His tail impacted rock, and Kaz yelped again. His eyes snapped open, and he looked around, his hands already going to his injured appendage. Raff stood over him, a bemused expression on his face.
“I told you we were down, Blue. You all right?”
Kaz awkwardly climbed to his feet, his fingers brushing through the soft fur of his tail. It seemed to be intact, though bruised, and he managed to nod at the human. “I’m fine. I just didn’t expect the climb to take so little time.”
Raff chuckled. “What? So you decided to take a nap?” Shaking his head, he stretched, reaching his arms high overhead and extending his fingers, which brushed the ceiling of the tunnel in which they stood. “Nice, clean mana here, though. I swear I could feel it getting better as we went down.”
Lianhua tilted her head. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed a difference.” She closed her eyes, and Kaz focused, watching the tidy ball of energy in her abdomen shrink, pulling in gray wisps of power from the air. After a moment, she released it, shaking her head. “You must be quite sensitive, Raff.”
Gaoda, who had ignored Raff’s words until Lianhua responded to him, snorted. “As if a common sellsword would know ki better than the fairy of the Long clan.”
Lianhua and Raff both glared at him for that, though Raff quickly returned his expression to its usual neutral joviality. Lianhua gave a bright smile that rang false to Kaz, though he was still getting used to the way the human’s flat faces differed from those of kobolds.
“Thank you, Gaoda Xiang, but I’m certain Raff is just as skilled in his own arts as I am in mine.” Turning her attention to Kaz, her smile became more genuine as she said, “Do you know where the next passage down is, ah-” Her cheeks turned pink. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
Kaz debated. His first instinct was to snap, ‘Blue is fine’, but she was female, and hadn’t earned such rudeness, so he just said, “Kaz.”
She nodded. “Kaz, then. Do you know where the next passage down is, or perhaps any strange buildings or relics from a past civilization that may be on this level?”
Gaoda sighed in exasperation. “We’re too high up, cousin. The only evidence that the Diushi ever even ventured this far west are a few trinkets brought back from the lowest levels, and one scroll that’s been sitting in plain sight in the sect library for centuries. If there were really something here, don’t you think someone would have found it before now?”
Lianhua’s lips pinched together, and she said, “Anyone who read the scroll probably dismissed it as rumors or fiction, just like you do. The Diushi were here, and I’m going to find proof.”
Raff was looking away from the pair, watching the darkness of the tunnel, but he muttered, “You tell him, sister,” so low that the words were barely audible.
Kaz, who seemed to be the only one able to hear the large human, hid his amusement, simply pointing down the passage to their right. “I know of no ‘relics’, but there is another way down that direction. It passes through four levels, so we can simply skip those, if your goal is only to reach the depths.”
Gaoda’s face lit up. “Yes! Let us reach the bottom quickly, so we can get out of this place.”
Kaz nodded. “Be cautious, however. We must pass through a large cavern, and it’s likely to be infested with janjio.”
Raff shrugged, already walking in the direction Kaz had indicated. “Screechers? Eh, they’re not a problem. The ones here are a bit stronger than the ones in the foothills, but if they’re like that last batch, I’m not worried.”
Kaz shook his head. “That was a small group. The main colony is many times larger. They usually live on the next level down, but…” He hesitated. Should he remind them about the core-hunter? Hopefully, they had left the thing behind when they began to descend. He felt a niggling worry for Katri and the others, but they should be safe enough among the large, well-organized ‘Longknife’ tribe, especially since they had been warned that the creature was nearby.
“But?” Raff prompted.
“Something stronger may have driven them out,” Kaz said. “But I don’t know what. We passed through their nesting area, and didn’t see any sign of them.”
“Eh, whatever it was, it’s up there,” Raff said, waving it off. “And even if this lot is three or four times larger, we can hold our own. You just warn us before we get there, and it’ll be fine.”
Kaz nodded. If it looked like the humans were going to be killed, he would just run. It would be easy enough to get back to his tribe from here, and though he wouldn’t do as Katri had hinted and lead them into danger deliberately, he also had no reason to risk his own life for them.
The group walked in silence for a while. Not even Raff spoke, and the human’s eyes moved constantly, watching for any sign of danger. They were confident, perhaps even overconfident, but not suicidally so. Once or twice, they heard screeches coming from branching corridors, but never anything close enough to cause Gaoda to call a halt to their progress.
At last, Kaz held up a hand, stopping in the middle of the passage. His ears swiveled, trying to catch any sound, and his hackles rose slightly.
“What’s wrong?” Raff murmured, though he didn’t turn back to look at Kaz.
“We’re close,” Kaz replied. “They don't scream when they're not hunting, but I can hear rustling and squeaks. There are two more turnings. Right, then left. I only came through here once, when my tribe arrived on this level, but it was… memorable.”
Memorable because it was the first time his mother ordered him into battle. He was still a pup, but there were so few warriors left in their tribe that Oda had to call up anyone who could hold a weapon. The experience was terrifying, and horrible. The kobolds had waited until most of the janjio were out hunting, then simply raced through the cavern as quickly as they could. It had been all they could do to just hold off the attacks of the remaining monsters, and though no one had died, several had been injured.
Raff shifted his grip on his sword. He hadn’t returned it to its sheath since they first heard screeching, and as he flexed his fingers, they popped. Chi Yincang appeared beside Gaoda, seeming to step directly out of the shadows that surrounded them, and looked at the gold-furred male.
“Two hundred. Maybe more, if the others return after hearing the battle begin,” he said.
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Gaoda nodded. “We’ll cross as quickly as we can, but that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Kaz shook his head. Two hundred? That was easily three times as many as they had battled before. He glanced at Lianhua, remembering how she had cowered during the previous attack. Would she be all right?
It seemed Gaoda had a similar thought, because he glanced at Lianhua as well. “Your body cultivation isn’t as high as ours, cousin. Do you need someone to carry you?” He held out his arms invitingly, and Lianhua drew back.
Reaching into a pouch at her waist, she pulled out two small objects. “I’m prepared this time,” she said, pushing one into each of her ears. That done, she concentrated, and Kaz watched as she pulled power into her center, then pushed it out into the rest of her body. Her skin glowed softly until Kaz blinked away his other sight, and then she looked just as she always did.
Gaoda nodded, though he looked disappointed. “Let’s go, then.”
As if a trap had been sprung, the humans rushed forward. Chi Yincang leaped ahead, vanishing into the darkness, while Raff charged with his sword held across his body, ready to block any attacks. Even Lianhua ran, her steps light, with Gaoda at her back, his whirling balls of light already spinning.
Kaz suddenly realized he was being left behind, and chased after them, barely managing to keep from dropping to all fours in his haste. By the time he reached the cavern, the battle had already begun, and it was truly a sight to behold.
The cavern’s ceiling was high overhead, and Chi Yincang launched himself into the air, impossibly high. The human leaped from wall to wall, only briefly coming to rest on the ground, his knife-on-a-stick slicing janjio to pieces. Raff stood as a bulwark before Gaoda and Lianhua, taking down any enemies who drew close enough, but it didn’t really seem either of those two needed the help. Gaoda’s power-balls darted out, blasting holes straight through the diving monsters, while Lianhua now held a bow, from which brilliant bolts launched, one after another, all without her ever placing a single arrow to the string.
Kaz scampered along until he was near Lianhua’s feet, then hunkered down, covering his ears with his hands. The Janjio’s screams were their greatest weapon, driving their targets to run away or simply collapse in terror and confusion. None of the humans even seemed fazed by them, however, and bodies soon began to pile up around them.
Realizing that no one was even paying attention to him, Kaz pushed power to his eyes, watching each of the humans as they fought. Chi Yincang, Lianhua, and Gaoda all had the whirling bundles of power in their abdomens, but the two males also had a similar accumulation in their chests, though they were far more controlled than Raff’s cloud of sparkling fog. Lianhua and Gaoda also had a small sphere of power behind and between their eyes, much like Kaz and the dragonling.
Each of the main trio were using clean threads of power, while Raff continued to pull in and push out the same gray cloud. Chi Yincang glowed with black and white light that was concentrated in his arms and legs, but Gaoda’s power matched his fur and eyes; gold and blue leaped from his hands to his glowing orbs, while his body retained less of the light than that of Chi Yincang. On the other hand, only Lianhua’s skin glowed gold. The rest of her energy was blue and black, and flowed into her arrows after gathering in the spiral between her brows, which was much larger and more defined than Gaoda’s. It made Kaz wonder what his own power would look like, if he could see it from outside his body.
Seeing that the humans had the fight well in hand, Kaz focused on observing them. He watched the way their power-centers spun, pulling threads of energy out of the undifferentiated fog, and feeding them into each of their cycles, up along their backbones, turning behind their eyes, and then flowing back down to their centers. It was fascinating, and absently, he began to emulate them.
Strength flooded his arms and legs, making him want to jump up and move. Staying still was almost painful, and he quickly withdrew the power he had pushed into them. His limbs grew leaden, and, looking, he realized that he had taken too much. There were, in fact, miniscule rivulets of light running through every part of his body, and he had nearly cut off the flow to his arms and legs when he yanked the energy back.
Awkwardly, he loosened his hold on the energy coursing through him, fed by his core. It took a few tries to consciously control something that his body had been doing on its own for his entire life, and he went from jittery to weak a dozen times in quick succession. Still, by the time he figured out where it was supposed to be, he also saw that he could boost it just a tiny, tiny amount, nowhere near what he had done the first time, and just give himself a little extra strength.
He had done the same thing a few times before, though now that he was watching, he realized he had been doing something like what Raff did; applying raw power with very little control or understanding. It had worked for him then, at least well enough, and it clearly worked for the human, so he didn’t know if it was better or worse than the other way, but, watching the graceful flow of the brilliant colors within the bodies of Lianhua, Chi Yincang, and Gaoda, he had to admit that their way was certainly more beautiful.
Impulsively, he pulled off his pack and focused on the two glowing bundles of power inside. The dragonling had gold, white, and black energy cycling lazily through it, and, somehow, he had a feeling that it was asleep, probably full after eating all the food he’d been given by the Longtooths. The not-rock didn’t really have a cycle, just a dark, empty pit that swallowed up the trickle of gold that it stole from Kaz’s with each spin of his cycle.
Reaching out with his mind, Kaz gave the golden rivulet a sort of mental poke, and it reacted, waves of deeper gold rippling away from the contact. He set a ‘finger’ on top of it, and gave it a push. And groaned.
It moved easily, the rivulet becoming a stream, but as it did, it tugged on its link to Kaz’s core, pulling more and more power from him, until the gold in his own cycle, which was usually the predominant color, was nearly all going into the not-rock. Distantly, he was aware that much of the power he had just fed into his arms and legs had been siphoned off, and if he hadn’t already been crouching, he might have fallen.
A hand on his shoulder caught him, and Lianhua’s concerned voice said, “Kaz? Are you all right? You’re safe now, I promise.”
As he withdrew his attention, blinking to focus his eyes on the real world, instead of his internal one, he sensed the not-rock’s pull slow, then returned to its normal flow rate. His own strength returned, and he managed a nod, though he staggered a little as he stood, clutching his pack to his chest.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. It was an effort to speak at all, and now that he knew she was an adult female, everything in him said he shouldn’t interact with her unless absolutely necessary.
She smiled and patted his shoulder again, her fingers lingering slightly, almost stroking his fur. A flush filled her cheeks as she realized what she was doing, and she snatched her hand back. “I’m sorry. I… Your fur is very soft.”
He felt awkward. Only family members groomed each other, and she certainly wasn’t family. Still, it wasn’t unpleasant, so he just looked toward the opening in the far wall of the cavern, deliberately avoiding looking at the bodies of the fallen janjio, which lay all around them, stacked three and four deep. He had hunted the things before, of course, but this effortless massacre was strangely disturbing.
Raff nudged one of the beasts. “I’ve eaten these before,” he mused. “Bit hard to clean, but tasty. You want to grab a few and stop for lunch when we get to the exit?”
Gaoda’s short nose wrinkled, but he nodded. “We should conserve our own stores as much as possible. We don’t know how much we’ll be able to find that we can identify as being safe to eat.”
Raff nodded and scooped up four of the less-damaged janjio, tying them to his belt with a few loops of cord. Kaz hesitated, but found a relatively small one as well, slipping it into his pack on the side opposite the little dragon. He would need to let the creature out soon, for a drink, if nothing else, so he hoped he could slip away for a bit when they stopped. In the meantime, if it got hungry, it could eat the janjio, though that would add to the mess in his pack.
Lianhua clapped her hands, smiling broadly. She forgot to hide her teeth again, but Kaz found that it didn’t seem as strange or aggressive as it had when she’d first done it. For one thing, those flat teeth certainly weren’t a good enough weapon to make them any kind of threat.
“Let’s go! Everything I’ve read indicates that there are at least a hundred and fifty levels within the mountain. We have a long way to go.”
Gaoda nodded, and motioned to Chi Yincang. The dark male spun his weapon, faster and faster, and Kaz was fascinated to see that he actually pushed energy into the weapon itself, spinning the power along with the material object.
With a shouted, “Hi-yah!” Chi Yincang thrust both weapon and power forward, and it blew out of the staff, pushing the fallen bodies out of the way.
Path cleared, they set out once more.