“The Dragon?” Kaz repeated, while Li turned her gaze on the core before them with sudden interest.

Heishe sighed, nudging the silent core with her nose almost as if she expected it to wake and speak to her. It didn’t, of course, but she curled around the remnants of its resting place almost protectively.

Heishe murmured.

Kaz stared at the core, which burned with a subdued fire so deep that its red was nearly black. Unlike Heishe’s water ki, which moved constantly, ebbing and flowing as she shifted, this lay still, in a thick pool.

“What is it doing here?” he asked quietly, respectful of the deep sorrow in Heishe’s voice.

Black eyes pierced him, and the serpent hissed with sudden fury. She looked around, and Kaz felt confusion push away the anger.

Li asked. She had been staring fixedly at the core since the moment Heishe revealed it. Now she tore her eyes away and looked at Heishe instead.

Heishe hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

Li asked, and Kaz felt his heart pound, waiting for the reply.

Heishe said, sounding like she’d really rather not answer. She hissed as if in pain, staring around at the cavern.

Kaz felt his shoulders tense. He stared at the dull core, cautiously stretching out his own ki toward it. He’d felt it, hadn’t he? He’d known something was here, at least. Something which felt very familiar. But how could it? He was certain he’d never seen this core before.

When his ki touched that of the red core, he felt a sudden spark; a connection that felt like he’d stared into a fire for so long that he’d begun to feel like it was looking back. He blinked, certain he must have imagined it, but both Li and Heishe were staring at him.

Heishe demanded, raising a head which suddenly had a black hood spreading behind it.

Kaz took a step back, and Li shifted so she was in between Kaz and the Snake. Kaz stretched out his hands, but he didn’t know if he meant to pull Li back, launch some kind of attack, or simply try to calm the two females before anything happened. Heishe sank back down, though, the hood melding back into her body with a ripple like a breeze over the surface of a stream.

the snake said.

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he told her. He’d never tried to describe his feeling that the mountain was linked to him, and sometimes watched or spoke to him. Li knew because she felt it through him, but surely anyone else would think that his mind had been lost. But he knew Heishe had gone through his memories at least once, so surely she already knew? She was keeping things from him and Li, and perhaps if he wanted her to tell him her truth, he needed to trust her with his.

“There’s something here,” he told Heishe. “It’s not conscious, but it’s tied into something that is. That something is right there.” He lifted his finger and pointed it at the core, then, slowly, uncertainly, downward. “It’s linked to me - or rather to the mountain, which is linked to me. I think it all has to do with whatever Nucai did to me, all those years ago.”

Heishe stared at him, and he could almost feel the weight of that gaze. It was expectant, but also wary. Finally, she said,

Kaz felt a terrible sense of revulsion at the very idea, and said, “No,” at the same moment Li said, Kaz turned to stare at his dragon, who stared back, looking almost as startled as he felt, but not at all as if she’d like to take the word back.

Heishe began to laugh, and the raspy hiss swelled to fill the space in which they stood. Even the core seemed to shiver in response. she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

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Suddenly, she seemed almost eager, and tapped the core with the very tip of her tail, sending it rolling toward Li. Heishe lifted her coils out of the way as it moved, so it met no resistance until it came to rest against Li’s toes.

The golden dragon stared down at it, and Kaz twitched with the urge to snatch the thing away. But he could feel something passing through their bond. It wasn’t hunger, but it wasn’t not hunger. It was a longing for something she wasn’t ready for. Not yet. Swallowing hard, she flicked the core back at Heishe, who gave an almost inaudible sigh.

Li said firmly.

In spite of himself, Kaz felt a laugh bubble up in his chest. As if something not being hers had ever stopped Li before. Li felt his amusement and glared at him, but something dark drained from her, and she sent him an image of herself, round as a ball, rolling around after having eaten an enormous core she couldn’t digest. It was funny, but it also wasn’t, because there was a little too much truth in it.

Heishe asked, and the core vanished into her coils.

“Will it? Wouldn’t this Loong just take Li over if she ate it?” Kaz asked, feeling a sudden rush of anger as he stared at her. He laid his hand over his own core, then stepped up beside Li. “Heishe, what do you know that you won’t tell us? And why?”

The serpent’s forked tongue flickered out. she turned in and in on herself, becoming smaller with each turning, With that, she slithered up his leg and around his waist so quickly that Kaz barely had a chance to jump, and when he looked down, she was as still and silent as a strip of leather once again.

Kaz and Li stared at each other, frustration flowing between them. What choice did Heishe believe he or Li would have to make? And what could she possibly tell them that would make them choose a different one? He wanted to tear off the ‘belt’ and shake Heishe until she answered, but at least he finally understood that she at least believed she was doing what was best, and she wasn’t just being enigmatic for her own entertainment.

At last, Li broke eye contact, looking in the direction of the broken pedestal where the Dragon’s core had laid. she demanded, and Kaz, too, looked around. The last time he’d seen the core, Heishe had wrapped it in her coils, and-

“Heishe has it,” he said. “Somehow.” And that was truly a mystery. The serpent had neither pack nor pouch, and he was certain she hadn’t swallowed it, so where was the core? He closed his eyes, trying to sense its presence, but it was as if it had utterly vanished. They still stood in a thick miasma of its ki, but it no longer had a source, and he suspected that it would begin to fade soon.

He felt a spark of concern at that thought. If Loong’s core was the reason there was so much Fire ki in this part of the mountain, what would happen now that it was gone? Would the mines even exist in a few years? What would become of the city without the ki-crystals that powered everything there?

Conflicting emotions poured through his bond with Li. There was relief and disappointment, worry and also a deep feeling of calm confidence. She shook those off and raised her wings, looking up at the three buildings which felt more like towers now that they were at the bottom of the bowl.

she said.

Kaz shook his head, then shrugged. “There’s still something, but it’s below us.” He took a single step forward, his paws crunching through the fallen ki-crystals. Looking straight down, he said softly, “The Tree is directly below us. It’s the heart - the core - of the mountain, and that’s where I need to go. But I had to come here first.”

Li asked, watching him carefully.

Kaz’s claws scraped against something buried beneath the broken and scattered crystals. Kneeling, he brushed them aside, revealing the precise spot where the core had sat. There, buried in the stone, was the top of a perfect ki-crystal, brilliant red and larger than any he’d ever seen before.

Li demanded, leaning forward. Kaz had already pulled his mage-knife from its sheath, though, and had begun cutting away at the polished stone surrounding the crystal. It was surprisingly difficult to cut, even with a steady flow of ki to the blade, and by the time he’d carved out a hole more than a foot deep, Kaz found himself panting for breath.

Li asked, lending her own claws to the effort. To her annoyance, she found that she could barely damage the impossibly hard stone, and quickly sat back again, glaring at the rock with deep irritation.

At last, Kaz gave in, climbing back up out of the hole. There was now a column of red ki-crystal in the center of it, standing just a little shorter than he was. “I think it must go all the way down,” he said, gingerly tapping the six-sided crystal, which chimed in answer. The first time he’d accidentally touched it, he’d been afraid it would break, but it hadn’t, and by now he almost wished it would, if only to have an end to the thing.

Kaz stilled. He’d lost track of it in his urge to dig out the crystal and find an answer to at least one of what seemed like a never-ending series of questions, but Li was right. He’d said the Tree was directly beneath them, and he was absolutely certain he was right. Which meant this ki-crystal was at least leading in that direction, even if it didn’t go all the way. Because it couldn’t. Could it?

“I think,” he said, “that we need to go to the Tree now.”

Li asked, and that single word was filled with the frustration of a dragon who had just spent several hours watching her kobold try to hollow out the center of a mountain all by himself.

Kaz scratched his ear, staring up at the looming buildings and the complete and utter lack of anything that looked like an actual exit. “Are you ready to fly some more?”

Li immediately sank down, extending a leg so Kaz could climb up onto it, in spite of the fact that it was entirely unnecessary.