They were going the wrong way. Kaz’s sense of ‘mountain’ told him that, as clearly as if he could see with his eyes. There was nothing he could do about it, at least not without explaining how he knew, and he didn’t think he could without revealing to everyone that there was something strange about him.
What he could, and did, do was memorize each and every turn. He hung to the right as they traveled through the murky darkness, his eyes on Raff’s, Li’s, and Lianhua’s barely-visible dantians ahead, and his fingers trailed against the stony wall. He felt the damp smoothness of flowstone, and the small gaps of cracks and crevices, as well as the gritty crust of fulan coating everything.
If Civ led them into a trap, or simply got them lost, Kaz was confident he could get them back to the original staircase so they could start again. That wouldn’t get the four males to the Redmanes, but Kaz’s trust in them waned each time Civ led them down another narrow passage, further and further away from the broad, finished stone hallways that led from one stairway to the next.
Even Raff was silenced by the oppressive fog, other than passing back instructions when they turned. The only real conversation happened in Kaz’s head, where he and Li held a lively exchange of images, each more ridiculous than the last, interrupted only when Kaz added another section to his mental map of their travels.
When even this internal entertainment failed to sufficiently distract her from their surroundings, Li sent an image of herself crawling down from Lianhua’s shoulder, flying back to Kaz, and then shoving her head into the mask covering his face.
Kaz sent back an image of her getting lost in the dense spores, and him walking right past her, unknowing.
She plucked the cord between their cycles, making it thrum, and Kaz winced, taking his hand off the wall long enough to rub his head. The injury behind his ear was the only one that still hurt every now and then, and that had caused a painful twinge.
Li gave him a sense of apology, which he accepted, and acknowledged her point. There was no way he could lose her, even if he was completely blind, which he wasn’t. In fact, while he couldn’t see the exact details of their surroundings, between his ki-sight and his hand on the wall, he actually felt as comfortable as he had become while they were lost together.
Well, other than the fact that there might be another one of the grotesque horrors just out of sight. After seeing the warped core he’d taken from Litz, and the sickly glow of the one in the blob-monster above, he was fairly certain there was no way another one could sneak up on him. With several examples to compare now, though he hadn’t been able to see Litz’s while it was still inside her, he should be able to identify the next one, even if it lurked inside someone who looked normal from the outside.
Li prodded him with another image, this time including her taking a deep breath before launching directly from Lianhua’s shoulder, and Kaz could feel her gathering her determination to actually try it.
Quickly, he formed his own picture of her putting her head into his mask, allowing a flurry of spores inside to infect them both. Then, to hopefully deliver a final blow to the whole idea, he showed the mask falling to the floor, where it was trampled underfoot, leaving blue-kobold and gold-dragon to gasp out their last breaths in exaggerated torment.
A sense of amusement reached him, and he felt her relax, finally sending grudging acceptance, along with an image of herself biting the nose of the blue kobold, leading to dramatic and impossible gouts of blood.
Ahead, Civ said, “We need to go down. Be careful, it’s slippery.”
Kaz frowned. Down? There were no stairs here, and the only ‘down’ was the next level. His eyes widened. Surely the male didn’t intend to-
Then there was a sharp tug on the wrist he had put through the loop Lianhua had tied in the rope, and it pulled him forward, paws skidding over the spores covering the ground in a layer that sometimes seemed like it reached his knees, though he was fairly certain that was in his mind, rather than reality. He heard a yelp from ahead, then a small cry in Lianhua’s voice, and the light of her dantians vanished, straight down. A moment later, the floor fell out from beneath him, and he followed.
For an instant, he felt like he was back in the woshi’s mouth, being pulled along by his arm down a steep and slippery slope. But this moisture was water, not slime, he could tell by the smell, and there were no teeth trying to tear through his flesh, so he was able to control his panic well enough to flail around until his hand caught something metallic that clinked and rattled, pinching his fingers painfully.
He gasped, and Lianhua’s breathless voice came from below. “Kaz? Are you all right?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but Gaoda spoke first. “What about me? I nearly fell down this pox-ridden hole.”
“We all fell down this hole, Gaoda Xiang,”Lianhua replied crisply. “There’s a chain to hold onto, but it’s slippery. Kaz?”
“I’m fine,” Kaz managed, looking down to follow the glittering thread leading toward Li. Even it disappeared into the fog a little past his paws, but at least he knew she - and therefore Lianhua - was down there somewhere, and safe, though the dragon felt distinctly cranky now.
"Good,” Lianhua said, sounding genuinely relieved. “Civ says the drop is less than a hundred feet, so as long as you can hang onto the chain, you’ll be down in no time.”
The damp chain vibrated in Kaz’s hands, making him slither down a few more inches. Above him, Gaoda cursed, and a foot pressed against Kaz’s fingers, nearly causing him to let go. He yelped, and the foot pulled back up, then started sliding back down again immediately. Kaz growled softly and let a little more ki into his arms and fingers, especially the skin. Now, even if Gaoda stomped on them, they should be fine, not that the human cared one way or the other.
Bit by bit, they went down, and each time the chain shook, everyone slipped a little further. By the time Kaz’s paws scrabbled at nothing, dropping him into the shockingly cold pool at the bottom, Gaoda was practically standing on him, and he’d caught his fingers between the links more times than he could count. Fortunately, his body refinement was far enough along to prevent injury, but when he looked around at the other kobolds, the light of Raff’s rune stone allowed him to see they hadn’t all been as lucky.
The air here held only a faint dusting of spores, especially compared to the area right above. In fact, in the light of Raff’s rune stone, Kaz could tell that most of the spores were concentrated beneath the hole through which they’d just dropped. Everyone stood around, waiting for their last member as they gathered their wits, and Kaz quickly got out of the way before Gaoda landed on top of him.
The water was past his waist as he sloshed his way out of the pool, and Gaoda must have decided to just let go when he reached the bottom of the passage, because a wave came from that direction, soaking Kaz’s entire back. Still, the startled yelp Gaoda gave when he suddenly found himself immersed in water was almost worth it, and Kaz met Pils and Civ’s little grins with one of his own as he joined them. All three kobolds quickly smoothed their expressions as Gaoda surfaced, spouting water like an angry woshi, but it was good to know that they shared Kaz’s opinion of the human.
Ilto was cradling his hand to his chest, and there was a darker brown patch growing against the soft tan of his fur. Beside him, Regz was holding his hand away from his body, fingers curled up in a way that told Kaz it was painful to move. It was hard to tell if Civ had made the descent intact, thanks to his pitch-black fur, but if he’d been hurt, his expression and stance revealed nothing. Pils did look fine, so that was one, at least.
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Moving away from the group, Kaz gave a great, shuddering shake, spraying water all over the walls nearby. He could see from the bits of fur and small pool of water beneath his paws that he wasn’t the first to do so, and the fur of the other kobolds had the clumped, spiky look that meant they had recently been immersed. All of them were at least a bit shorter than Kaz, so they had probably been almost as wet as he’d gotten when Gaoda splashed him.
By the time he was as dry as shaking could get him, Lianhua had crossed over to Ilto and was examining his hand, so Kaz went to Regz. One of the warrior’s fingers was already swelling, and the skin along the side was split and oozing blood.
Kaz grimaced. “Did it get caught in one of the links?”
Regz’ gray muzzle dipped. His voice was hoarser than usual when he spoke, but other than that and the injury to his hand, he seemed well enough. “Ilto lost his grip when he got hurt, and his paw shoved my finger between the links.” He slid a glance toward the younger male, who was looking astonished as Lianhua wrapped a chief’s ransom worth of cloth around his wound.
Regz looked more amused than angry, and Kaz wondered if the other kobolds were used to Ilto getting into trouble. That would explain why he was usually assigned to help Zyle, and only helped guard the den or stairs when everyone else was too tired or injured.
Kaz bent down, eyeing the top and bottom of the finger, seeing that it bent too sharply at the second knuckle. He shook his head. “I can’t tell if it’s broken or if the joint is out of place. Either way, we should straighten it so it can heal properly.”
Regz hissed in a breath, but nodded. “I know. Can you do it?”
Kaz hesitated, but nodded back. Broken or out of joint fingers and toes were fairly commonplace injuries, and Rega had been the best healer his tribe had left. As the oldest pup, Kaz had often assisted her, though his job was usually holding the wounded kobold still, rather than straightening the limb or digit.
This time there was no one to hold Regz, but Kaz hoped the warrior could control himself better than a whiny pup or a female who was unused to pain. Kaz turned, tucking Regz’s forearm between his own upper arm and body, then quickly bent the finger back and snapped it into place again before the other kobold could tense against the coming pain.
A soft growl came from behind Kaz, then Regz let out a sigh and the tension in his arm relaxed. He bowed slightly as Kaz turned around, releasing the hand. “Thank you. That feels better already.”
Kaz’s tail wagged. “Good. I didn’t feel any bones grinding, so I think it was only dislocated. Keep it raised and don’t use it unless you have to, at least for a few days. Then be gentle with it until it stops hurting.” He was only repeating what Rega used to tell someone after a similar injury, but Regz looked impressed.
The other kobold bowed again, even more deeply, then smiled crookedly and held up the hand, showing off the swelling. “No fear I’ll be using it today. Fortunately, I fight with my left.”
Kaz’s eyes widened. He’d once met a warrior who’d lost his right hand, then learned to fight with his left, but he’d only heard of kobolds who preferred the left hand to the right. He frowned as he tried to remember who’d mentioned it to him, and a faint memory rose out of a long-unused portion of his memory.
He saw his father’s face, partially overlapped by his own, as he’d seen it in Lianhua’s mirror, smiling as he told a much-younger Kaz to watch out for left-handed warriors. They could strike from unexpected angles, and their openings would be opposite those of a right-handed fighter.
Where had they been when Ghazt said that? His father looked younger and happier than Kaz remembered, not yet worn down by worry and hardship. Had Ghazt really started training Kaz already, or had it been a form of play? And where… Where was that? Did he hear water rippling nearby? And why was the light that peculiar shade of bluish-white?
Lianhua pressed a hand to Kaz’s shoulder, and he jumped, startled out of his thoughts. Sharp claws dug into Kaz’s skin as Li climbed from the human’s arm back to Kaz, and Kaz belatedly realized that Lianhua wasn’t pulling ki out of him through the contact.
“She strongly indicated she was ready to go back to you,” Lianhua murmured, releasing Kaz so she could brush her hair back away from the curl of her tiny, furless ear, showing two indentations that each held a single neat drop of blood. One of them slid down, meeting the other, which also spilled over, and Lianhua wiped both away with an amused lift of her eyebrow.
Kaz turned his head, trying to glare at the unrepentant dragon, who just wound her long body through the fur around his neck and shoulders. Now that they were out of the worst of the fulan, and Kaz’s dunking in the pool had cleaned most of the spores off his fur, Li was clearly done allowing herself to be carried by anyone other than him.
“There’s still some fulan here,” Kaz told her, trying to catch her slippery body. She was still slightly damp, which made her scales slide out from under his fingers, while somehow also catching and pulling at his fur even more than usual.
Lianhua touched his arm again, then gestured to her own head. She was wearing a mask, but the bubble of ki no longer surrounded her. Kaz almost said something before he realized that he still wasn’t sure how much of the shield other people could see, and tilted his head as if confused.
She chuckled a little. “Sorry, of course you wouldn’t- I dropped my shield to save ki, now that the air is mostly clear. I offered her a mask like the ones I gave the kobolds, but she refused to let me put it on her, and since I’m out of bamboo ones, I don’t really know how much it would help anyway.”
Pils overheard and bowed toward Lianhua, soon followed by the others. “It helped a great deal,” he said, speaking for them all. His voice, like Regz’, was raspy and raw-sounding. “The spores were getting in our lungs. It was like breathing raw firemoss smoke, but even worse.”
He reached down and picked up a sodden piece of cloth from the ground and held it out to her. It was one of Lianhua’s handkerchiefs. “I’m sorry they got wet, but we cleaned the spores out of them as best we could.”
Gently, Lianhua pushed it back toward him, even as the other males picked up similar wet fabric squares. She looked around at them, smiling. “Keep them. I have enough, and if we encounter any more areas where the spores are too thick to breathe, you can use them again. If we don’t, consider them a gift.”
The males all protested, though Kaz could see the longing in Ilto’s face. The handkerchief and the weapons Zyle had given them should be enough to get them each a high-ranking mate, so long as the chief of the Redmanes didn’t simply demand they hand them over as the price of joining the tribe.
Kaz could definitely see Oda doing such a thing, but the other chiefs he’d met since then seemed more reasonable, as traitorous as he felt at the thought. Though, to be honest, the more of the mountain he saw, and the more he was exposed to those other tribes, the less guilt he felt. He had known Oda was arrogant since he was old enough to understand what the word meant, but he hadn’t realized just how much better things could be in a tribe with a good chief.
That tunnel of thought turned as Gaoda spoke. He was still wringing water from the long sleeves of his robe as he glared at Civ, but Chi Yincang was using one of the fluffy ‘towels’ to dry him off, even as the hem of the dark warrior’s clothing still dripped onto the stones.
“Where in the infernal pits are we?” Gaoda demanded. “I thought the halls on these levels were supposed to be as close to civilized as you lot get.”
Civ ducked his head, bowing. His ears flattened as if in fear, but Kaz could see the muscles in his back and shoulders held the wrong kind of tension for that. “This is the shortest way to reach the den,” he said, glancing toward the dark gap of a nearby tunnel mouth.
Kaz sighed. It was time to find out what was really going on, before they got any further away from the normal route between stairs.
“This is one of the between levels,” he told Gaoda, ignoring the way Civ turned to glare at him. “There aren’t many of them that are usable, and I’ve never heard of one in the mid-levels, but every now and then someone will stumble into a part of the mountain that has no stairs leading to it at all. We call these ‘between’, since they lie between two normal levels, and usually contain no more than half of the territory we would expect on one of those levels. They’re also difficult to enter and leave, which results in them lying forgotten or unused by any of the tribes.”
Gaoda scowled, glaring at Civ. “So, there are no stairs here? Does that mean we’ll have to go back up, or find another of these cracks to pass through on the way down? You swore there would be stairs, kobold!”
Civ’s knees bent, and he knelt, bowing his head until his nose touched the wet stone. “I misled you,” he growled. “If anyone is punished, it should be me. But I swear there are stairs here. They were simply lost long ago.”
He turned his head so he could look up at Kaz. “Which means this is not a between level, simply a forgotten one.”
Kaz sighed, feeling his own lungs burn as he did so, forcing him to cough before he could speak. If there really were stairs, then Civ was technically correct, but he had failed to address the real problem. “Even if that’s true, this isn’t anywhere near the next set of stairs. If we go down from here, we’ll be squarely in mosui territory, and the mosui do not tolerate trespassers.”