While Snen and Li made their way back, Kaz used his own silence rune and told everyone else the bare outline of what had happened. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t tell them about Kus Ukark’s apology, but it seemed like something private; a part of the story that only the xiyi themselves should share. He did tell the humans about removing the duqiu, since it could be important that the stones could be taken out even at such a distance.
Snen had never been a light-hearted person, but when he returned to them, he seemed both relieved and determined. Some shadow that had lain over him since they met was lifted, allowing him to walk forward with fresh resolve.
“We could meet more of my people at any time,” he told them as Kaz contained their voices. “I would prefer if you could simply render them unconscious, but if they must die, I ask that you do so quickly and as painlessly as possible.” In spite of the seriousness of his words, the xiyi seemed at peace with them, yellow eyes never wavering as he continued.
“The section we’re entering is where the shamans live, and while there are a few like Kus Ukark, none will hesitate to kill you. The humans are held in buildings much like the one your friend Raff is in, but there will be guards both inside and outside. These guards are nothing like myself and Chekdrusk. While we were trained as scouts, and are simply doing our best as guards, these xiyi have trained as warriors since they were barely more than hatchlings.”
He turned his gaze on Reina. “You have met their like before. We’ve all heard of their attempts to capture you. They will not be trying to take you alive this time. They also will not allow you to take the prisoners. Kaz, you must remove the fangqiu as soon as possible. But be aware that once you do, the humans no longer have value, and the guards will not hesitate to kill them as well as you.”
“What’s the point?” Reina burst out. “Why are you - they - doing all of this?”
The xiyi bowed his head. “We do as we must.”
“But why?”
The reptilian simply bowed even deeper, leaving Reina and Jinn to glare helplessly at the ridge of scales along the back of his head and neck.
They took a left turn, and then another and another, making Kaz realize they had traveled in a wide, sloping circle. He continued to see the almost-familiar rune at every intersection, but they didn’t always turn toward it. Still, it was there, as if every path eventually led toward whatever it meant.
They didn’t have to kill the xiyi. Chi Yincang took care of that for them. By the time Kaz and the others reached them, any enemies had been reduced to piles of lifeless scales and staring eyes. Two of the fallen figures wore the same bulky robes as Nucai, and there was something both strangely satisfying and repellant about seeing the garments stained with blood.
After six turns and five deaths, they stopped just outside a cavern that was far larger than either of the two they’d seen before. Snen didn’t bother to wait for Kaz or Lianhua to hide their voices before he spoke.
“At any time, someone will discover us or the fallen,” he said. “When you hear a roar, run. Leave anyone you haven’t saved behind. No one can defeat Jianying.”
Jianying? Li helped Kaz pull up the memory of Qiangde, shouting at his black-scaled attacker. Jianying was the name of the emperor’s brother and his betrayer, though it had been unclear if he was the leader of the xiyi at the time of the rebellion, or simply a co-conspirator.
How could that Jianying still be alive, though? Or was this a descendant with the same name? According to Lianhua, Qiangde must have died around eight hundred years before. But then again, both Nucai and Zhangwo still lingered, however unnaturally, so why not an ancient dragon? But had he, too, been struck by this ‘curse’, or was he the only intelligent dragon remaining other than Li?
Then Li pulled forth another memory. A different one, so buried in terror and awe that in spite of having shown it to the dragon a hundred times or more, he had never made the connection. Jianying was an enormous black dragon. Smaller than Qiangde, at least when they had their final battle, but who knew how he had grown since then?
But Kaz did know. Because the huge black dragon that attacked Li’s parent just after her siblings hatched looked just like Qiangde’s memory of Jianying. From the shape and location of his horns to the absolute blackness of each and every scale, he was a match.
“We don’t know that they’re the same,” Kaz murmured as the others shuffled around him, watching as Li apparently tried to crush him.
“Kaz-?” Lianhua said.
He shook his head. “Just a moment.”
Because as much as he wanted to be able to sit down and hold Li while they worked their way through both his memories and Qiangde’s, they simply didn’t have time. If that monster was truly here, Snen was right. Even Chi Yincang would lose if he attempted to fight the great dragon.
Reaching up, Kaz stroked Li’s neck, tilting his head so his jaw pressed against hers. “We have to go.” There was no time. No time for questions, contemplation, sorrow, or anger. Right now, they had to get the human royals out.
“Can you hide us?” Kaz asked Li softly. She sniffled but nodded, smooth scales sliding against his fur. He turned to Lianhua, waiting for instructions.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The human female looked uncertain, but she huffed out a quiet breath, looking around at all of them. “Reina, you and Jinn need to go with Kaz and Li. Your priority is to get to Reina’s family and remove the rune-stones from them. Convince them to let you, and then get them out.”
Glancing at Chi Yincang and Yingtao, she said, “Our job is to keep you and them safe. That’s it.”
“What about me?” Kyla demanded, puffing herself up. At her feet, Mei squeaked, and the young kobold said, “Us, I mean.”
Lianhua bit her lip. “Hide. You’re our secret weapon. If it seems like someone is in trouble, help them, then return to stealth. Do not show yourself unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Kyla’s eyes narrowed, seeming to assess Lianhua’s words, looking for any attempt to keep her out of the conflict simply in order to protect her. The human female was right, though. Kyla was fast, smart, and stealthy, but any xiyi they’d seen was more than capable of simply overwhelming her physically once she ran out of ki.
“All right,” she said, and they began to move.
The cavern was big, but its sheer size made it difficult to watch every part of it. Xiyi patrolled the open space, most of them wearing the simple leather and cowled cloaks Jinn and Reina had described. There were a few of the shamans as well, but these seemed to be posted in one location, instead of wandering freely.
And it did seem that there was no pattern to their paths. Unlike when Kaz had to cross the ordered nest of the hoyi, there was no predicting when the xiyi would turn or where they would go. That made the space between the tunnel and the three long buildings standing in the middle of the cavern a constantly changing maze.
Their only hope was the fact that the guards each carried their own lanterns. This meant one of their hands was occupied, and hopefully also that they couldn’t see in the dark as well as Kaz’s people. Some of them had the same blue, ordered ki as Kus Ukark, though none were as strong. Perhaps they didn’t have enough strength to maintain a ki-light?
Kaz stared out into the space, and the moment he was certain he could move between the shifting lights, he started out. Jinn and Reina stayed right behind him, though he could almost hear their hearts pounding in their chests. So far, it didn’t seem that the xiyi could smell nearly as well as kobolds, which was good, because both females smelled of fear.
Kaz watched to the right as Li watched left. The world narrowed to moving bubbles of light, the reptilians in the center fading out to blurry shadows that didn’t matter, at least not yet. Together, kobold and dragon navigated the darkness, listening for the faintest brush of claw against stone, or a shift of illumination in their direction. Both sets of eyes formed a single vision, watching everything.
Until Reina tripped. It was a small thing, just a catch of her toe in a narrow crevice that Kaz stepped over without even noticing. Jinn caught her, so the princess never even stumbled, just dipped slightly toward the ground, her slipper scuffing over stone softly as she straightened again.
It was enough.
The lights turned and shifted toward them in an uncanny ripple. Xiyi claws scratched against the ground, one after another, as they ran toward the tiny sound.
Kaz stepped backward. This would have been easier in his human body, simply because of its greater height, but he wrapped one arm around each female’s waist, then pushed ki into his legs. They were halfway to their destination, with perhaps two hundred feet remaining. Honestly, they’d gotten farther than Kaz expected.
He jumped straight up, clutching Jinn and Reina tight against his body. Both females let out startled sounds, which was unfortunate, but they were already above the densest parts of the circles of light, nearly touching the stalactites hanging some fifty feet overhead. Vaguely, Kaz hoped there were no lopos here, either, and then Li’s wings snapped out.
One kobold and two slender human females weighed less than five hundred feet of ki-infused rope, which meant that Li could carry them, at least for a little while. And this time she didn’t have to haul them up, but simply let them down exactly where they needed to be.
Li glided along the ceiling, draining both of their central dantians at a terrible rate. Kaz had really hoped that if they had to do this at all, they would be closer, but here they were, and their job was to get to the captives. The roof of the first building rose up beneath them, and Li let them fall.
Apparently, when the xiyi put a roof on a building underground, they didn’t bother to make it terribly sturdy. After all, the building wasn’t meant to keep out wind, rain, snow, heat or cold. No, it had one purpose only, and that was to keep the humans inside. When Kaz’s paws hit the tiles, they cracked and fell away, offering next to no resistance.
Reina and Jinn screamed, but Kaz pushed a shield out around them, taking most of the impact and diverting a good bit of the debris away as well. He landed on something surprisingly soft, had less than a second to realize it was a bed, and then rolled out of the way as an arrow skipped off of his shield.
To Kaz’s surprise, Jinn and Reina reacted just as quickly. They had spent the last month being chased and attacked with little to no warning, and it showed. However surprised they were, they, too, were already moving, and Reina even had a thin shield up. He doubted it was enough to actually stop one of the arrows, but it would slow or deflect it, and that could be enough to save her life.
Li lifted from his back, diving toward a xiyi and biting down on the shaft of the arrow he was setting to his bow. It snapped in half, and the reptilian released the bow, staggering back, yellow eyes huge as he stared at the dragon.
Then Kaz was lost in his own battle, a knife swinging toward his chest from behind a nearby captive. The xiyi was crouching behind the human female, who looked as if she’d been larger before she was diminished by captivity.
Shoving the human forward, the xiyi charged, but he wasn’t counting on Kaz’s shield making the prisoner slip off to the side. Rather than having his own rather fleshier shield, the xiyi found himself entirely exposed, and Kaz’s mage-blade removed his head before he could do more than hiss in surprise.
Li was clinging to her own opponent now, teeth and claws tearing his scales to shreds, but he didn’t even seem to notice. His own claws slashed at the dragon, and crimson stained her flank as she drew back, breathing out the purest flame Kaz had yet seen her produce. The xiyi made a terrible sound as it engulfed his face, and Kaz put him out of his misery. Burns truly were agonizing, and though they were enemies, Kaz hated to see anyone suffer.
He longed to examine his dragon’s wound, but there were three guards here, not just two, so Kaz crouched and spun, looking for the third. He needn’t have worried. The final xiyi lay sprawled on the floor, a knife hilt protruding from his eye as Jinn stood over him, panting.
Li fell into his arms and Kaz began pushing blue ki into her wound as he looked around for the last member of their party. And there she was. Reina was locked in the embrace of a woman with hair just as pink as her own, and both were crying.