Raising his hands, Kaz pictured a shield covering him, Snen, and the dragon on the ground. A barrage of attacks - physical, as well as both mana and ki-based - assaulted them from all sides, and he felt his ki drain away precipitously. Was this what it felt like when Bella tried to remain standing while the roar pressed her down? It was terrible, worse even than when he first heard Jianying roar in the hidden xiyi den.
But when arrows fell and spells sputtered, Kaz, Snen, and dragon remained. Once again, everyone stared, but now for a different reason. He could see them glancing at their enemies as well as their own people, all of them asking, “Who are they? Whose side are they on?”
Kaz briefly debated allowing everyone to wonder, but he doubted if anyone would actually leave them alone in order to return their focus to where it belonged. Everyone was well and truly distracted by now.
But he’d forgotten that there was one being who wouldn’t be confused. From overhead, Jianying roared yet again. There was a different sound to it now, a terrible and triumphant ring, and Kaz abruptly found that no one was looking at him at all. Instead, those who were still on their feet craned their heads to stare up at the dragon blotting out the sky.
Just like his illusion, Jianying landed on the stadium. He was indeed noticeably smaller than the false dragon had been, but the damage he did was far from illusory. Wings shattered benches, while his clawed feet crumbled bricks. Fortunately, the great dragon settled on the opposite side of the stadium from where Kaz’s friends crouched, but some other humans who had still been attempting to hide weren’t so lucky. They were sent tumbling by his great tail, their screams the last sign of them.
Beside Kaz, Snen was trembling, his large yellow eyes fixed on the black dragon. The other xiyi bowed, but Snen did not, and Kaz realized that he was shaking not from fear but from fury.
“We create our own fate. We rule no one, and no one may rule us,” Snen muttered, his hissing voice oddly rhythmic, as if speaking a howl. “We are free in our hearts, if not our bodies, and one day we will be free in truth.” He crouched, his hand going to the knife hanging from his belt. “And today is that day.”
The xiyi stood as if he would launch himself toward the dragon, but Kaz caught his arm. He wasn’t sure what Snen intended to do, but he was certain that one xiyi couldn’t defeat a dragon, at least not without the kind of magic they had used against Qiangde. Even then, it had taken two and another dragon.
“Do you have-,” Kaz cast his mind back to Qiangde’s memories, trying to remember what, if anything, the old dragon emperor had called the power used to hurt him. “A statue that can hurt him?”
Snen’s look of bewilderment was answer enough, and Kaz dragged the xiyi down behind the brown dragon’s bulk. It wasn’t a particularly large beast, as dragons went, but it was more than large enough to cover both males.
Arrows and power began to fly again, but this time the humans were very much in retreat. Jianying could raze the stadium in a matter of minutes, and his mere arrival had destabilized the building in such a way that the section where he sat looked like it could come down around him at any moment. Then the overly loud voice rang out again, for the first time since Kaz destroyed the illusion of Jianying.
“Lay down your weapons and submit to the examination and the duqiu or fangqiu, and you will be allowed to leave,” it hissed, and Kaz peered over the brown dragon to see the black-scaled xiyi’s mouth moving. “Continue to fight, and you will all be killed, and the rest of the population will have the qiu implanted anyway.”
“The mages and the army are on their way, you pox-ridden lizard,” a human warrior shouted, his deep voice echoing from inside his metal helmet. “You won’t-”
The xiyi flicked his hand, and blood spurted from the joints of the armor as the male’s mana was pulled out, leaving him as dark as a smothered torch. To Kaz’s shock, the ball of mana flew away from the crumpling body and into the air between human and xiyi, creating a small cloud of mana that quickly dispersed.
Li saw this through Kaz’s eyes, though so far she was still in place behind the pile of rubble, waiting for Kaz to need her. She had nearly come when everyone attacked him and Snen, but even she hadn’t believed she could fly unscathed through the torrent of attacks. Now, she said,
Kaz shook his head. He had no more idea than she did. How could this xiyi simply rip someone else’s power from their body? Tilting his head toward the xiyi leader, Kaz whispered, “Who is that?”
Snen’s sharp teeth were bared as he said, “Ganring. He’s the only son of Emperor Jianying and Guaruka, our queen. It’s because of his conceit that we have been infiltrating the human lands. For centuries, Emperor Jianying was mostly satisfied with being venerated and indulged. Then Ganring was hatched, and from the moment he reached adulthood, he has desired nothing more than to recreate the great Diushi Empire his teachers taught him so much about. He believes that because we bear the blood of the dragons, who ruled the humans for nearly a millennium, it is our right to do so again.”
He shook his head, and Kaz’s extensive experience with Li allowed him to read the derision on his reptilian features. “It goes against our belief that no being should rule another. He brought the use of the qiu back, and made his mother queen in fact as well as title.”
And now Kaz actually had more questions, if that was possible, but for the moment he pushed most of them to the back of his mind and asked only the most important one. “How did he kill that human?”
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Snen shook his head, and now he seemed sorrowful. “It is the power of the qiu. Only the royal line can command them, allowing them to steal power from anyone with either a duqiu or fangqiu. They can also take the energy of those without such a stone, but it kills them instantly.”
That was…horrifying. “Can he kill or control someone without power? Does it matter if it’s mana or ki?”
Snen’s head swayed from side to side in his version of a shrug. “All xiyi have power, so I don’t know. What is the difference?”
The difference was that the human had had mana, so it was possible Ganring’s trick wouldn’t work on someone with ki. Though so far all of the xiyi Kaz had seen bore ki, not mana, and Snen hadn’t seemed at all surprised when the human burst within his metal shell. That implied that it didn’t matter what kind of power the victim had. But what about someone with no power at all?
Kaz looked around, taking in the momentary lull in fighting. The humans weren’t sure what to do now that the loud one had been killed so easily, while the xiyi were holding their attack until they knew if the humans would surrender. It made sense that Ganring would want to keep the most powerful of the humans alive if he planned to steal their mana for himself once the duqiu were implanted.
The common people, most of whom had little to no power, would serve no real purpose, however. Ganring probably wasn’t lying when he said he intended to place these qiu and then leave the humans mostly to themselves. Kaz couldn’t imagine the difficulty of commanding an entire city, much less a country containing more humans than his mountain held kobolds. It would certainly be more effort than it was worth.
Then his time to think was over, as Ganring’s yellow eyes flicked toward the brown dragon, taking in Kaz and Snen crouched beside the beast. He lifted a hand, pointing one sharp claw toward Kaz, and two of the tall xiyi behind him began to move forward.
Kaz glanced at the creature, who was now resting on his belly rather than his side. His eyes were bright and watchful, but his core was still drained, and his wings hung limp at his sides. Kaz answered.
There was a brief silence as the two xiyi advanced and Ganring continued to exhort the human warriors to give up.
She was using a great deal of red ki as she moved, just like Kyla, so Kaz wasn’t surprised at all by the shimmering blur that flew toward him. Kyla’s ability to hide worked best in shadow, when no one was looking directly at her, but the stadium was bathed in bright sunlight, and Li wasn’t as good at it as the young kobold yet.
Unfortunately, at least a few of the other people in the stadium obviously noticed the shimmer as well, including Ganring, whose eyes latched onto it, widening with something that looked like hunger. He couldn’t know what that subtle blur concealed, but he had to know it took power. Could he even sense it, like Lianhua?
Li landed beside Kaz with a soft thump, sheltering beneath one of the brown dragon’s wings as she allowed her concealment to fall.
“Yes,” Kaz murmured, seeing Jianying’s great head turn toward them for the first time since he’d landed. The dragon’s eyes were yellow and feral, though there was a cunning intelligence in them behind the hunger.
Ganring let out a loud hiss, and the two xiyi heading for Kaz and the others faltered, then stopped. The loud voice spoke again, but this time in a conversational tone, not the one he’d been using to speak to the humans.
“Stand,” Ganring said.
There was no doubt in Kaz’s mind that the xiyi meant Li, or rather whatever had caused that movement of power. Holding his hand out just in case Li decided to try something, Kaz stood instead, staring straight at the xiyi leader. As he did so, all eyes turned to him, and for the first time he became aware that he still wore nothing more than his loincloth, belt, knife, and storage pouch. Worse, because he had no tail, his loincloth hung awkwardly. Murmurs rose from among the humans. Would they recognize him as the ‘mage’ who had been fighting in the tournament? Did it matter?
“I’ll start with you,” Ganring said, holding out a hand. His fingers were long, with knobby joints and sharp claws. “Come here and allow yourself to be examined.”
Kaz wished he had his kobold voice as he growled, “No.” His discomfort made him long to shift back to his proper form, but he held onto his human image. He couldn’t spare the ki it would take to change shape, even if it didn’t cause the humans to do something unwise.
Jianying roared, and his ki pushed out from him like a thick blanket. It started as a small roar, but grew as the people around Kaz began to fall. One by one the humans went down. They were already tired from their battle and the many previous roars, their mana nowhere near as dense as it had been when Kaz first saw them, and now even the strongest of them knelt. A few managed to plant their shields first, using them to hold some part of their bodies upright, but soon not a single human stood.
But Kaz did. The power in Jianying’s voice split around him, like water around a stone, and far from bowing, he threw his shoulders back, lifting his chin. He was Kaz, and this dragon was little more than an overgrown janjio, screaming for him to flee.
Seeing this, the huge dragon locked his eyes on Kaz and roared again, flooding the stadium with even more power. This time even the xiyi staggered, then knelt. At Kaz’s feet, Snen gave in, head bowing on his long neck, though his hands were clenched into fists, weeping blood from the gouges dug by his claws.
“Great Emperor!” Ganring yelled, but if Jianying heard him, he paid no attention. The roar swelled, and even Kaz felt it, pushing at his ki, trying to make him small, break him down. But Kaz had been broken already. Broken and put himself back together, each time stronger than before, and with greater understanding of how the world worked.
Kaz opened himself to Jianying’s ki, a swirling mass of power with little to no direction. There was no way he could best the dragon physically, but when it came to power, Jianying was almost small, especially when compared to Heishe. He had clearly never made any real effort to learn, depending on sheer strength to overwhelm everyone who attempted to defy him. Water, Metal, Earth, and Fire licked at Kaz, and Kaz…won.
Kaz was so caught up in the realization that he was stronger than this ancient dragon that he didn’t notice Ganring until it was too late. The xiyi leader was the only other living creature that hadn’t been forced down by Jianying’s power. He staggered across the blood-soaked dirt, pulling a wicked-looking blade from its place at his waist. Raising it high, he brought it down toward the blue-haired human’s bare, unprotected back. And a small golden dragon stretched out from its hiding place and bit him as hard as she could.