Overhead, the battle continued for a few more minutes, with Jianying whipping his long neck around to bite at Fengji. The Rooster allowed it until a few of his burning feathers were pulled free, and then he reached down and tore Jianying’s head from his body, gulped it down, then lifted his beak and let out a crow that flooded the area with ki. Unlike Jianying’s roars, this one left Kaz - and the others, if the expressions on their faces was any indication - feeling somewhat invigorated.

Once the dragon’s body stopped thrashing, Fengji flew away with his prize clutched in his claws. During that time and for several more minutes thereafter, none of the remaining humans moved, though they stared at Kaz through the rain of Jianying’s blood. The xiyi, all but Snen, were as dead as their master, and their dragons crouched, looking as lost and frightened as such large and deadly beasts possibly could.

Then, as the power of Fengji’s final crow faded at last, a clatter of stones made them all turn to see a pink-furred kobold helping three humans down the crumbling stairs at the far side of what remained of the stadium. All four females were dirty and injured, with fresh streaks of blood staining skin and fur alike. They were all alive and conscious, however, and Kaz caught a quick movement in the shadows behind them that looked like Mei.

Kaz stood as Kyla stepped into the open area. His cousin’s tail was tucked tight against her legs, but her ears were up and her shield was in place. One of Harper’s hands rested on her shoulder, which was a form of protection in itself, and Bella held her more physical shield at the ready.

When no one made a move to immediately attack, Kyla led the way across the muddy battlefield. With each step, her tail relaxed, and by the time she reached Kaz, it was wagging rapidly. She gave a ululating howl, one of being reunited with someone long absent, and Kaz returned the same, holding out the arm that wasn’t touching Li, where his dragon leaned against his leg.

Kyla hesitated briefly when she saw Li, but Kaz gave her a nod, and the pup came to him, cuddling close as she buried her nose against him so she was surrounded by his scent. Kaz bent his head and did the same, drawing in the smell of burned, dirty fur, blood, fuergar, and Kyla.

The scuff of a foot pulled them apart. It sounded so much like Raff’s boots that Kaz was actually surprised to see someone else; a male, not quite as tall as Raff, but with the same defined muscles. On his shoulder was a familiar symbol. This man was from Raff’s guild, the Adamant Reach. Kaz wasn’t entirely certain what a guild was, other than a loose collection of unrelated people who had agreed to help each other, but Raff seemed proud to be part of it, so Kaz nodded respectfully.

To his surprise, the man nodded back with equal respect before touching the side of his hand to his forehead, giving a much more formal-looking version of the finger-flick Raff did all the time. “I’m told your name is Kaz, is that correct?” He was watching Snen and the brown dragon warily as he spoke, and seemed ready to leap backwards at the first sign of aggression.

Kaz nodded. That much was true, anyway. “It is,” he agreed. Indicating each of his friends, he said, “And these are Li, Kyla, Snen, Eve, Harper, and Bella.” As each of them other than Li were named, they nodded, though the humans all looked a little surprised to be included.

The human male flinched a little as a dragon, a kobold, and a member of a race that had just attacked his city were named, but he said, “I’m Eugene, leader of the Adamant Reach, one of the guilds of this city. We…appreciate your help?” There was a definite question there, and Kaz couldn’t blame the other male. Kaz had killed Ganring, and the other xiyi as well, though that was both unintentional and distressing. On the other paw, he was also with two dragons, a kobold, and another xiyi.

Kaz felt his head duck and wished he could lower his ears. He really didn’t like it when people paid too much attention to him, and he thought this human must be something like a chief. In his experience, it was never good when those of high rank noticed him.

Then he remembered that this was neither his chief nor someone else who could tell him what to do. Kaz didn’t like people who used power to get their way, but if he needed to, he could probably escape simply by raising a shield and walking away. Though it would be difficult to carry Li with him, given how large she’d grown.

“I’m glad I could help,” he said finally, though his eyes shifted to the exit. The large archway was behind the humans, and now that the dragon and the xiyi were gone, more humans were trickling back in, many of them showing signs of having been injured earlier.

Eugene opened his mouth to speak further, but as he did, Kaz saw something that made his heart leap in his chest. There, among the people just entering, were some he recognized. Raff, along with his mother, father, and the rest of his family.

Kaz and Kyla gave yips of welcome, and a broad grin spread across Raff’s tired face. Kyla immediately scampered away, and Kaz would have tried to hold her back except that she was still maintaining her shield. No matter how excited she was to see their friend, she hadn’t forgotten herself entirely.

For whatever reason, while several of the people Kaz didn’t recognize touched their weapons, no one actually swung at the kobold running through the small crowd. When Kyla reached Raff, he picked her up, swinging her high overhead as she yelped in offended dignity. Still, her tail gave her away, wagging almost as wildly as it had when she saw Kaz.

Raff set the little kobold on his shoulder, which was once again adorned with the symbol of the Adamant Reach. Rather than the light armor and axe he had been using, he wore his usual metal shell, with his enormous sword hanging at his waist. His hair was still short and black, but his beard was already starting to grow back in, brightening and concealing the lower half of his face.

Raff and his father came to join Kaz, Eugene, and the others, while Raff’s mother began giving orders to anyone who looked like they didn’t know what to do. People began to move out, looking behind and beneath fallen stone, obviously searching for survivors.

“Captain,” Raff said, making a gesture that was much closer to what Eugene had done than his usual lackadaisical flick of the fingers.

Eugene’s heavy gray brows rose, but he returned the gesture. “Raff. I see you found…Lord and Lady Hillcroft.”

Raff sighed, tapping a finger twice against the hilt of his sword. “You don’t have to pretend any more, sir. I think just about everybody’s figured out who I actually am.”

One corner of Eugene’s mouth twitched up briefly. “It wasn’t much of a surprise to most of those who know you, lad. Now, what do you have to do with,” he waved around at the sadly broken stadium, “this?”

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“I’d like to answer that, if I may,” Raff’s father said. He was wearing clean clothing, and his hair was styled almost as neatly as Lianhua’s usually was. Eugene nodded, and Kaz turned away, listening with only half an ear as he knelt down by Li.

She had her eyes open now, though he only knew because she sent him a weak mental image of the world covered in a pale white blur. Gently, he rubbed his finger over the scales covering her eyes until they shifted, revealing deep golden orbs containing flickers of the other four colors of ki. It reminded him of Heishe’s rich black ki, filled with bright stars of power.

Together, and then with Snen’s well-practiced help, they managed to peel away the many layers of skin, revealing a dragon who was still mostly gold, but with a dark obsidian nose, white toes on all four paws, a crown of ruby horns, and a deep sapphire patch over her heart.

Once the discarded skin and scales lay in a disgusting, stinking pile of sludge, Kaz threw his arms around his dragon’s neck. She wasn’t anywhere close to the size of Snen’s brown dragon, not yet, but she was larger than Brute, the dog who had once seemed so big to Kaz. he told her, and her ribs expanded as she sighed, laying a surprisingly heavy head on his shoulder.

she told him, as if he hadn’t noticed. And if the pleased tone of her voice wasn’t quite as genuine as it could have been, neither of them mentioned it.

he said.

She sniffed. she turned her head so she could look at him slyly,

Kaz wasn’t so certain of that, but the picture she sent of him clinging desperately to her back caused him to chuff a laugh. Something hot trickled down his cheek, and for a moment he thought he’d begun bleeding from some unnoticed wound, but when he reached up to touch the moisture, he found only tears.

he told her softly, and their foreheads touched as they shared an image that so far existed only in their dreams. The two of them, together, flying through a clear blue sky, filled with nothing but them and a few clouds to play in.

Then something one of the humans said managed to penetrate his consciousness, and he looked around, seeing that two warriors had hold of Snen’s arms. Kyla was protesting loudly, but they ignored her, focusing on the brown-scaled dragon that was attempting to get to its feet instead.

Snen’s dragon did not look happy, and neither did the other dragons that still crouched nearby. Kaz looked around, realizing that each of those dragons were surrounded by warriors with weapons, mostly spears. The warriors looked determined, and the dragons were becoming progressively more angry and defensive.

“Stop!” Kaz spoke without thinking, and it came as an utter shock when almost everyone did as he said. A few of the humans glanced in his direction before dismissing him, but they all wore clean, shiny armor. The people who had been here during Ganring and Jianying’s deaths immediately stepped back.

Unfortunately, the males holding Snen were both of the clean sort, but Kaz only had to take a single step toward them before Eugene snapped, “Release the lizard.”

“Xiyi,” Kaz corrected, though he was certain he’d heard Raff use the word already, so the captain knew it. Why hadn’t he used it?

“Snen,” Kaz said, “Can you get the dragons to listen to you?”

Snen nodded, tugging his arms free so he could pull his whistle out from under his tattered cloak. He blew through it, and all of the dragons immediately began to walk toward him, moving with sinuous grace as they went right past their erstwhile foes.

The xiyi blew a few more times, and when he finished, all of the dragons sat in a line, watching him attentively. Some of them were injured, but other than one with a wing held close to its side, none of the wounds seemed serious. They still wore the leather pads and straps the xiyi used to control them, and Kaz could see calculation in the faces of more than one of the humans nearby.

Li said, and Kaz nodded. But unlike when he’d so impulsively released the wyvern, he knew this was neither the time nor the place. He also knew Li wouldn’t wait, and that it broke her heart to see others of her kind made into mere beasts of burden.

Perhaps he could compromise, however, so he turned to Snen, who now stood free and tall in the bright sunlight. “You care for your dragon,” he said.

Snen nodded. “Intong is my xiongdi, my dragon-brother. I carried his egg from his mother’s nest, nurtured it, and cared for him since the day he hatched. It is the old way, and not all xiyi follow it, but he and I are friends, as well as rider and mount.”

“Would he still listen to you if he were,” Kaz tried to find a better way to put it, and couldn’t, “free?”

Li demanded, stretching out her long neck to stare at him. She could nearly look him in the eye now, and when he was in kobold form, he thought she would be a little taller, when she cared to be.

Kaz asked gently,

She hesitated only a moment.

She had no easy answer to that. Her instincts told her only dragons mattered, but she was more than instinct now, and she valued the lives of those who weren’t dragons. Some of them, at least.

she said finally.

Kaz agreed.

When he looked up, Snen was on the ground, head bowed. He bowed far too easily, and Kaz hoped he would learn otherwise, in time. “I have seen your companion, Kaz. She is not cursed. Are you saying you can do the same for Intong? If so, I will be in your debt forever.”

Kaz looked at the brown dragon, who gazed back. His eyes were neither placid nor furious, but there was little beyond instinct and training in them. The creature might be as intelligent as Brute, but Kaz felt no connection to him, as he had with the dog.

Focusing his gaze, Kaz looked deeper. The dragon’s ki was clean and simple, coursing through the natural channels running from his core to his head and back down along his spine. There were a few paths leading to his limbs and organs, but very little ki suffused his flesh, other than his wings.

Reaching out, Kaz laid his hand on Intong’s forehead, over the dantian that hung there. It was dark, barely swirling in spite of the steady flow of ki passing through it. Carefully, Kaz prodded it, seeing if he could urge it to spin faster without actually using his ki. He didn’t want to end up bound to another dragon, however much he loved the first.

It resisted, feeling almost sticky beneath his mental touch, and Kaz remembered the strange, stretched rune-thing he had accidentally torn from Li’s upper dantian. He was fairly certain that just ripping it away had been risky at best, and this dragon had borne the rune far longer than Li.

Li reached into his memory, and together they examined the moment the thing emerged. Here and here were the strokes, not barbed, because any change of shape would alter the meaning, as they had learned from Lianhua, but still somehow hooked into the dantian. Sticky, like fresh yanchong slime, but set in place as if it had been heated.

Thoughtfully, they laid the rune over Inchong’s dantian, and there it was. The rune was a little different from Kaz’s memory, not yet stretched out of shape, but clearly identifiable. But if Lianhua was right, it wasn’t one rune, but several, layered over one another. She had even managed to figure out one of them, or believed she had. With a sudden burst of hope and understanding, Kaz laid the symbol for ‘silence’ over both, then wiped it away.

The dragon shuddered as something broke free within his dantian. He began coughing, then stretching out his neck to hack up a deep black glob of stinking slime. The long strokes slithered over one another for the barest instant before melting into an incomprehensible blob.

A new voice entered their minds. It was loud, but also somehow dull, without depth.