Elder Long’s fingers immediately closed around the small figure, and he drew his hand back. “What?”

Li insisted, staring after the statue hungrily.

Kaz didn’t know what was going on, but he recognized that tone of voice. He couldn’t see what Li was seeing, not this time, but she - or whatever she was speaking for - did, and that was enough. It had never led them astray, and had probably saved their lives more than once.

“Please,” Kaz said. “Trust us.” He met Lianhua’s eyes, and she nodded slowly, then reached out and laid her hand on top of her grandfather’s.

“Trust me,” she said, and he released the statue into her grasp.

Deactivating the talisman was as simple as activating it. Elder Long touched his finger to the statue’s forehead, and when he lifted it, there was a tiny rectangle clinging to the tip. This expanded into a slip of red paper covered in painted runes, and as it did, the little figure expanded as well. Within moments, a female human lay on a blanket stretched across the ground. Her eyes were closed, her hands laid across her abdomen, and every part of her looked ancient, as if old age itself had been given the form of a tiny, wrinkled female.

Together, those watching gave a soft sigh of relief when that thin, fragile ribcage rose and fell beneath the opulent robes. Kaz and Li were watching something else entirely, however, and they leaned forward, staring intently not at the female’s surface, but what lay beneath.

Simply put, her channels were a mess. Thickly scarred in some places, weak in others, they were alternately blocked or leaking. She had only two colors of ki, fire and wood, which Kaz suspected was the only reason she was still alive. Fire sought to spread, to grow, but could be destructive in that growth. Meanwhile, Wood fed Fire, but it also wished to grow, and together the two of them sustained her ki cycle as it attempted to expand, barely staying ahead of the dissolution that crept through her body.

“What did you do to her?” Kaz breathed, his eyes wide. Reaching out, he laid a hand across her forehead, gently urging her upper dantian to settle. Rather than spinning, her ki kept impacting bits of gray, compressed mana, exactly like the unformed core in Elder Long’s abdomen. It was sticky and chunky, though, blocking and unsettling her cycle, turning it into a chaotic swirl. No wonder she was unable to think properly!

“What is it?” Elder Long demanded, leaning forward. Beside him, Lianhua did the same, but instead of looking at Kaz, she was watching her grandmother, trying to see what Kaz and Li did.

“It looks like she was trying to form a core, but it…shattered. Pieces of it are everywhere. I don’t even know if they can be removed,” Kaz said absently, His eyes shifting downward. The upper dantian was too small and too full of debris. If he was going to heal this female, he would have to start somewhere else.

Her middle dantian was in much the same condition, but because it was larger, the pieces there had clumped together. Unfortunately, there was very little ki left in the old female’s reserves, and Kaz had a feeling that this dwindling resource was the reason Elder Long had finally had to use the talisman or give his mate up to death.

Blue and red ki began to flood the dantian as Kaz watched, and he jerked his eyes up to Li. She had placed a paw just above the other female’s heart, and was pushing her own ki into the shriveled body. The old female spasmed, twisting away, then coughed violently, black-speckled blood dribbling from her chin. Thankfully, she didn’t open her eyes, but both Elder Long and Lianhua looked horrified.

Kaz said, but the dragon had already released the connection. She, too, knew the potential danger of allowing her ki to enter someone else’s cycle. It was bad enough that she’d allowed her ki to touch that of the other female at all.

They both watched, holding their breath as Lianhua’s grandmother drew in a deep, shuddering breath, her muscles relaxing again. She was curled on her side now, but when Elder Long reached out to turn her, Kaz grabbed his hand without thinking. It seemed like the powerful old human should have been able to shake Kaz free without even trying, but instead Kaz stopped the movement easily. He knew Elder Long wasn’t making a serious effort, but still, they stared at each other for a long moment before a cough from the female between them drew their focus back to her.

However unwise it had been for Li to give this female some of her own ki, somehow it had worked. Fresh red and blue ki now turned easily in her middle dantian, flowing out through her abused channels. Her alabaster cheeks turned faintly pink, and Elder Long finally withdrew his hand.

Li said softly. Kaz almost told her there wasn’t one, but then he actually looked, and to his shock, there was. It was tiny, smaller even than the one belonging to Chix, but still somehow slightly stronger. Rather than the gray of a human core, or the dingy color of Chix’s all but powerless one, it held colors: the soft blue of the sky at the end of day, and the red of a beetle’s wing.

Kaz asked, moving his hand down to hover over her abdomen. He could feel it now, the faintest pulse of ki, buried beneath broken mana and an uncontrolled cycle.

Li said again.

And it was true. How, Kaz didn’t know, but pieces of Qiangde’s lineage had come together in this female, allowing her to be born with a tiny, perfect beast core, though hundreds of years had passed since Qiangde himself had died. That core had probably granted her a relatively easy path to power when she was young, but its presence would prevent her from forming a human core, and had probably also made it so that the medicines that were supposed to strengthen her had poisoned her instead. How many other cores had she eaten, in bits and pieces, in pills and potions?

Kaz lifted his eyes to Lianhua, taking in her white hair and violet eyes. She had a gift that was rare even among her people. One that probably came from her draconic heritage. Her grandfather’s blood had thinned out Qiangde’s, allowing her and her mother to live relatively normal human lives, but her grandmother wasn’t human. Not quite.

Kaz asked, turning his gaze to his dragon.

Li shook her head.

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Kaz felt the fur on his spine lift as a shudder ran down his back. There was no doubt that the broken human core had to be removed. It was causing too much disruption to an already battered system. But that would still leave the female with a tiny dragon core, one which was innately opposed to everything she might do to repair her body and ascend, if she truly wished to do so.

he said, staring at it. It was so weak, and there were minute cracks in the surface, but it still functioned, still added a tiny bit of ki to a world that, he suddenly understood, had far too little.

Li stared at him, and he could feel her own inner conflict. Everything in her said to strengthen that fragile little core, but while that would probably grant Lianhua’s grandmother a few more years of life, it would also lock her irrevocably to this world. What should she do?

he suggested tentatively.

Li finished, her relief palpable.

Kaz stretched out his hand, palm up, and Li laid her paw over it. Hers was still a little smaller than his, with long, slim fingers. Her claws were sharper, but his were thicker. They wound their fingers together, sinking into their bond, and then into the body of the female who lay between them.

Kaz didn’t know how long it took. He would carefully pluck a piece of splintered core free, and Li would send a wash of ki to carry it away to the relatively empty space within the central dantian. There, they gently prodded at it, breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces that could be expelled safely from the body. They started with small pieces in areas that were relatively undamaged, and worked their way up to more challenging sections, until at last they returned to the upper dantian.

This was where the worst of the damage lay. The walls of the dantian were thick with splintered mana, and when Kaz tried to tug them free, it was like removing the cursed runes from a dragon. Was it just part of this dantian’s nature to cling to such things, or did the two apparently unrelated issues actually have something else in common?

Still, unlike with the dragons, who at least had healthy bodies, this female would die if the pieces weren’t removed, and soon. So Kaz gritted his teeth and pulled them out, leaving small holes that leaked ki. By the time they were done, her dantian was barely intact, and he had no doubt that some of the damage would never heal. At least not unless something very significant happened.

When all of the pieces were out and dissolved, Kaz and Li released each other. Kaz, for one, found it strange to be alone with his own thoughts again, feeling only his own heart beating in his chest, and it took a moment to realize that Lianhua was kneeling across from him, not to his left.

Vile black goo was spattered on the ground around the frail old female. Her face and chin were streaked with it, but Lianhua was wiping it away even as more was expelled. Elder Long held his mate’s hand, looking helpless and more than a little angry. When he saw that Kaz’s eyes were open, he snapped, “What have you done? You’re torturing her, not healing her!”

Kaz shook his head wearily. “We need to speak to her, but she couldn’t think while that was in her.”

“What could you possibly need to say? I can tell you anything you need to know. Just help her!” the old male cried, fingers tightening around his mate’s hands.

A soft groan answered him, and his expression went blank as he looked down into amethyst eyes that were even more vibrantly purple than Lianhua’s. They blinked, hazy with pain, and then her lips formed words. Both Elder Long and Lianhua leaned in to hear as she said, “...never…listen.” She lifted one hand from his and tapped him gently on the cheek in an affectionate rebuke.

Tears overflowed her mate’s eyes, and Lianhua caught her breath in a sob. Behind her, tears were streaming down Yingtao’s cheeks, and for some reason Chi Yincang was holding Mei, stroking her copper-pink fur, though his face remained inscrutable.

Turning her gaze to Kaz, then Li, the old female seemed somehow unsurprised to find that a kobold and a dragon were crouching over her. Had she been able to feel their presence as they worked to save her? Li had given her quite a lot of ki. Suddenly worried, Kaz glanced between his dragon and the old female lying on the ground, but thankfully there was no visible link between them.

Li leaned in until all the supine female could see was her face, all golden scales and delicate snout, with elegantly curved horns like a natural crown. she said simply.

She stopped, and Kaz felt her revulsion at what she was about to say.

Kaz could tell that the female didn’t understand. That was fair. Neither he nor Li truly understood either. They could only do their best, and so must she.

The amethyst eyes turned toward her mate, and lips so pale they were nearly white curved up. “I want…to be with my Yufei. And I want Lianhua…happy.”

The choice was made. Kaz was fairly certain that Lianhua would be happy with any solution where her beloved grandmother didn’t die, at least not yet. But there was only one way for Elder Long and his mate to be together.

Kaz looked at Elder Long. “You said you had a way to help her gain more ki,” he said.

The old male nodded, but frowned. “I brought the pills that helped the most in the past, but-”

Li said.

Kaz and Li clasped hand to paw again, and Kaz crushed the tiny dragon core with his own ki.

The old female screamed, the sound tearing from her throat as she arched backwards. Her joints popped, and her muscles spasmed, sending her into convulsions. Bloody foam gathered at the corners of her mouth. The humans stared, horrified.

“Give her the medicine!” Kaz barked at Elder Long, and the human jerked his head back, forcing himself to look away from his mate. He held out his hand, and a golden orb formed in his palm. It looked too large for a human to swallow whole, but he shoved it into his mate’s mouth and down her throat with a grim determination that showed how he had reached the peak of human power. He would do whatever he had to do to achieve his goal.

The scream choked off as the medicine moved down into the female’s body, ki pouring through her channels, filling her dantians. Only a moment ago, those channels had connected to her core, rather than a lower dantian, but now one formed before their eyes, opening like a night-blooming flower Kaz had spent an hour watching one night in camp.

This ki was different from what a natural core produced. It was refined from the ki of the world, but separate from it, and Kaz could finally see how it could then be made into something entirely different. All ki was one, part of a whole, but this had been removed from that cycle, that whole, at least for as long as it was held within this human shell. No wonder the conflict between this and her core had nearly torn her body apart.

It was done. Kaz and Li sat back, opening a single pair of eyes that split into two pairs only with the greatest reluctance. There in front of them lay a human female, white hair daubed liberally with stinking goo, as was her face. But that face had changed. No longer was it ancient and wrinkled, blank of thought or strained with agony.

Now it looked like Lianhua, but softer, with a rounder chin and cheeks that sagged gently. Faint wrinkles still splayed out from her eyes, but when she blinked them open, their deep amethyst hue had shifted to a more natural purplish blue. Kaz had destroyed her core, but Li had removed her dragon, leaving only a human behind.

“Baihe,” Elder Long said as Lianhua gasped, “Grandmother!” The two fell forward, arms going around the stinking figure lying before them. Slowly, her arms came up, clasping her mate close as she gently stroked Lianhua’s white hair.