Kaz wasn’t foolish enough to believe that he had won. There was no way either Nucai or Dongwu had been crushed beneath the overwhelming mass of things that poured out of the pouch. In fact, Kaz himself could think of several ways to get out of the shifting pile, including simply reducing everything around his own shield to ash.
No, Kaz’s only hope lay in the fact that Nucai wanted the core that Qiangde had stored in the pouch, and might not be willing to risk it being damaged or destroyed. That meant Kaz should have some brief period of time in which to find what he had come here looking for: the Rabbit, or perhaps its core.
Closing his eyes, Kaz focused on his connection to the ‘mountain’, the Tree, the Rabbit…whatever it truly was. It was in the opposite direction from Li, he could tell that much, and it was close. Closer, in fact, than it had ever been before.
Far more slowly than he would have preferred, Kaz made his way around the edge of the room. The sodden mass beneath his paws shifted with every step, and he had a mental image of a pale, long-fingered hand bursting up through it to grasp his leg. If only he knew where Nucai and, to a lesser extent, Dongwu, were, Kaz would have made certain to go around them. As it was, he could only hope they were too preoccupied with either escaping or finding the missing core to come after him. For now, at least.
Not here…or here…or here…but close. Closer and closer, in fact, until at last Kaz laid his hand flat against the wall and knew this was it. Whatever it was that lay on the other end of that tenuous connection, he would find it on the other side of this wall.
Reaching down, Kaz touched the flat pouch at his waist, absently offering it power, only to find that it gave nothing in return. Indeed, there was a sense of disgruntlement coming from it, as if it was unhappy with the current state of things.
“Sorry,” he murmured, then immediately felt ridiculous. It wasn’t like the thing was alive, and he had no doubt that both Nucai and Dongwu had excellent hearing. Still, it had seemed like the right thing to do. Unfortunately, the apology couldn’t make the bag give him something it didn’t contain, which in this case was Kaz’s mage-blade, making him fervently wish he’d thought to hold something back when he emptied the pouch.
How, then, was he supposed to get through the wall? There was only one way he could think of, and, reluctantly, he pushed ki into his claws, then dug those claws deep into the wall. At least, he tried to, but as soon as the tough, ki-filled points touched the wall, the wall pushed back. The harder he pushed, the harder his ki was pushed in return, until it was thrust out of his claws completely, and first one and then another broke against the smooth white surface of the wall.
What was this material, and why had Nucai surrounded this room with it? Kaz’s mind flashed back to the layer of grayish-white hidden within the door leading out of the tunnel he and Li had found by Xundu’s lake. That, too, had felt oddly cool and smooth, and there had been no ki at all around Xundu, just like in this room. Was it possible that this was the same material? And if so, why?
Kaz shook his head, forcing away the ever-present questions. Now was the time for action, not thinking, but without either his knife or his claws, Kaz had no idea what to do. Though, come to think of it, without ki the knife was simply a blade of mediocre quality, so it might not have helped, either.
A hand came down on Kaz’s shoulder, sharp claws digging into his flesh. He whirled, teeth bared, already snapping at the owner of the hand, only to find himself nose to nose with a wet, filthy Dongwu. She was absolutely covered in something that looked like slime, though Kaz had no idea which of the objects he’d released into the room might have produced such a substance. To his surprise, she showed no sign of anger. Indeed, her eyes were burning with an almost wild glee.
“Here,” she said, thrusting something into his hand. He recognized the feeling of it even before he looked down. It was a hilt, still warm from her grip, and the short blade held the lustrous gleam of adamantium.
“It doesn’t need ki to work,” Dongwu told him, jerking her chin at the wall. “Go on. Get out of here. You can’t stop him, but you can at least survive. You deserve it after this.” She looked around at the enormous room filled with trash and grinned wildly, showing every tooth.
Kaz’s fingers tightened around the hilt. He didn’t really have time, but he had to ask. “Why are you here? You said you weren’t going to help him any more.”
Dongwu’s eyes slid away from his, and her grin faded into her habitual scowl. “Luoyan thinks he has a way out, or he wouldn’t be moving. Maybe I want out of this damned mountain, too. Maybe I’m just not ready to die yet. I told you I was a coward.”
Kaz shook his head. “Then where’s your hammer? The special one. I don’t believe you’d leave without it.”
Now a growl rumbled in her chest. “Shut up and run before I kill you myself, just so I can see the look on my uncle’s face when he realizes I beat him to it.” With that, she strode off, making her way over the unstable pile with a grace that shouldn’t have surprised him, but did.
Turning his back on her and the rest of the room, though it made the fur on his neck lift to do so, Kaz stabbed at the wall, half expecting the blade to bounce off or even break like his claws. It didn’t, though. As Dongwu had said, its strength and sharpness were a function of its material and the skill that had gone into its making. It wasn’t easy, but Kaz worked it back and forth, dragging it through the wall.
Too. Slow. Too. Slow. Too. Slow, pounded through his mind with every beat of his heart, every movement of his hand, pushing the blade through the tough material. Then, with a twist of his wrist, the white surface split, and a crack shot up, zig-zagging to the ceiling and down the part of the wall that was still hidden by a millennium of treasure and a few months worth of what others would probably see as junk.
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Yes, yes, yes. If this was what he thought it was, if it was…of course it would be brittle. He remembered when it had been a too-flimsy shell around his own core, blocking his ki, but also holding it together. If this was that stuff - what had Dongwu named it? Wei? - then it and ki should never have been able to coexist, but they had, and when it broke, it had shattered into hundreds of fragments that still lingered in his core, altering the flow of his ki.
Rather than trying to cut straight up and down, Kaz began shoving the knife into the wall, then twisting it. Again and again, he stabbed, and while some of those attacks did little, others sent out cracks that met other cracks, and when Kaz turned the knife around and struck the wall with the hilt, a piece fell away, then another, and Kaz slid the tip beneath the white surface and pried it up, chipping away at it until he’d cleared an area large enough to squeeze through if he really had to, and then he started to cut.
Where was Nucai? How long would he spend searching for the core that was presumably buried within the pile somewhere? Why wasn’t he making any attempt to reach Kaz? Because Kaz was certain that Nucai could get out anytime he wanted to.
These alarming thoughts fell away as Kaz’s hand emerged into the space on the other side of the wall. As it did, he gasped, suddenly feeling the mountain in a way he never had before. The feeling of ‘here’ abruptly became HERE, and it was only with great difficulty that he managed not to try pushing his head through the ragged hole that was barely large enough for his fist.
HERE HERE HEREHEREHEREHERE became the refrain to which his heart beat, his blood pulsed, and his cycle spun. With renewed vigor, he hacked at the wall, levering off whole sheets of white, which shivered and broke to the cadence of HERE.
He thrust an arm through, then a shoulder, and then both, dropping the knife from nerveless fingers as he pushed forward, threatening to strip the fur and skin from his body as it scraped against the sides of the hole, remnants of white laminate pushing his ki-filled flesh back and then forward when he finally got far enough through, and then he fell to the ground with a liquid sort of splat, realising only then that he, too, was covered in wet and filth, but he was through, he was HERE.
“Where?” he whispered. “Where are you?” Here, yes, but not beneath his fingers, not yet, because he would know, and he didn’t, and it was as dark here as it had been light in the other room.
“Lights,” a cool, cold voice said as if in response to this thought, and light flared into being, making Kaz flinch back. He blinked against it, and when he could see, he knew he was too late. Nucai stood before him, perfectly composed, though his long beard and hair still held small fragments of something unidentifiable but disgusting. He was holding a core the size of Kaz’s fist, but the color of polished obsidian, though there were sparks of the other four elements in its depths.
“I wondered what you were up to,” Nucai said, his thin lips stretching into a reptilian smile. “You and your little dragon. Though I have to admit that Xion’s betrayal surprised me, small as it was. I truly thought she was thoroughly broken long ago, but perhaps I underestimated her.”
But Kaz wasn’t listening any more. He stared up, suddenly realizing that the cord that connected him to Li had shifted, moving from behind him to… Looking past Nucai, he saw that this room was far from empty. Racks stretched away into the distance, holding hundreds upon hundreds of white orbs. And there, bound to a table that made a dark, suppressed memory leap to the front of Kaz’s mind, lay Li, utterly motionless, her beautiful eyes open and staring, with a knife lying beside her.
“No!” Kaz shouted, lunging forward.
Before he could take more than a single step, Nucai’s smile stretched, and he said, “Stop.”
Kaz froze. Everything in him said to go to Li, to see if she was… He couldn’t even think the word, couldn’t tear his eyes from her body, watching for the smallest quiver, the faintest breath. There was nothing, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t even blink. He was somewhat surprised to realize that his heart was still beating.
“Did you really think,” Nucai said, half-turning to look back at the dragon, “that I wouldn’t know such strong cores had entered my territory? And to try hiding by using a dragon veil on me.” He hissed a laugh. “It might as well have walked right up to me and begged me to take its core. Honestly, at this point I wouldn’t even bother, but I’m fascinated to discover how you tamed the beast. The runes are supposed to make sure they’re not as intelligent or powerful as this one seems to be. Are they fading, or is this one just particularly resilient? Well, I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.”
Soon enough. So he hadn’t cut out Li’s core yet? Or he had, but hadn’t examined it? Why couldn’t Kaz feel anything from her? Why was she lying so very still? But the link was still there, and Kaz was alive. He would be dead if Li was dead. Wouldn’t he? He should know.
Nucai paused as if waiting for a reply, then shook his head. “You may speak, so long as you keep a civil tongue in your head. I do miss talking to others, you know. For the most part, you kobolds are almost as stupid as the canines from which you were made, but one makes do, I suppose.”
“Li,” Kaz gasped, as soon as the lock on his breath and voice lifted. “The dragon. What did you do to her?”
“Hmm?” Nucai looked up from his contemplation of the core in his hand. “Ah, you wouldn’t know. A long time ago, when the Diushi Empire still flourished, we developed a device that allowed us to place patients in stasis until they could be treated. It only works on those who have ki, but really, what would be the point in saving powerless mortals anyway?”
Misunderstanding Kaz’s expression, Nucai went on, “Hmm. You wouldn’t know what stasis is either, would you? That word has undoubtedly been lost, since your, ah, ‘people’ have no such techniques. It means the body is locked into a single moment in time, unchanging, until the seal is removed. In this case, your little pet won’t breathe or move until I release it.”
Like Baihe and Gaoda, then, but not shrunk down to a statue. Not dead. Not dead yet. “Did you-?” Kaz couldn’t even speak the word, and couldn’t gesture toward his own abdomen either. If only he could get a little closer!
Nucai frowned. “What? Oh! Take her core? No, I have something else to do first.” He held up the black core, smiling with what looked like pride. “I thought this was lost, along with all of Qiangde’s items. I was already trapped in the Tree when he died, you see, and by the time I gained control of some of the remaining kobolds, his corpse was stripped clean. Where did you find the pouch, anyway?”
Kaz was still watching Li, and he said, “Let me check on her, and I’ll tell you.”
For a long moment, Nucai stared at him, apparently uncomprehending, and then he actually threw back his head and laughed. “Oh,” he gasped finally. “How funny. You still think you can negotiate with me.” He touched a knuckle to the corner of his eye, though no moisture glittered there. “I haven’t laughed like that in…I don’t know how long. For that, I’ll allow it. You may move, so long as you make no attempt to do anything other than examine your dragon.”
Kaz’s paws came unstuck from the floor so suddenly that he stumbled forward, making Nucai snort another laugh. That was all right. Let him think Kaz was stupid and ridiculous. The important thing was Li. Li, who lay so still, staring at nothing with her golden eyes. He ran his fingers over her smooth scales. They weren’t cool, but they weren’t warm either. Not dragon warm. Not living warm. Her chest was still, and her heart didn’t beat. But her skin was intact. No gory hole gleamed in her abdomen.
“Why?” Kaz choked, moving so he stood between Nucai and Li.
Nucai smiled, sharp teeth pressing against pale lips. “I thought you knew,” he said. “You told me so. So I’ll ask you, kobold. Why?”