Snen looked up as Kaz and Li approached, his yellow eyes bright. Bowing deeply, he said, “Thank you again, friend Kaz. Intong and I have finally been able to speak, and it isss-” His voice trailed off into a hiss and he simply shook his head, unable to finish.

Li said, stretching out her claws to land on Kaz’s back and shoulders. At the last moment, she remembered that she was too large and came to rest on the ground instead. Pretending she hadn’t almost fallen over herself in the process, she peered into Intong’s golden-brown eyes.

she told him. Then, as if realizing she might have stated the obvious, she curved her neck, half-lifting her wings. Another pause.

She stopped, once again seeming uncertain. There was a long silence, and then the slightly hollow, distant voice they’d heard once before said,

Li froze, then turned stricken eyes on Kaz. He could feel her pain as she struggled to understand the simple words. For an instant, Kaz wondered if this was simply the way dragons spoke when they were young, or had just had part of a life-long curse removed, but one look at Intong’s eyes told him otherwise.

Once the runes were removed from her dantian, Li’s eyes had always shone with keen intelligence, but this dragon’s gaze said he understood no more than what he’d said. He was Intong. Intong was hungry. Snen was his brother who fed him.

Fortunately, Kaz could take care of one problem. It was completely reasonable that Intong would be exhausted after his flight from Jianying. Kaz was just glad he hadn’t tried to eat anyone, because a truly wild beast would have done exactly that. Hopefully, it was an indication that the dragons could be reasoned with, even in their current state.

Reaching into his pouch, Kaz began removing strips of dried meat. He’d taken them from the xiyi’s storage hut, so using them to feed the dragons was fair enough. Intong began swallowing them whole. Soon, the other dragons had circled him as well, and he had a dozen sharp-toothed snouts snatching long chunks of meat from his hands. He couldn’t tell if Snen recognized the meat, but the xiyi did give him an odd look before taking some and handing it out to the dragons at the back.

Li remained silent throughout all of this, and only when Kaz ran out of meat and Snen had to whistle the dragons back did she react. Snapping at the beasts, she chased them away from Kaz, and the dragons - the smallest of whom was ten times Li’s size - obeyed without even trying to fight back.

Snen gave his chuckling hiss as he watched. “She reminds me of my egg-sister, Zhihs. Small but so fierce no one questions her right to command.”

Kaz glanced at him, sensing an opportunity to finally ask some of the questions that had been plaguing him, at least in the moments when he wasn’t busy dying. “Do your females lead your people, as well?” He started to say that all of the xiyi he’d seen had cores, then realized that would probably reveal too much, and simply waited for the answer.

Snen leaned back against Intong’s side, and the brown dragon huffed a contented sigh. He had eaten more than any of the others, and seemed happy enough as long as Snen was nearby. He kept one eye on the humans walking around, but since Snen didn’t seem worried about them, Intong wasn’t bothered either.

“We have tales of the time when we all lived in the mountain,” Snen said softly. “When we were just kobolds, servants and slaves of the false emperor.” He hesitated, glancing at the spot where Jianying had landed, then up at the sky. He seemed almost apprehensive, but managed to continue.

“No. Qiangde was not the false emperor. Jianying was-ss.” He heaved an almost gasping breath, as if he’d run a race rather than speaking a few simple words. “But we knew we couldn’t kill Qiangde, so we played on Jianying’s vanity. He was a fool, but a powerful one. We had no idea we would have to continue to serve him for a millennium after we were supposed to be free.”

He rubbed a hand across his short muzzle, then said, “But you asked about our females. No, males and females are equal, each individual performing the role to which they are best suited. But females who leave our home no longer lay fertile eggs, so it’s rare for them to venture far until they have reached senescence.”

Kaz blinked. “Where do you live?”

Snen sighed again, glancing sidelong at Kaz. “Our home is our greatest secret, and our greatest vulnerability. Our eggs only survive there, so if it is lost, so are we.”

Kaz frowned. “Is it like the mountain, then? We - kobolds - become…less if we leave our home.” He knew Snen knew that. Somewhere in the xiyi den below Cliffcross was at least one small tribe of Fallen Ones, and the xiyi had been working with them.

Reaching up to grip his whistle, Snen gave the xiyi shrug, weaving his long neck back and forth. “Something like. Qiangde and his servants somehow managed to create a place where the world’s power is so strong that unnatural creatures like us can survive, and even thrive. When we left, Jianying found or made another, similar place, though it’s far smaller. In spite of centuries of trying, we still don’t know exactly how, so we were forced to obey him in order to survive. Otherwise, we simply would have vanished into the mountains long ago, leaving him to fulfill his own whims.”

Li leaned against Kaz’s leg, and only his newfound strength allowed him to hold her up. His dragon wasn’t trembling, but her heart was on the verge of breaking. He rested his hand on her head, stroking gently as she spoke.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

she said, glaring defiantly at Snen.

Snen didn’t seem surprised to hear Li speak, and Kaz realized that the xiyi had only known them for a matter of hours. He had no idea that this was a new skill. Snen’s hand came to rest on Intong’s head even as he bowed his own.

“Things will be…complicated, now that both Jianying and Ganring are dead. Ganring was far from Jianying’s first child, though he was the first in centuries to turn his eyes from home. That egg-line will be unwilling to give up power, and while we bore the qiu, we couldn’t force them to. But Kus Ukark will carry the knowledge of how to remove the stones home with him, freeing us to fight back at last.”

His large eyes were sorrowful. “A great many of us will die, and we have never been numerous. Like dragons, xiyi mate for life, and each pair will produce only a few clutches. Still, members of my group believe that we owe the dragons a debt for enslaving them, however accidentally. We protect them from the humans who hunt them, and keep their eggs safe with our own until the day we can release them.”

Kaz remembered the words Kus Ukark had spoken to Li. This one begs you to forgive him. In our haste and our pain, we inflicted upon you the same sorrow you once gave us. But our people never lost their ability to think, to regret what we did not have, which meant it was possible for us to achieve freedom. We took that from you, and it is the greatest shame of our lives.

“How did you curse them?” he asked, leaning forward. “Can you undo it?”

Snen shook his head. “We believe it was done by Trunzas, who slew Qiangde, but why or how, no one knows. The tales told of that time are few and ambiguous. We know he had help from someone within Qiangde’s court, but there are only vague hints as to who it was and what role they played.”

Li said, and Kaz nodded. It made sense. Jianying had been jealous of his brother, that was clear from Qiangde’s memories.

To their surprise, Snen disagreed. “Jianying was powerful, but he was neither wise nor imaginative. He spent the last thousand years doing the same things over and over again, never realizing that our entire culture had moved on without him. For the most part, he was an emperor in name only.”

Kaz frowned. Who else could have betrayed Qiangde, and so thoroughly? Not that it really mattered now, when everyone from that time was dead, other than Nucai, who was still utterly devoted to his Master.

“I’m going to free the dragons, then,” Kaz said. He met Snen’s eyes, his own unwavering. “Will your people try to stop me?”

Li said, lifting her wings and hissing in a show of support.

“Mine won’t,” Snen said, though his fingers curled around one of Intong’s horns, holding on, not possessively, but as if touching something precious to make sure it was still there. Kaz knew exactly how he felt. Still, once Intong and the other dragons were free, they would make their own choices about where to go and what to do. Just like Li.

Turning to look at the gathered dragons, Snen said, “My people see ourselves as caretakers, not owners. When those we care for are ready to leave, we will not try to stop them from doing so.”

Kaz nodded. “Then I’ll help your side, if I can.”

The xiyi was silent for a long time. Around them, the crowd of humans began to thin. The guards remained, but most of the mercenaries had gone. They believed no one else survived in the devastated stadium, and as it grew dark, it became more dangerous for those searching.

“You are a powerful ally,” Snen said finally, “but this is something my people must do. Perhaps I’ll regret saying no, but I believe we must fight our own battle, so that whatever comes of it cannot be blamed on any outside power. It’s enough that Jianying and Ganring are dead. Now, we must find our own way as a people.”

Kaz thought about how he would feel if powerful outsiders appeared one day and killed the chiefs of the great tribes so that a different group of kobolds could take command. He would know that that group didn’t succeed through their own power, and the changes they forced weren’t ones that would be upheld by kobold tradition. They wouldn’t have his respect, or that of many other kobolds, leaving them open to rebellion from within, like the Magmablades.

“Can you get home by yourself?” he asked, changing tunnels. “And what will happen with Kus Ukark and the other xiyi below? The humans will kill them all.”

Snen bared sharp teeth. “They can try. But yes, I can get home, even if Intong chooses not to carry me. My people are very good at hiding.”

His core surged, and he faded away before Kaz’s eyes, leaving only a blur of ki. It was different from what Chi Yincang did, which depended on shadow, and what Kyla did, which depended on heat. This was closer to Li’s method of concealment, convincing the power in everything that it was one with the power coming from Snen. After a moment, he flickered back into sight.

“By now, everyone will know what happened here,” he told Kaz. “We were only in this city because Ganring planned to trade places with the king of this country, place qiu in the humans, and then head toward the place now called the Sheng Empire.”

Which reminded Kaz of the warehouses of cores and cultivation pills. The people of Holiander didn’t cultivate, depending instead on mana, so what were the pills for?

Snen chuckled when Kaz asked. “One of Ganring’s plans, though it was a good one, for him. Once Holiander was his, he would move on to the Empire. Their cultivators are far less numerous than Holiander’s mages, but can become much more powerful. But even the strongest only live a few hundred years, and the pills could destroy the cultivation of a weak human. Stop them before they start, even as the old, powerful ones die or ascend. Leaving a generation lacking the strength to resist Ganring’s assault.”

Lianhua had talked about ascension a few times. “Ascend? Is that when their ki becomes one with that of the world?” But wasn’t Kaz himself literally nothing but an image made of ki? Did that mean he had already ascended?

But Snen was shaking his head. “I’m no Kus, and I don’t pretend to understand it, but when humans reach the point where their ki becomes so dense it is capable of turning into a core, they either fail and die, leaving their ki to rejoin this world, or succeed and ascend to the next.”

So Kus was a title, not part of Kus Ukark’s name. That was good to know. Was a Kus like a mage then, or more like an elder or chief? But Kaz had a more pressing question. “But how do they reach this other world?”

Snen lifted his hand, pointing at the moon that was growing brighter as the sun set. “There,” he said. “They go through the Gate.”