They were seated at a table that looked like it had been made from many small pieces of wood, each carved into shape and held together with some kind of glue before being polished to a high shine. Wood was incredibly rare in the mountain, even in the Deep. Had Dongwu gathered all of these pieces bit by bit? Why hadn’t she just walked outside and cut down a tree sometime in the last eight hundred years?

Rather than chairs, the table had been built with such short legs that everyone simply sat on furs piled around it. Everyone except for Yingtao, that is. Lianhua’s mate was on her feet, moving with silent grace from one person to the next, making sure they had tea and what Lianhua said was dried fruit and small, soft cakes.

Only when everyone had been served, and Dongwu had slowly savored both fruit and cake, did she take a sip of steaming tea and sit back with a sigh. Looking around, she said, “I’ve only told this story to one person before, and that was…a very long time ago.” Gently, she stroked her hammer, which lay on the table beside her, almost as if it was a person as well. Turning a pointed look on Lianhua, she said, “And I ask that you hold any questions until I’m done.”

Lianhua blinked, opened her mouth, closed it again, bit her lip, and said, “Of course.”

Dongwu snorted softly, and began.

“This story doesn’t start with me, or Qiangde. Instead, it starts with a brother and his much younger sister, both of whom were brilliant and powerful, but because only males could inherit, hold property, or have their own jobs, only the brother went to school, while the sister remained home, learning embroidery and art.” Dongwu smiled slightly.

“I don’t mean to be cryptic, it’s just that it’s hard to say their names, even after all these years. The brother was, of course, Luoyan Wu, who you know as Nucai. His younger sister was my mother, Yinyou Wu.” At this, Lianhua’s eyes opened wide, but she placed her hands over her mouth and somehow remained silent.

“Luoyan joined a sect, and rose quickly through the ranks, forming his image around being a scholar. This allowed him to grow every time he learned something new, and there is always something new to learn, or so he believed.” Something dark and bitter passed through Dongwu’s eyes before she continued.

“He became an advisor to the Emperor when he was barely thirty years old, and was allowed access to the royal archives. What he found there brought him to the edge of the Golden Core stage. Everyone thought he would be the first known human to ascend before reaching a century in age. And then he stalled.”

Lianhua bit down hard on her lip this time, and even Yingtao stopped midstep. Raff, Kaz, Kyla, and Li didn’t exactly understand what this meant, even though Lianhua had tried to explain, but Dongwu continued speaking without clarifying.

“He struggled for a decade, during which time his younger sister began to make a name for herself, in spite of her gender. She wrote poetry, one of the few acceptable pastimes for young ladies, and even the emperor was impressed by what he heard. He discovered that Luoyan was Yinyou’s brother, and had Luoyan invite her to court. When she arrived, he was overcome by her beauty and grace, and offered to make her his concubine, since she wasn’t of a high enough rank to join his wives.”

Dongwu sighed, touching her hammer again. “She refused. Categorically. But Luoyan stepped in and negotiated the arrangement anyway. Their father was dead, so he was her closest male relative, and he could make such decisions for her. Nine months later, I was born.”

Kyla looked like she wanted to find Nucai and scratch his eyes out, but she managed to restrain herself from speaking. Dongwu smiled and reached out as if to touch the young female, but stopped when Kyla flinched away. So Kyla hadn’t truly forgiven or forgotten who and what Dongwu was, in spite of her sympathy.

“By that time, the Emperor’s affections had moved on, as they so often did. He visited only rarely, especially when it became clear I had none of my mother’s beauty, but it wasn’t a bad life to begin with. We lived in a peaceful summer palace, with servants and everything we could wish for. But as I grew older, the rivalry that always takes hold in such households drew me in as well. My half-siblings constantly tried to bring themselves to our father’s attention, usually by reviling and lying about the others. This shouldn’t have mattered to me, but I had begun to…shall we say, create things. My mother taught me what cultivation she knew, and in her own way, she was as brilliant as her brother. So my creations often had abilities far beyond that granted to them by the materials I used.”

Pausing, Dongwu took a sip from her cup, found that her tea was beginning to cool, and touched the side of the cup, sending a small spark of red ki into the liquid, which began to steam again. Kaz had done something like it a few times before, but he’d never seen anyone else use their ki like that, and he stared until Dongwu noticed and lifted her furry brows.

Li said just to him.

Kaz looked down at his own cup, seeing that his tea was cool as well. With difficulty, he restrained himself from warming it up, even though he had no real intention of drinking it. he told his dragon.

He felt Dongwu’s gaze on him for several more heartbeats, and then she began to speak again. “The Emperor learned what I could do, and summoned me to him. He tested me, then decided that I was…interesting. At first, he was going to send me to a sect for training, but Luoyan convinced him to place me into his care, since he was my uncle.

“At first, it was all I dreamed of,” Dongwu admitted with a sigh. “Luoyan provided me with all the books and materials I could have asked for, and I spent weeks simply making the things I saw in my mind. All Luoyan asked was that I give him the finished product and explain to him how my creations worked. I believed he was truly interested and supportive until I saw the Emperor riding around in a ki-powered vehicle I had invented. When I asked, I was told Luoyan made it, and when I told everyone it was me, they just laughed at me. I was his apprentice, and he the master, and a generous one at that, to take on a female.”

She gripped the handle of the hammer, drawing it toward her with a soft scraping sound. The metal head should have scratched the polished wooden table - Kaz had learned that wood was really ridiculously soft - but somehow it didn’t.

“There was nothing I could do. I was helpless to gain the recognition I deserved, and that began to eat at me, causing me to lose the very creativity Luoyan valued. When he realized I was no longer capable of making new things for him, he was furious, sending me back to my mother, though that was far from the punishment he intended.” She smiled, her brown eyes warm as she glanced back toward the other room, and presumably the picture on the wall.

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“And then one night, Luoyan appeared in our palace. We could already hear the screams, and mother and I were readying ourselves to flee. A man came with Luoyan, the very image of the first Emperor, and poured a mound of metal and crystals across my table, while our servants ran and the screams grew silent.”

Her fingers twitched, as if stirring something invisible on the table before her. “There were so many, all filled with a kind of power I had never sensed before. And then there were mithril, adamantium, orichalcum, even sky iron and others I’d never even heard of. What could I make with these?”

She pushed the invisible pile away, looking up again. “They said if I went with them, I would have all of these and more to work with. More, I would have my own servants, and everyone would know I was the genius behind my creations. Never again would someone else take the credit for what I’d done.”

One corner of her mouth lifted in that almost-smile that looked so strange on her muzzle. “They even promised that my mother could come and live with me, and she, too, would be free to write poetry and live her life without the control or judgement of men. I had no idea how all that would be achieved, but I was young and prideful, and I accepted.”

Now, she glanced at Kaz, then met Kyla’s eyes. “We were here for three years, along with all the others taken that night, during which I discovered that my benefactor was a dragon. I didn’t care, because he left me to Luoyan, who provided me with more and more new things to experiment with. And then my uncle brought me fulan. It was safe, he said, since I had no core, though I was solidly in Core Formation by that point. I rarely cultivated, but the ki here is so dense, and my image tied so closely to invention, that I grew whether I intended to or not.

“By that time, I didn’t even hesitate to use whatever he brought. They gave me small beasts with cores, and I used the fulan to make them into other things. It was rarely pleasant, but they were only rats and spiders, after all. I theorized that it would work the same with humans, but when Luoyan off-handedly suggested we try, I waved it off as a joke. Even I knew the line had to be drawn somewhere.”

One finger began to tap on the hammer. Tap. Tap. Taptap. “I didn’t know they were using my ideas and the things I discussed with my uncle to perform their own experiments.” Her eyes were dark and haunted. “I had no idea what monstrosities they’d created until my mother told me.

“She was old, by then. She’d never moved beyond Foundation, and she aged while the years passed me by without pause. As she lay dying, I went to her for the first time in I don’t know how long, and she said that the others who had been taken at the same time as us were slowly disappearing. Many of them had cores, so they weren’t dying of sickness or old age. They would simply vanish, except that some of the servants were assigned to care for ‘beasts’ on other levels, and they spoke of monsters with human eyes and hideously deformed mounds of flesh with hands and feet.”

Her fingers stilled, and she gripped the handle of the hammer again, looking straight at Kyla. “I went straight to Luoyan - Nucai, by then - and he took me to Tegra. I had once told my uncle of a kind of wolf rarely found in the mountains of the far north. They were called Howling Moon Wolves, and they were supposed to be fierce but intelligent and powerful creatures, many of whom were born with cores. Several times, they had been hunted nearly to extinction, but somehow they always returned, though no one had seen any in a hundred years or more. They would have been perfect subjects for the fulan, if I was willing to move beyond rodents and insects.”

She sighed, her ears flattening. “There couldn’t have been many of them. I’m certain Qiangde and Luoyan began with dogs, perhaps because of their relative availability, or perhaps because dogs are known to be fiercely loyal to their masters, and they wanted to mix that trait in with the rest. Certainly Howling Moon Wolves weren’t domesticated beasts. In any case, Tegra was one of the first of ‘my’ kobolds. There were others, more or less successful, but she was the first to retain her human intelligence. Too much so, as it turned out.

“We gave her a tribe, once I was convinced that the experiments would continue with or without me. I created the first collar for her, so she would stop trying to escape or turn her people against us. I didn’t mean for it to be used on anyone else, but Luoyan said he would kill her if she didn’t stop. He’d learned everything he could from her, and we knew how to make others, so he and Qiangde were perfectly willing to harvest her core to use in the next round of experiments.”

Dongwu gave up trying to be subtle about the way she was clinging to her hammer, and simply pulled it in front of her, wrapping her arms around it like a puppy with a favorite toy. “That was when I found out about Zhangwo’s kobolds. He was given my notes and told to use them to create a new race. His mistakes led to my kobolds, and my mistakes led to Nucai’s. Before I knew it, the five great tribes were established, and two generations of kobolds had been born. After Tegra’s first attempt at rebellion, I added a requirement that kobolds must obey their masters, and that was perhaps the worst thing I could have done.”

She seemed to droop. “I saw the uses to which my inventions were being turned, and I withdrew, focusing instead on teaching my kobolds how to create. They were so smart, and with their nearly human hands, they could do almost anything a human could do.”

A small laugh escaped her, and she looked at Kyla again. “For a little while, I was almost proud, and then I met someone. A kobold. One of the Woodblades, the last tribe I created. I’d focused on empowering women, and for some reason, most of the Howling Moon Wolves who had strong cores were female. I encouraged the females to embrace their power, taking joy in seeing them grow and thrive, leading their tribes. But the wolf I used for the Woodblades was the last, a male, and the only human remaining was a man.”

Her eyes slid away. “I won’t make excuses. I knew what I was doing. What I had done. But it seemed less evil, since I hadn’t started it. I was saving them, because Qiangde, Zhangwo, and even Nucai were just following what I’d said I would do, anyway, but they weren’t learning anything from it. No, they weren’t discovering anything. Those lives were being wasted, and so I thought it would be better if they at least meant something.”

Dongwu began to tap the hammer again. “Then Eizri was sent to be one of my helpers. He was one of the first Woodblades to be assigned to me, since I preferred Mithrilblades and Magmablades. They were more useful, you see. But while he couldn’t walk through stone or shape metal with his hands, he was an artist. Like my mother.”

Once again, her eyes returned to the empty doorway leading back to the room filled with colorful hangings and the picture of her mother. “He was funny, and kind, and it seemed like he didn’t even know he was supposed to be afraid of me. He told me what it was really like, being a kobold. I pulled my kobolds back, refusing to allow Zhangwo or Nucai to command them any longer. I stopped work in the top of the mountain, and withdrew from the middle city almost entirely. We returned here, to the Deep, and stayed out of the conflicts that began to arise between Zhangwo and Nucai.”

Her hand lifted, and she fingered her muzzle almost absently, tracing the length and shape of it. “But Qiangde wasn’t done with his experiments. I went to sleep one night as a woman, and woke after a nightmare of lost time, looking as I do now. Zhangwo and Nucai were changed as well, without our choice or consent, just like all of those we had changed before. I went into hiding, trying to blend in with my kobolds, but Zhangwo became a madman, raving about kobolds and Qiangde. Nucai… He vanished into the Tree, and I haven’t seen him leave it since.”