There was a dragon carved into the stone around the stairs. The last time Kaz saw it, he’d guessed it might be, but now he was certain. Four guards paced back and forth near the dragon’s gaping maw. They each bore a club made from a single thick bone, with copper fuergar teeth embedded in jagged rows up and down the length of the weapon. One of them was Bek, his squat, powerful body practically vibrating with readiness, in spite of the gray that speckled his dark fur.

Li asked, and he could tell by the tone of her voice that if he’d asked her the same question, the answer would have been a resounding ‘no’.

he replied silently, and felt her surprise at the admission.

The stairs in the mid-levels had been carefully maintained by the kobolds who lived there. Having quick and easy access to another level could be the difference between life and death for a whole tribe, especially since the powerful creatures who lived there never used those stairs themselves.

Kaz wasn’t sure if anyone had ever questioned why that was, since beasts certainly did travel between levels via cracks and crevices in the stone. During the time he spent in the mosui city, however, he’d learned that Zhangwo - the mosui leader - could control whether the stairs held back beasts and contaminants like fulan. None of the spores should have been able to travel via the stairs at all, but Zhangwo had turned off that protection for his own reasons, and as far as Kaz knew, it had never been turned back on. Kaz hoped to fix that.

he said, sniffing again, as if he might have missed the pungent aroma the last dozen times he’d tried.

Li asked.

Kaz knew she was worried because the last time he’d interacted with the stairs they had nearly emptied him of ki. If she hadn’t made the mountain stop draining him, he would have been as dead as the xiyi Ganring by the end, just a husk of skin and bones. He shook his head, knowing she’d feel it even though they were hidden at the moment.

she threatened.

Kaz laughed silently. he agreed.

Creeping forward, Kaz kept an eye on Bek. He didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing. It would be better to just do it and move on. But Bek was intensely loyal to his chief, Pilla. There was no way he’d allow Kaz anywhere close to the stairs without her permission, and Kaz didn’t want to hurt or shame him by forcing the issue. Plus, now that he and Li had cleared the air between them, Kaz had relaxed enough to feel a bit like a puppy practicing sneaking up on his parents. He knew nothing serious would happen if he was caught, so it was fun to see what he could get away with.

There was a ridge of stone curling up on each side of the dragon’s jaws, and Kaz crouched down behind the closest one. Up close, he could see the remains of carvings, worn down by centuries of kobolds sitting, leaning, or simply touching them as they went by. The widest part of the ridge narrowed down and then split into five smaller ridges, faintly evoking arms and clawed feet, with the dragon’s ‘chin’ resting just behind them.

Ever since he’d reformed his body after it was destroyed in an effort to get rid of an illusory dragon, Kaz had found that he could see both ki and mana much more clearly than before. Here in the mountain, where mana hung far more thickly than in the outer world, even in the heights, it was disruptive, so most of the time he forced the ki in his eyes down to a reasonable level. Now, however, he let it rush back in, depending on Li to warn him if one of the guards got too close.

Peering into the dragon’s mouth, Kaz looked for what he expected to be there. He’d been watching, and for every set of stairs he’d taken since re-entering the mountain, there had been an arch at both top and bottom. Many of these arches were damaged, some even shattered, as were the stairs themselves. Most were missing one or more of the ki-crystals that were supposed to be there, which meant they probably couldn’t be repaired, even if he tried. Honestly, though, he had no real urge to make the effort. Not only were there so many other ways between the levels, but the amount of ki it would take to fix a staircase that was little more than rubble just wasn’t worthwhile.

Unlike every other staircase, there hadn’t been an arch at the entrance to this cavern, which meant it had to be closer to the top of the stairs themselves. The most reasonable location was inside the dragon’s open mouth, which formed an arch of its own. But even with his vision so subsumed by ki that he was effectively blind to anything else, he couldn’t see anything other than the light of the red ki-crystals that lined the walls.

Then he looked up higher, and almost groaned. Why had he expected Qiangde, or whoever had built this very special entrance to this particular set of stairs, to do anything normally? Even through the curve of the stone above him, Kaz could see the bright gleam of more ki-crystals. It was so clear, he wasn’t even sure how he’d missed them before, other than the fact that he hadn’t really been looking yet.

he told Li, though he was sure she’d been watching through his eyes as much as her own.

she asked, tensing as one of the guards moved toward them, then relaxing as he turned away again.

he asked, and she thought about it.

she answered finally.

That was fair. Kaz had been known to put too much ki into his legs and jump right past his goal. But she was right. Jumping would be faster and allow them to keep in contact more easily.

A small puff of vapor formed about where her nose would be as she snorted.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Kaz backed up, shifting his vision back into normal sight as he looked up toward the top of the stone dragon’s muzzle. It would be easiest to land on the relatively flat section there, then move back toward the eyes. He bent his knees, gathering his muscles but not his ki. As ridiculous as it seemed, a jump of only a bit over ten feet shouldn’t even be challenging for him any more, and he really didn’t want to either jump over entirely or bash his head into the ceiling some eight feet higher, especially after assuring Li that he wouldn’t.

His claws dug into the stone, scraping as he jumped in a short, tight arch. Bek glanced around, his lip lifting slightly as he peered toward the spot where Kaz and Li had hidden, but they were gone. Kaz teetered momentarily on the ridge of the long nose, which was sharper than Li’s, then caught his balance and stabilized as Bek’s pale blue eyes swept around the cavern. The male sniffed deeply, then shook his head, moving back toward the other guards.

Once he was sure the older male was looking elsewhere, Kaz walked over to the closest carved eyeball. It was as large as his torso, and to his surprise, it, too, showed some signs of wear. Unlike in the outer world, neither rain nor wind wore away at the stone, so it should have been discolored but sharp. Instead, the edges were softened, and Kaz wondered whimsically if generations of young kobolds had dared each other to climb up here and poke the monster in the eye.

Li commented, clearly amused.

Kaz glanced down to see that Bek was talking to one of the younger males, who nodded and headed out of the cavern at a pace a little faster than a walk. He felt his heart sink, and turned back to face the eyes again.

Five ki-crystals had been carefully embedded in the carving, each one surrounded by runes. Kaz tried to pick out the meaning of those runes, but gave up after a moment. While Lianhua was teaching him, she’d often mentioned that people who tried making the runes more decorative often only succeeded in making them harder to read, and now Kaz could see what she meant. Each rune had one right way it could be made, but it was possible to create flourishes and extra lines so close to it that it was nearly indistinguishable from the original shape, especially after ten thousand hands had touched and worn it away.

Fortunately, Kaz didn’t need to read the runes to know at least some of what the crystals were meant to do. They just needed power in order to do it, and power was something he had in abundance. Carefully, he bent and placed Li between his paws. He would have preferred to hold onto her, but the eyes were too far apart to touch without pressing himself against the carved face, so he leaned against the cool stone, spreading his arms wide.

He felt it when his questing fingers touched the first crystal. It was Water, and its cool, calm presence was comforting beneath his hand. His wrist contacted the Earth crystal, which was on the other side of the stone pupil, and he smiled at its steady presence. His other hand touched Metal, then Wood, the unchanging nature of the one balanced by the constant effort toward growth of the other. That left Fire, which sat in the center of the dragon’s forehead, right where the upper dantian would lie. Left with no other option, Kaz leaned forward and touched the last ki-crystal with the tip of his nose.

The mountain came apart around him. Staircases spun, creating a pattern Kaz had never noticed before, even with how many times he had traveled up and down. There were more than he’d ever guessed, but most of the ones in the upper levels were dark, untouchable. Holes hung in the pattern, and Kaz guessed that those were staircases where all five crystals were missing, leaving nothing for him to connect to.

He felt his ki beginning to drop precipitously, pulling on his core. Even with the large amounts of ki he could produce, it wouldn’t be enough for all of this, but he’d known that. What he hadn’t expected was to find himself in the midst of it all, instead of dealing only with the stairs in front of - or rather below - him. Kaz gasped as he felt parts of himself begin to fade, losing their coherence as the mountain tried to remake him in its image. It needed power, and in a very real sense, Kaz was power.

But Li had no intention of allowing her kobold to be taken from her. While Kaz was the stronger of the two, Li was better at controlling their ki, and now she pulled it back, viciously cutting off every part of the mountain except for the ones Kaz had intended to focus on. The heights and the Deep vanished abruptly from Kaz’s vision, as did some very interesting things that he was almost certain were part of the mosui city. This left only the stairs, and these were, as he’d hoped, in remarkably good condition, so they were the least of what had been pulling him apart.

Kaz was finally able to catch his breath and begin to gather his ki into something he could control. He turned his attention to the staircases, and realized that he could actually feel people walking up and down the steps. The ones with cores were female kobolds, while the dense bundles of mana were husede. But looked at this way, he could sense the male kobolds as well, the power present in all living things gathered in them, too, though it was oddly wispy, as though it was constantly being pulled in and then escaping again, so none of them was ever able to keep much for long. He longed to look more closely, see if he could determine why this was happening, but he didn’t have time. Not yet.

He felt the Fire crystal beneath his nose pulse almost eagerly, and understood that he could burn these interlopers with its power if he wanted to. This was the ki used to keep things like the fulan in check, but it could also be used to burn away every living thing within range. That was why there were so many red ki-crystals up and down the stairs. It wasn’t to light the way, but to burn those things the mountain’s master didn’t want to pass.

No, he told it silently. Only these. He showed it fulan, lopo, dengyu, and janjio, among others He felt the Fire recognize these things, and, rather sulkily, return to doing what it had done for a thousand years, whenever Zhangwo hadn’t forced it to stop.

That done, Kaz started to pull his ki back, but stopped as another kind of ki reached out to him. It was Earth, with Metal close behind, and, like Fire, they were eager to complete the tasks they had been given. Earth shaped the stairs, the tunnels, the landings, even the carved maps that guided travelers. Metal coated each step, protecting them from the passage of claws and time. It picked out xiyi scales on the maps, and formed reflective shields behind the red ki-crystals that lined the steps.

Carefully, Kaz offered them ki, though he could feel Li’s disapproval. His dragon was ready to roar at the mountain again, and it almost seemed like the Earth and Metal knew it. They pulled only their own elements from his cycle, and stopped when they’d taken as much as he could give. He promised to offer them more, now that he knew they could be trusted not to kill him, and they settled back, content.

That left Wood and Water, and the tips of his fingers on both hands tingled as they acknowledged him. Water was the connection, flowing from one staircase to another, pervasive and eternal, and while it acknowledged him, it didn’t need his help, at least not here. And Wood…Wood was ready to grow, to become more than what it had been allowed to be, but it wasn’t time for that to change, either. It touched Kaz’s strong Wood ki, acknowledged it, and let him go.

Done, Kaz blinked his eyes open, wincing as he realized just how off-balance he was. He had almost no red ki left, and yellow and white weren’t in much better shape. Only blue and black held him upright, so he swayed on his paws while Li attempted to steady him.

Down below, past the slope of the stone dragon’s muzzle, a kobold barked, then began to howl. Kaz had been discovered.