Predictably, Gaoda dismissed this concern instantly. With a wave of his hand, he said, “Then we’ll kill them. The question is, if we’re dropped in an unknown area, can you get us back to the regular stairs?”
Civ spared Kaz from answering this when he said, “The Redmanes have mapped out a path to the next set of stairs. Etle says no one has seen any mosui yet, so they think there are no dens nearby.”
Gaoda held out his arms so Chi Yincang could finish drying them, then looked upward as the other male began patting his hair and face with the towel. His voice was slightly muffled as he said, “That’s fine, then. I don’t care about your ridiculous superstitions. So long as we can keep traveling in the right direction, that’s good enough.”
He looked back down at Civ, who was still kneeling at his feet, then crouched, lowering his voice slightly so he could speak into the kobold’s ear. By pushing just a little power into his ears, Kaz could still hear him, but he wasn’t sure if anyone else could.
“If you ever lie to me again, kobold,” Gaoda murmured, summoning a single ball of ki that he placed on the floor between them. “I’ll shove this down your throat and feed it power until you turn inside out.”
Civ shuddered, his eyes locked on the innocent-seeming orb, and he gave one jerky nod as Gaoda stood back up, a smile on his face. The human male looked at Lianhua and held out his arm invitingly. “Well, cousin? Shall we go? The floor here is a little slippery, so let me help you.”
Lianhua looked between Gaoda and the kneeling kobold, and slowly reached out to set the very tips of her fingers on Gaoda’s sleeve. She was still wet, and a drop of water slid down her finger to darken the blue of the fabric from topaz to citrine.
Gaoda’s smile stretched, and he glanced at Civ again, one eyebrow raised expectantly. Civ visibly gathered himself, climbing to his paws without once looking at Gaoda. He began to walk, and as he passed each of the other kobolds, they silently fell in behind him.
The journey through the rough and narrow passages past that point was, oddly, far more stressful than the one spent in fulan-smothered darkness. Gaoda kept three orbs spinning around him at all times, and each time Kaz glanced his way, the human’s cold blue eyes were fixed on a point directly in the center of Civ’s back. Even Raff didn’t dare to speak, so the only voice was Civ’s when he told the group which way to turn, and the occasional sound of one of the kobolds coughing.
They saw a few patches of burned-out moss, and once the light of the orbs caught the first hint of fresh fulan darkening the bright green of a swath of yumao. Kaz made a mental note of where it was, since it looked like the Redmanes were still trying to keep the infestation under control. Kaz wasn’t sure how they expected to do that, since it seemed to surround them on all sides, but he had to respect the effort.
Twice, they caught glimpses of fuergar at the edges of the light, but the creatures acted exactly as Kaz would expect, and ran away when they realized how large the group was. The smallest of these was bigger than the one Kaz fought after the battle with the lopo, and Kaz didn’t even see a core flickering inside of it. That meant its size wasn’t boosted by the production of ki, and Kaz realized why the four Sharpjaws had gone to such lengths to get the humans to escort them. Four male kobolds, even trained warriors, would be just another meal to a pack of fuergar that size, much less anything else that might be lurking in the darkness, waiting for easy prey.
“Almost there,” Civ said, his voice sounding more like a growl than words. He hadn’t looked back once as they traversed the mile or so between here and the drop into the level. Gaoda’s focus had slowly drifted, but the black-furred kobold’s shoulder blades were still tensed as if ready to receive a blow.
Raff sighed in relief, his hand lifting as if to pat the kobold on the shoulder, then dropped without making contact. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “Never seen such a wet tunnel before.”
He was right. While some parts of the tunnel were dry, each time the ground dipped, it seemed that water pooled there, rising from cracks in the ground, or seeping from the walls. The plants and animals that thrived in such an environment were plentiful here, and there were so many glow-worms that Gaoda’s light was redundant, even for the humans.
Ilto looked around with shining eyes, his round ears perked high with interest. “I’ve never seen so much tanuo. When we gathered some, our den-mother used to boil a little and give it to us, even though it’s usually reserved for females.”
Kaz nodded. Rega used to do the same for the Broken Knife pups, at least when tanuo could still be found at all. The combination of high moisture and a large wild glow-worm colony that the lichen preferred was all but unheard of in the very top of the mountain. The last time Kaz remembered eating the thick, sweet treat was two, if not three dens ago.
The young warrior’s visible anticipation was enough to convince Kaz to do something he hadn’t since they entered the mid-levels: gather. There always seemed to be fulan here, and he didn’t want to accidentally transfer the spores to a plant that might otherwise have survived, however unlikely that seemed. There was so much tanuo here, though, that he thought he could safely pull up a whole patch and still leave more than enough for the plants to recover.
Hurrying forward, Kaz knelt by the next section of lichen, pulling out the blade Zyle gave him. It was an old, well-worn weapon, not made of particularly good metal, and the blade didn’t hold an edge well. That meant it wasn’t as sharp as he’d like, tugging and breaking the plant as much as cutting it away, but he managed, and he was just reaching up to unbuckle his pack when something moved in the dimness at the edge of the soft light given off by the glow-worms.
At first, he thought the greenish glow was reflecting from the fuergar’s iron-gray fur, but then he realized that it was deeper than that. Past the rodent’s fur and flesh, the sickly color of yellowish ki struggled with red, the two in conflict rather than cycling together through the animal’s channels, or vessels, as Lianhua called them.
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Raff and Civ muttered to each other as they, too, caught sight of the fuergar, but they didn’t slow. They had already become used to the rodents scuttling out of the way at their approach, but this one’s glittering eyes were locked on Kaz and Li, and he didn’t think it was going to yield so easily.
“Raff,” Kaz tried, but the human just flashed him a grin over his shoulder as he walked on.
“No worries, Blue, it’ll-”
The yip of surprise he gave when the fuergar darted between his legs would have been funny if it weren’t for the fact that the rodent’s silvery teeth were aimed straight for the dragon perched on Kaz’s shoulder.
Kaz dropped the tanuo, which scattered across the damp floor, as he fell back, instinctively raising the knife he still held. It wasn’t particularly large or sharp, but it was still better than tooth and claw, if only because the idea of tasting the blood of the afflicted rodent made him want to vomit.
Behind him, Kaz heard Lianhua’s raised voice, but her power, her image was too slow. She didn’t already have an attack ready, and by the time she traced and infused a rune, this moment would be over, for good or ill.
Raff had already spun around, moving impossibly fast, and he was raising his sword to strike at the rodent, but he, too, would be too late.
He felt Li tighten her tail around his throat, her claws pulling at his fur as she made sure her grip was strong enough to keep them together. Kaz put his free hand down, bracing his paws so he could thrust forward with the other hand, knife sinking deep into the throat of the fuergar. It gurgled, teeth snapping as it ignored the wound, pushing fiercely against his blade as it desperately tried to reach either Li or Kaz’s neck, he couldn’t tell which.
Then Raff’s blade swung, severing its body so half fell to the floor, twitching, while the other half slid from Kaz’s impaling blade. As the two pieces sloshed down, staining the water red, they could see two tiny buds of something that looked like a janjio’s wings protruding from its back, as well as an extra fuergar tail extending from its rear, this one copper beside the larger iron.
Gaoda stepped forward, his fingers dipping into the mess, emerging stained red but holding a core. It was mostly red, but there were two smaller nodules partially absorbed into it; one blue, and one yellow. Gaoda muttered a curse and closed his fingers around it, reducing the core to nothing but a smear of blood and sparkling dust.
“Where did it come from?” Lianhua asked, looking around with worried eyes. “I didn’t think there was enough fulan here to cause the mania. The air is clear, at least so far.”
Kaz swished his blade in a clear pool, then wiped it on the edge of his fuulong silk loincloth. Vaguely, he was amused at his own disregard for the precious fabric, but he knew the cloth would be none the worse for the use, while the blade would rust quickly.
Standing, he pointed to the ceiling, where a wide crack vanished into the darkness. “This is a between level-” Civ made a protesting noise, and Kaz corrected himself. “A forgotten level, then. We have no idea how many ways there are between here and the levels above and below, only that those ways are both relatively short and too small or difficult for kobolds to pass easily. Fuergar and other beasts, however, have never been so restricted in their movements. They probably become infected elsewhere, and then come here.”
Lianhua had her book and pen out, and glanced at the smear on the wall where Gaoda had wiped the remains of the core. She sighed, and said, “If the passages are small, then at least the things that come through should be as well.”
“‘Cept the cursed things seem to grow faster the more they eat. They might fit through there on the way down, but soon enough they’re the size of a house and chasing us through the halls while waving tentacles and a half dozen heads,” Raff said.
“True,” Lianhua said, scribbling one more note in her book before tucking it away. “Civ, you said we’d be there soon?”
Civ nodded, though he was still staring at the fuergar. “The way will widen out in a few more turns. After that, we just go straight.”
Raff shrugged. “Onward, then. Hopefully that’s the last one we’ll see.”
It was not. As Civ said, the winding tunnels soon dropped them into a broad, squared-off tunnel that reminded Kaz of one of the ancient halls, just without the decorative carvings. It almost looked like it was supposed to become one of those, and then someone changed their mind, and it was never actually finished.
From the moment they stepped into the wider passage, they found themselves under attack. Fuergar and janjio were the most common, appearing seemingly from nowhere every few minutes. There was one lopo Kaz would have sworn was too large to still be mobile, but perhaps it had regained the ability to move around when it grew two kobold paws and a dengyu lantern.
Worse, as the group advanced, they began to hear sounds coming from in front of them. The sounds were all too familiar by now; a mixture of growling, screeching, howling, and pained screams resulting from injuries taken during whatever battle they were walking directly into.
They moved more and more slowly, leaving a trail of dead monstrosities behind them, until finally Chi Yincang stepped out of a shadow that Kaz would have sworn wasn’t there a moment before. The male had appeared a few times before, when a particularly large or fearsome atrocity attacked, but for the most part, he seemed content to let Raff and the kobolds bear the brunt of the fighting.
“The den is under siege.” Chi Yincang said simply, bowing to Gaoda.
Civ jerked as if he’d been stabbed, and he took a half-step forward before controlling himself. No one but Kaz and the other kobolds seemed to notice, but Pils set a staying hand on the warrior’s shoulder.
Gaoda folded his arms, staring down at a warped woshi they had just killed. He tapped his fingers of one hand against the opposite forearm, and Kaz couldn’t quite tell if he was agitated or simply frustrated.
“Could you see if there’s anyone left alive inside?” he asked.
Chi Yincang nodded. “Warriors at least. Still fighting, but losing.”
Lianhua made a small sound. “Gaoda Xiang, we need their stairs. If we save them and bring Civ and the others, they’ll definitely let us by.”
Gaoda snorted. “If they’re struggling with these little things, then they’ll let us pass, one way or the other. Fine, though. We’ve come this far, and I’m not retreating now.”
Chi Yincang bowed, stepped back, and disappeared.