Li asked, staring at the horde of insects scurrying through the cavern below. They stood on the stairs that led into the hoyi nest, having descended from the hidden doorway in the yumi fields. Kaz had told Li that the largest ki-crystals were found here, and she’d insisted they see if there was a way to gather some without the hoyi knowing they were there.

Kaz had agreed, not only because they could sneak silently through the vast cavern under the cover of Li’s camouflage, but also because there was something here that called to him. A part of the mystery of the mountain could be found here, he was sure, if only he looked in the right place.

Kaz told her, pointing. The comment was unnecessary, since Li could see the bulky, unwieldy body covered in flying hoyi for herself. Still, the monstrous insect and her airborne servant-guards were worth noting, and they both stared in awe.

Li asked finally, watching as the smaller, winged insects groomed and fed the queen between eggs.

Kaz asked silently.

Li said.

Kaz shrugged.

They watched as the massive hoyi produced another round of eggs, and the worker insects carried them away. Finally, as the last glimmering orb fell into waiting jaws, Li shook her head.

The large warrior bugs protected the egg-bearers as they vanished down the surrounding tunnels, and Kaz sent his amusement to the dragon.

Li said, amused by the memory of his fur stuck to the ice.

Kaz grumbled, but he didn’t really mind. Looking back, it might have been funny if he wasn’t so cold and, yes, terrified. Now, he just wondered if the fur was still there, in its vaguely Kaz-shaped pattern.

Li asked, watching the last warrior-gatherer pair as they left the cavern. The queen lowered herself onto her bulbous abdomen, and her servants rose in a glittering cloud, heading for the pile of half-frozen meat nearby. There wasn’t as much of it as there had been last time, and Kaz hoped that that was at least partially due to the miners being both better protected and less desperate.

Kaz thought about it.

Li clicked thoughtfully. They were perched on a step just beyond the point where the stairs entered the ceiling. The hoyi had no eyes, depending on touch, sound, and perhaps smell to tell them what was going on around them. So long as Kaz didn’t draw attention to himself by moving, Li could go, using her camouflage to cover herself while she flew around and broke off a few of the very large crystals that covered the ceiling and upper curve of the walls. Most of these were red, which was the one color Kaz had left alone when he raided the storage level, and Li wanted them.

the dragon agreed easily. She lifted her wings, then peered back over her shoulder.

Kaz’s heart filled with warmth, but he sent her an image of himself, flapping his arms as hard as he could, only to fall flat on his face while she flew away.

she told him seriously, and took off.

It took another full cycle of egg-laying for Li to be satisfied with what she’d gathered. Kaz’s pouch was almost humming with all the times he’d opened it and the amount of ki stored inside. It was still not full, even after everything he’d put in it, but he had a feeling he might finally be reaching some limit. Every time he used it, it seemed to take a bit more of his ki to open, and there was a kind of pressure pushing back when he slid items in.

Li gobbled down the yellow crystal she’d been saving ever since bringing it back, even though she’d eaten most of the other non-red crystals she found. Even here, they weren’t particularly large, but this yellow one was the size of Kaz’s fist, and Li had been particularly pleased with herself when she found it.

she said.

Kaz thought about the way he must have looked when he escaped from here the first time, wildly leaping from column to column, and grimaced, shaking his head. They moved quickly down the stairs, which ended far too close to the queen for comfort. There were no loose eggs for him to steal this time, but that was all right, because they had a much better plan.

After winding their way through the complex pattern of guards and servants, they found themselves not at the same tunnel Kaz had entered through once before, but at another one, far to the left. Kaz and Li couldn’t tell the difference between one tunnel and the next, but the hoyi obviously could. Not all of the eggs were carried in the same direction, and this time, Kaz had been able to tell that the ones with the strongest ki were taken this way.

Hopefully, they were timing this correctly, because the tunnels were surprisingly narrow, and there was no way they could pass a hoyi on its way back without being noticed. If that happened, Kaz would have to kill the hoyi very quickly, before it could call for help, but there was no way the next insect wouldn’t notice the corpse, so this could very quickly go from a stealth mission to a bloodbath.

Stolen novel; please report.

Kaz said, more to reassure himself than Li. The dragon was as confident as ever that they would succeed at whatever they attempted.

This tunnel was longer than the one Kaz had used before, and side-passages split away more than once. Kaz followed the well-worn paths in the stone, growing more and more nervous the deeper they walked into the nest.

Then, without any warning at all, the tunnel ended, leaving them standing in the entrance to a cavern whose walls were covered in small alcoves. Each alcove had a shallow depression in the bottom, and each depression held an egg. Another new kind of hoyi worked here, one with antennae almost twice as long as those of the others. They used these antennae to check on the eggs, turning them carefully with the flattened ends. They moved along the walls, focused on the alcoves and their spherical occupants, leaving the center of the cavern almost entirely empty. Kaz quickly moved into the open space and stood there, holding Li and watching what was going on.

Kaz said, and Li sent agreement.

Li asked.

Kaz said. He was moving slowly along the cavern, careful to make no noise as he stared at the hoyi and the eggs. The opalescent sheen of the eggs’ surface seemed to fade as they moved deeper into the cavern, and he began to see darker patches moving inside. The insects in the eggs were growing and developing. Their ki was stronger, too.

After a while, they saw one of the caretakers actually lift an egg from its alcove, carrying it still deeper in the cavern. The egg was almost black with the insect inside, and as Kaz looked more closely at the eggs around it, he could see that some of them were rocking in their shallow depressions, and one even had a small crack in its surface.

Li asked, staring at them.

Kaz wasn’t particularly picky, but he also wasn’t really here for eggs. They’d come for the crystals, which they’d gotten, and yes, the first hoyi egg had given him quite a boost of power, but he didn’t want to have the balance of his ki shifted again. He did plan to take some eggs, but just to keep in his pouch, if it would hold them. Still, he found his gaze being pulled inexorably in the direction the caretaker hoyi had carried the wiggling egg. Rather than moving back toward the fresher eggs, he went deeper.

Fewer and fewer alcoves held eggs. Some of the ones that were there were dark and lifeless. A flicker of power remained in a few, but others were as empty as if they’d never held life at all. Eventually, they had to dodge out of the way of the returning insect, who now had empty pincers, and Kaz found himself standing beside a wall of alcoves that stood entirely empty.

Li asked, watching the retreating adult, who was now testing each of the few eggs in the area with its overlong antennae. It found one of the lifeless eggs and picked that up, as well, but took it back toward the entrance rather than deeper into the cavern.

Kaz was distracted by something that hung, just beyond his ability to see. It was as if the air itself was thicker here, and it was almost difficult to move his paws, though neither Li nor the hoyi had seemed to struggle.

he asked absently, still staring down the long rows of empty holes in the wall.

Li sighed and looked as though she might bite his ear, but decided against it.

Kaz didn’t need any more encouragement, though he had to push a bit of ki into his legs in order to keep moving. The air grew thick with mana, and even Li began to feel it, stretching out a wing, then a leg, only to peer at them as if checking to make sure nothing was wrapped around them. Sparks of ki jumped from Kaz’s fur and Li’s horns, disappearing into the air, becoming just another part of the power that pressed against them. Then the walls changed from alcoves to crystals, and between one step to the next, the pressure eased up.

Li gasped softly as she looked at the thick layer of ki-crystals that covered every surface except for the stone beneath Kaz’s paws.

Rather than standing in individual prisms or small bunches, the way the crystals grew in the rest of the mine, these looked like a single, solid mass. Kaz shook his head reluctantly. He turned back toward the area of highest pressure.

It was Li’s turn to hesitate.

There was no doubt that was true. Kaz had never felt such a dense miasma of power before, even when he was in the pit surrounding the mage college. That had been fueled by Fengji’s fury, and there was no emotion in this. It just was.

Unconsciously, Kaz touched the smooth loop of scales that hung around his waist like a second belt. Heishe had asked to be brought into the mountain for some reason, and he had a feeling this was part of it. He couldn’t just go on without even trying to investigate.

Turning around, Kaz stepped back into the heavy shroud of mana, feeling his shoulders sag a bit beneath the weight of it. Li hissed unhappily, but didn’t try to argue or draw him back. This time, they both kept their eyes on the walls, searching for anything that was different, and it was actually Li who found what they were looking for.

Kaz was almost blinded by the fog of mana, but Li still didn’t see mana as well as he did. So she was the one who realized that among all the undifferentiated gray, there were sparks of black and white. But when she pointed them out and Kaz peered into the alcove that held the ki, he found that it wasn’t produced by naturally forming crystals like all of the others, but had clearly been placed there. They were actually partially embedded in the stone, which was carved with a series of complex runes.

Li said instantly, and Kaz yielded to her greater expertise. He’d been a bit busy when she stole and swallowed that crystal, and shortly after that the entire building had begun to melt as Fengji escaped. Kaz had barely glanced at the runes.

Kaz responded instantly, but Li just gave a sniff, as if the thought had never crossed her mind.

She tilted her head, eyeing the runes.

Kaz honestly wasn’t sure, but he had an idea. It wasn’t a particularly good idea, and he was fairly certain Luanhua would have yelled at him for allowing it to enter his head, but she wasn’t even in the mountain yet, as far as he knew.

Reaching out, he touched the crystals.