that the knot kept her out, or he could do anything about it when she took his materials, but at least he knew at a glance that he would need to work even harder that day in order to replace what she stole.
It had become such a habit that he used the knot without thinking, and a few times since he started traveling with the humans, he had been glad that he had. Not that any of them had ever gotten into his bag, but because of the knot, he knew they hadn’t, which was comforting.
But though the knot that now held his pack shut looked like his knot, it wasn’t. This was a standard knot used by most warriors, releasing easily when the correct loop was pulled, but otherwise remaining tightly closed. It was the knot Kaz had used as a foundation for his own, but his had two strands where this had only one.
Someone had opened his bag.