Heishe didn’t slither through the city. Instead, she opened another of those water-filled tunnels through the earth and dove into it. Oddly, though Kaz and Li felt the pressure of fluid moving around them, they could breathe without difficulty. A glance at Kyla and Mei showed that while the young kobold and her fuergar looked more terrified than Kyla’s earlier words might have implied, they, too, seemed fine.

The world around Kaz seemed to show, showing only flickers of the space passing around them. Rather than bare stone, he caught glimpses of tunnels, much like the ‘sewer’ through which they’d passed to reach the xiyi caverns. These were filled with squalid streams, and the bricks arching overhead were wet and unbroken.

But while they were there, they also weren’t, and no hint of the smell Li had described to him in excruciating detail reached his nose, nor did it matter if the tunnels were large or small. Was Heishe shrinking them and herself so they would fit, or was she changing the very world around them?

the snake’s voice hissed softly into Kaz’s mind, making him jump. He’d assumed that, as when he rode the mosui platforms, only he was aware of what was happening. It made sense, of course, that the serpent had to be conscious of it, however, or they might simply travel onwards forever.

Kaz’s mouth wouldn’t open, so he used that new voice he had so recently discovered.

the snake said, hissing a laugh.

Kaz said, realizing that he absolutely believed his own words. For all that he now knew his mountain was only another spire of stone rising to meet the sky, it was also home, and he was as bound to it as Li, and, perhaps, it to him. Surely there had to be some element of awareness beyond existence in order for that to be true.

Something moved within his mind, a gentle slithering that probably should have felt intrusive and unpleasant, but was so impersonal that it was more like being examined by a healer. Heishe said thoughtfully.

There was nothing Kaz could say to that, so instead he focused on something she’d said earlier. He hesitated only a moment before asking,

Heishe’s sigh seemed to ripple down the entire length of her body.

Kaz gripped her back more tightly, and they rose up, flowing through stone like water. For the first time Kaz could make out the ki that surrounded them. It was black, of course, but not dark, and he could see through it, much as he had the red ki that saturated the Nine, the levels that lay in the very center of the mountain. This wasn’t a mindless fog, but instead directed by Heishe’s will, and the amount of power flowing through her was awe-inspiring. Was all of that coming from her core, or had she learned to take in mana and refine it like the humans did?

When they burst up through the ground, water sloshed around them, and suddenly Kaz found that he was wet, though he’d felt completely dry only a moment before. Had Heishe actually transformed dirt and rocks into water, or had water pushed aside everything else?

A miniature serpent slithered near his paws, and Kaz danced back before recognizing Heishe. The snake wrapped around his leg, climbing up until she nestled at his waist like a belt, then lay as still as if she was nothing more than a skin made into an item of clothing. She seemed uninterested in speaking, so he decided to ignore her in turn.

Kyla, Mei, and Li had been dropped back out into the world as abruptly as Kaz had. Looking at them, he couldn’t tell if they had been aware of the time they spent traveling, but he thought Kyla, at least, hadn’t. She looked absolutely shocked to abruptly find herself somewhere else, and as she gazed around, he realized that other than the brief time they spent traveling to the Bard and Bee, this was probably the first time she’d been able to look at the human city properly.

They stood in a street that wrapped around the back of the great stadium, which loomed up before them, far taller than the nearby buildings. At first, Kaz thought the sound he heard was the cheering of the crowds, screaming as people fought each other in battles that were as false as they were real. Then he realized there was a sharpness to it, a terror so profound he could almost taste it, and he saw the dragon.

The sun was setting, and shadows stretched out to touch each other, gathering everything around them into darkness. At first, the obsidian behemoth above them seemed like nothing more than a particularly deep shadow, but then it moved, shifting its wings, and Kaz understood the sheer immensity of it.

Beside him, Kyla let out a choked gasp, and Li flattened herself against him, her body trembling as she stared straight up. Up and up and up, from the scaled tip of a tail that almost brushed the ground in front of them to the arch of a throat that was only slender in comparison to the rest of the body. And every bit of it, from the shape of the horns to the curve of the wings, matched two memories in Kaz’s mind. This was the dragon who had assaulted Li’s parent, and also Jianying, Qiangde’s brother.

“What do we do?” Kyla asked, whispering in spite of the fact that there was no one around to hear. Not a single human remained within sight, probably having run as soon as the colossal dragon appeared.

Li exclaimed. She sounded hopeful, but Kaz looked at the sheer size of the creature and shook his head.

Then he stopped and looked again. The dragon was a dragon. There was no doubt about that. Its bulk blocked the lingering rays of the sun, and ki coursed through its body. Most of that ki was black, like Heishe’s, but where hers was radiant, this was shadow, darkness without depth.

Traces of red and gold ki mingled with the black, but there was a good bit of white there as well. And who else did Kaz know with black and white ki? Chi Yincang, whose abilities seemed strongest in the areas of shadow and illusion.

And this dragon, impossibly enormous as it was, had no core. Ki flowed through and around it, resembling the black and white blur of Chi Yincang’s power more and more the longer Kaz looked at it. But somehow it also appeared to fade, becoming almost translucent, at least to Kaz’s eyes.

Kaz knew well that Li could use her innate dragon abilities to hide herself, or even just parts of herself. Would she someday also be able to project an image that was no more real than a cloud in the sky? There was something to it, it could be felt, but it was far from the solid mass it appeared to be when seen from below.

“It’s not real,” Kaz told Kyla, who stared at him in astonishment.

His cousin lifted a finger, pointing up at the dragon, who appeared to be utterly oblivious of their presence, as if they were jiyun grubs wriggling by its feet. “I can see it! Right there!”

Kaz nodded, stepping forward to very, very cautiously touch the tip of his claw against a single scale as broad as his chest. There was resistance, and then the claw passed through into the ki just beneath the surface. No blood rose, and no flesh parted.

Stolen novel; please report.

“That’s… You can’t-” Kyla stepped forward, jaw muscles flexing as she, too, touched the tip of a tail that had to be at least fifty feet long. Rather than disappearing beneath the scale, her claw skittered along the top of it, exactly as if it were real. They all froze, eyes lifting to the dragon’s head, which continued to weave back and forth in a sinuous rhythm, never even glancing down.

Kaz stepped forward, burying his hand to the wrist in the illusory tail. He caught his cousin’s hand in his own, gripping hers, palm to palm. “Did you see the dragon that chased Snen?”

She nodded, swallowing hard.

“That one was about the size of the dragon that attacked Li’s nest. It was large, far larger than Li’s parents, but it wasn’t like this thing. I think this is some kind of image, created to frighten the people inside, while the real dragon is elsewhere,” he told her.

“So what do we do?” she asked again, releasing his hand and closing her own into a fist.

“We figure out how this is being created and destroy it. That should be much easier than actually fighting a dragon this size,” Kaz said.

Li burst out.

Kaz shook his head, turning his attention to the stadium. It was a mass of mana and ki, layered together like meat and fungus in a cookpot. There were so many living creatures inside that he couldn’t tell one from another, and though there were some bright sparks that could be cores, he couldn’t be certain who they belonged to. He doubted if he could affect them from here in any case, not with so much else in the way.

“If Jianying really is the dragon chasing Snen, then he’s not as large or as powerful as he’d like people to believe. If he was, he would have simply blasted Snen and his dragon from the sky, and he never would have taken injury from a common beast like Li’s parent.” Kaz watched Li to see how she reacted to this last, but at least for now she chose to ignore it.

“More importantly,” Kaz told them all, “if this illusion is being created by Jianying, then he only has four kinds of ki. That means he’s not a Divine Beast, at least not yet.” He distinctly remembered Lianhua telling him that Divine Beasts were incredibly rare, usually taking years, maybe even whole lifetimes to achieve that rank. Could a dragon survive more than a thousand years without ever gaining its fifth form of ki?

More importantly, what did it mean that Kaz and Li both had all five elements already? And Mei was well on her way, too, though he had no idea how to help her gain the wood element, or if he even should. Was it important that the creature achieved divinity on its own?

A new noise rose above the constant roar of frightened people shouting, sobbing, and occasionally screaming. It was the sound of horse’s hooves clattering against the stone streets, and there were a great many of them. Had someone managed to call for help already?

The false image above them shifted, leaning forward, its head suddenly wreathed in flame. That fire was real, filled with intense heat, and the screams redoubled as the layers of mana inside the stadium pressed downward.

And then a door, all but invisible in the stone wall, swung open, and four females tumbled out. They all had long hair and long skirts, but the fabric of the skirts was tucked up into their belts much like Lianhua did when she needed to be able to move freely. Their hair was tumbled, their faces red, and tears poured from their eyes.

The moment they emerged into the open air, one of them fell to her knees, pressing her forehead to the cobblestones. One of the others simply continued running, not even looking back at her erstwhile friends, but the other two stopped, each grabbing one of the kneeling female’s arms.

Kaz stared at them, utterly speechless, wishing that he was still in his human shape so he could speak to them without causing them further fright. Kyla felt no such constraints however, and simply pointed through the open door.

“Does this lead back into the building?” she asked, in the rough voice of a kobold.

One of the two females who’d stopped to help looked at Kyla, shrieked, and ran after the first female. The other, however, stepped between Kyla and her friend, who still wasn’t able to stand, though her breaths were more even and her face was losing its alarming shade of red.

“It…does,” she said, voice quavering. “There are a lot of stairs, and then…a door. You can go through if you want. We won’t try to stop you. But let me get Margie out of the way first. Please.”

She was so obviously terrified, and yet so determined to stay, that Kaz just nodded. He would have liked to go to the kneeling female and check on her, but he didn’t know what that would do to the brave one. He would regret it very much if he was forced to hurt her in order to keep her from attacking. He doubted it would take much to stop her, but she didn’t deserve even minor wounds in return for her loyalty.

They all looked up as another wave of heat reached them. Flame blazed out overhead, turning the sky orange, but there were neither ashes nor smoke. This blaze was entirely formed of ki, and the sheer amount of power it had to take to create it was staggering.

The horses had come to a halt somewhere on the other side of the stadium, where Kaz thought the usual entrance must be. Did they even know of this back way? Fierce yells reached his ears, but amidst the wailing and the roars of the false dragon, he couldn’t understand the words they spoke.

The two female humans had recovered enough to stand now, the shorter, Margie, leaning on her taller friend. The brave one wrapped an arm around Margie’s waist, almost dragging her away from Kaz, Kyla, and Li. Kaz looked around, realizing that he had no idea where Mei had gone. Had the fuergar decided that she had finally reached her breaking point, or was she simply hiding, as her kind did?

The females moved out of the doorway, their eyes growing huge as they realized they were standing right beside the thick tail of the dragon. They actually jumped away from it as it twitched, causing them to get too close to Kaz and Kyla, which made them twist away again, leading to the two of them tripping over each other.

Again, Kaz hesitated to approach, even to help, but Kyla darted forward, tugging the taller female to her feet, then the shorter. She grinned up at them, looking like a puppy about to go on a great adventure, and not at all like a powerful female racing toward what could be her death.

“You should probably run away,” she told them, tail wagging. “And if you see anyone else, they should probably run away, too. We’re going to kill that dragon, you know.” She puffed up her fuzzy pink chest, and Margie actually released a tiny puff of laughter before she stopped and pulled away again.

“I…good luck, then,” the brave female said, grabbing Margie’s waist again. She hesitated, then added, “There were three women in the seats beside us. I heard them talking, and I think they’re fighters, but part of their team didn’t show up today. They looked pretty strong, though, so they might be able to help. They didn’t panic like us. Um, we were in blue forty-two, I think.”

At first, Kaz had no idea what blue forty-two meant, but then he remembered that the seats were divided up into colors. The ones closest to the ground were painted white, with red, then black, and finally blue in the highest reaches of the stadium. Only a small section was gold, containing the smaller individual boxes where only a few people sat, well-separated from the press of the crowds.

“Thank you,” he told them solemnly, and Kyla nodded eagerly. It was always good to have more allies, especially ones who knew more about what was going on. The two females nodded in return and moved away as quickly as they could.

Li used her front legs to push away from Kaz’s back, and he realized that the two humans probably hadn’t been able to see her front limbs, hidden as they were behind his body. How much more frightened would they have been to see another dragon, however small, as soon as they exited the stadium?

he told Li reluctantly. It would use ki that they might need, but it wouldn’t do for some panicked human to attack them because they believed that Li’s presence meant Kaz and Kyla were allied with the xiyi.

Li hissed unhappily, but settled back against him, at least for the moment. she muttered,

“Yes,” Kaz said. “We’re going to find your family.” And hope that that family wasn’t trying to kill them at the time.

“Mei’s back!” Kyla called, and Kaz turned to look at her. There in the open doorway was the fuergar, whiskers quivering in excitement. Had the rodent gone ahead to make sure the way was clear? Kaz had a sudden feeling that he had been underestimating the fuergar, and briefly he wondered what else he wasn’t seeing even though it was right in front of his muzzle.

Then Kyla dashed after Mei, and Kaz followed the two of them, with Li still clinging to his back. Just as the human female had said, there was a long, narrow stairway immediately inside. The steps were short compared to the ones in the mountain, but after about ten steps, there was a landing that turned back on itself, and when he peered up, he could see another turn ahead. Did it go all the way to the top of the stadium?

No matter. Kyla was already turning the first corner, so Kaz bounded after her, taking two or three steps at once, just as he had seen Raff do so many times. Kaz was no stranger to stairs.