The night was long, and Kaz was tired and injured. Again. Lianhua’s towel still laid on the stone by the pool, one corner slowly pulling pink water into its fibers. Kaz used it to clean the worst of the mess out of his fur, ruefully noting that Lianhua’s efforts had been wasted, since his fur was dirty and tangled again.

When he was as clean as he could get, he got up and crossed to Litz’s body. The smell of it would draw predators, and the humans hadn’t even bothered to set a watch. If the mountain managed to kill them, he was certain it would be because of their arrogance.

Fortunately, Litz was short, though her solid build made her heavier than he expected. Still, even with his injuries, he was able to drag her out of the cavern, leaving her a good distance down the passage she’d been hiding in while he spoke to Lianhua. Hopefully, if something came to eat her, it would be satisfied with that, and leave the rest of the group alone.

That done, Kaz hobbled back to the human’s temporary den, and sat down on the driest part of the towel. His tail was aching, and the soft surface was welcome, though he wondered at how he had so quickly become used to the wealth the humans just left lying around.

Gaoda had told him to return to the Sharpjaw den, but though he wouldn’t have hesitated to travel the same distance through familiar tunnels in the heights, he found himself reluctant to do so alone here. Besides, his paw hurt, the rest of his body ached, and if he stayed he could, at least, give warning if some beast came to eat them all.

He found himself drifting into sleep, then waking with a start when he began to slump over. After the third time, Li crawled down from his shoulder, curling up in his lap, partially covered by the towel, where she wouldn’t be disturbed the next time.

Kaz stroked her scales gently, feeling the smooth surfaces slide beneath his fingers until he thought he could count each one. His eyes closed, and the world around him vanished, leaving him in a space filled with the sound of dripping water, the scent of humans and blood, and the feeling of one scale after another slipping by.

His thoughts drifted to the talk he’d had with Lianhua. She said body cultivation - the thing that allowed the humans to ignore damage that would have killed a kobold twice over - was simply a result of saturating the body with ki. When Kaz’s channels leaked, his body was filled with ki, but all that happened was that he became weak, and Li had to give him enough power to keep his heart beating. Was this another example of the differences between the humans and someone who had a core, or was he just doing it wrong? How could he ‘saturate his body’ any way other than doing exactly that? Was it just that he didn’t have enough ki to fill his body and his channels at the same time?

With that thought, something clicked. He remembered Lianhua deliberately pushing ki into just the part of her body she needed to reinforce. Didn’t he do the same thing when he needed to be stronger or hear more clearly? When his channels leaked, he wasn’t putting more power into any one body part, instead he was reducing the power each one had. His heart hadn’t had enough ki to go on beating because the rest of his flesh had absorbed more than its share.

He needed to either produce more ki, or direct the extra ki he already had continually into one specific part, and keep that one part filled until it became natural. Wasn’t that what he had done with his eyes, entirely accidentally? It used to be that he only saw ki when he specifically focused on doing so, but once he met the humans, he found himself doing it constantly.

He wasn’t sure exactly when maintaining that vision became second nature, but it had, and until he’d hurt his head, he didn’t think he’d seen the world entirely without ki in days. Even now, he suspected that he was suppressing it instinctively, in order to reduce the strain on his mind, and as soon as he felt better, it would return naturally.

How had Lianhua put it? He had to become more ki than flesh, but she hadn’t said he had to do it all at once. So the real question was, where did he start? If he had, in fact, already tempered his eyes to some extent, did it make sense to do his ears or nose next? Honestly, if he could hear and smell everything all the time, he wasn’t sure he would ever sleep again, so perhaps that should wait. Did his channels count as organs? Could he temper them so they didn’t leak any more? But no, if he could, he thought it would have happened already. He actually had a feeling it might be the opposite; that he had already achieved something that would eventually help him, but he had done it too soon.

His skin was already tougher than it had ever been before, as he had been reminded when Litz’s long claws were unable to do more than scratch him. He wondered if his bones were equally solid, but he wasn’t going to attempt to break a finger in order to test it. Though perhaps the testing had already occurred, and that was why his skull and paw were still intact, rather than having been broken or crushed in the battle with the monster.

Kaz tilted his head back, sighing, and caught a glimpse of something gleaming on the ceiling high overhead. He squinted, trying to tell if there was a small colony of glow-worms developing there, but a stab of pain reminded him that his head was still healing, and he shouldn’t try too hard.

He reached up and rubbed his head, wishing that he could reinforce his brain so it would be better able to handle being battered about. Then he froze. Why couldn’t he do exactly that? He shouldn’t start with his brain, heart, or any of the organs that would lead to a quick death if he failed to temper them properly, but the brain was an organ. Eventually, he would have to infuse it with ki as part of the process of body tempering. What would that do to him? Did people change after altering their very minds in pursuit of eternity?

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He snorted a little laugh. These questions were all too big for one exhausted kobold to answer. He would have to ask Lianhua if she knew the answers to some of them, but in the meantime, he needed to choose one part of his body to experiment on. He had seen enough of the insides of the animals he’d butchered to have a fairly good idea what was inside a living creature, though he wasn’t as certain what all of the parts did. But he knew exactly what the lungs did, and he’d already pushed ki into them a few times, so if he just kept on the same way, it shouldn’t cause any problems.

Decision made, Kaz allowed his mind to wander again. Over and over, he found his gaze drawn back to that spark above him. It almost seemed to be moving, or perhaps the cavern was moving around it. He had noticed as a pup that sometimes, if he laid flat on his back and stared straight up, it seemed like he could feel the mountain circling around him, like he was the center of it all. He hadn’t had that feeling in a long time, maybe since he had first realized that he had power of his own, but here it was again. It was a strangely comforting feeling, and he relaxed into it until he realized that at some point he had closed his eyes again.

Reaching up, he touched his eyelids, confirming that they were, indeed, shut. Which meant that the light he was seeing wasn’t physical, but rather a product of his recovering ki-sight. Which in turn meant that the thing he was seeing was, in fact, ki. Ki contained within a core.

There was a lopo hanging above them, and where there was one, there were usually more. Had it been there the whole time? Had Lianhua noticed, or was it too far away for her to sense? If it had just arrived, then it was young enough to be mobile, which should mean it was also too small for its tongues to reach anyone standing on the ground. The ceiling of the cavern was at least fifteen feet high, but a baby lopo shouldn’t be more than two feet long, which meant its tongues shouldn’t be more than six feet, which left nine feet, and even Raff wasn’t nine feet tall, so everyone should be safe so long as Chi Yincang didn’t go leaping about the cavern, or…

Kaz rubbed his forehead, groaning. The good news was that he was no longer in danger of falling asleep. The bad news was, there was at least one lopo encroaching on the Sharpjaw’s territory, and they had no females to kill it. It was probably still small enough that they could knock it down with rocks or arrows, or Kaz could try to convince the humans to take care of it before they left, which shouldn’t be too difficult, since they had managed to kill several small ones before.

Li stirred as Kaz’s mind turned back to what the Sharpjaw males were going to do without females, and he realized that there was one member of their group who could get close enough to the lopo to be in danger. He looked down at the half-lidded eyes of the little reptile, and murmured, “There’s a lopo above. Don’t fly, even when no one is around.”

The dragon yawned, pink tongue curling into a sleepy hiss. He felt something pressing at his mind, and they both winced as a distant sense of agreement reached him. Kaz chuckled softly as his finger stroked her neck, gently scratching beneath her chin. Her throat vibrated as a soft purr reached his ears.

He continued to watch her until her eyes closed again, and her chin drooped to rest on his finger. Very distantly, he caught glimpses of blue sky and yellow light streaming from above, felt the barest hint of wind as it flowed over his wings…

And his head snapped up again, staring out toward the small cluster of huts. Low voices sounded as the bone and leather doors opened and closed, allowing drowsy humans to emerge. When he stepped out, Gaoda greeted Lianhua in a voice that was too loud for comfort, and she gave him an awkward smile as she edged around him toward where Raff had set up his fire stone. When she reached the large male, she knelt, taking dishes and wrapped items out of her pouch. Holding the metal teapot, she turned toward the pool, doubtless planning to gather some water.

Kaz’s kobold hearing picked up a small intake of breath as the human froze in place, and he finally looked around himself, taking in the scene now revealed by Gaoda’s ki orb.

For all that last night’s battle had been nearly silent, it certainly hadn’t been bloodless. Streaks and smears of reddish-brown fluid covered the stones, and there was a half-dried pool of it where Litz had died. Long parallel marks showed where Kaz had dragged the body away, and his own paw prints tracked toward the tunnel and then back to where he sat, making it very clear that he had been involved.

All eyes turned toward Kaz, and Lianhua’s mouth made a horrified ‘o’ as she rushed toward him, with Raff not far behind. Kaz scooped Li up, struggling to his paws, and only then saw that the towel on which he had been sitting was stained a deep red as well.

“Kaz? What happened?” Lianhua asked, none-too-gently turning him so she could check him over for wounds. She prodded something on his flank, and he winced. Perhaps Litz had managed to do more damage to him than he’d thought.

“The female kobold attacked him.” The quiet voice came from behind Kaz, and he and Lianhua both turned to stare at Chi Yincang as he stepped out of the shadows by the pool.

Lianhua waved a hand around, taking in the gory scene. “You saw this happen? And what did you do?”

The male’s dark eyes touched Kaz, and Kaz thought he saw a hint of approval touch their depths before they flicked away again. “Watched. He didn’t need help. He defended himself, and then took the body away. The important thing is this.”

Chi Yincang held up a small, roundish object. It glinted in the light, muddy green with blotches of yellow and black, all coated with a thin film of rust-red.

Lianhua stared at it, her hand creeping up to press against her chest. “Is that a beast core? Where did it come from? What’s wrong with it?”

“It was inside the female, Litz, and whatever has happened to it, it nearly caused her to change into an abomination.”