The sky was almost painfully blue and bright when Kaz and the others emerged into the open. The platform had come to rest in a long, narrow room in the back of a building not unlike those the xiyi had built down below. Almost as one, the humans rushed for a door outlined by sunlight, only to stumble back when eyes that had seen only dimness for a month protested the sudden blaze of light.
“It’s the Scorched District,” Jinn said, staring out with one hand over her eyes. She seemed to be adjusting more quickly than the others, which made sense, given that she’d only been below for a day, and in Adara’s well-lit room for a few days before that.
Kaz glanced at her. Ironically, his eyes were fine, in spite of the fact that he was more comfortable in darkness than light. None of his friends had had any problem either, though, so perhaps it was the increased body cultivation that was responsible for his quick adaptation.
“What is the Scorched District?” he asked, though he could guess at least part of the answer for himself. There were other buildings around them, but they were burned and broken, shattered walls protruding from the earth like dark, rotten teeth.
“Years ago, before I was born, an Incursion dropped a monster here,” she told him. “We weren’t ready, and people died - hundreds, maybe thousands of them. No one’s even sure because whole families were wiped out, so there was no one left to miss them.”
Reina stepped up beside her friend, briefly resting a hand on Jinn’s shoulder. “Periodically, someone will suggest razing it and rebuilding, but everyone knows someone who died that night, and the idea is always rejected. They consider it disrespectful. No one is supposed to live or work here, though sometimes a small camp will spring up, until the guards come and drive everyone away.”
That made no sense to Kaz. Death was everywhere. Why allow perfectly good territory to go to waste? But humans had so much space, he supposed they thought about it differently from kobolds, who lived in any place they could find enough food and water to survive.
“It’s in the middle of the city,” another voice said, and Kaz turned to see the people he assumed were Jinn and Raff’s parents approaching. The red-haired male shook his head. “I told Maleim it wasn’t wise to leave such a large area uncontrolled and unpopulated.”
The female lifted a brow, looking just like Raff as she did so. “Perhaps now he’ll listen.” She glanced up at the sun, then toward the east. “We need to get home, and as quickly as possible. Ricard and Verena are fit to be tied, worrying about Rissa.”
Jinn’s expression instantly collapsed back into worry. “Was she taken, too? Do we need to go back down to find her? We could get Raff-”
Her father clasped her in his arms. “The xiyi told us they didn’t take the children, and I believe them. They were…surprisingly hospitable, given the circumstances.”
“I killed one and Mison got another,” Jinn’s mother said, baring her teeth. “But they only increased the guard on us and took away anything we could use to make weapons. Didn’t even punish me. Then when Verena asked about the children, they said they were safe at home.”
Kaz’s ears flattened slightly. The xiyi were a very confusing people. Were they trying to control the city, or weren’t they? They seemed to have no interest in hurting anyone unless forced to do so, and, as the humans said, even went out of their way to make sure everyone was as comfortable as possible, while still refusing to allow anyone to leave. He wished he’d had more time to talk to Snen.
Without answering, she released her grip on him, dropping to the ground. She came up to his knee now, and when she began to run, still keeping her injured wing tight against her side, she moved away quickly. Ignoring the humans, Kaz followed.
Li scrambled over fallen bricks and broken cobblestones, leading Kaz toward something she could feel at the edge of her senses. She relayed the feeling to Kaz, and it was like catching a scent of someone you hadn’t seen in a very long time, and you weren’t even certain any longer if that was the right smell.
They passed down what might have been streets, and Li disappeared beneath a dark overhang. It looked like a roof had come down, crushing the upper story of a building, but leaving much of the lower level intact, except for one wall with a wide hole in it. Kaz followed his dragon, finding her staring down into a black pit. That sense of a familiar almost-but-not scent was strong here.
“What is it?” someone asked, and Kaz turned, not even surprised to see Lianhua standing there, with Yingtao close behind her. Lianhua’s fuulong silk robe was as clean and neat as ever, and somehow her face and hair were equally tidy. Yingtao wasn’t quite as unsullied, and blood stained the hems of her robe, left there by both killing and healing.
“I don’t know,” he said, but he was watching Li. If her wing had been intact, he thought she would have flown down already, with or without him. As it was, she paced along the edge, stretching the wing carefully before pulling it back in again. The damage was already noticeably better, though, so he didn’t think that would keep her much longer.
“I’d rather not explore any more dark holes today,” Lianhua told him, smiling wryly. “I would like to figure out where the other exit leads, though. Raff can’t have missed the roaring, so he could be up any time. Do you think this is where he’ll come out?”
Slowly, Kaz shook his head, then turned, finding the mountain with his senses. He was here now, but when they were only a single passage from the exit Raff was supposed to take, he had been- “There,” he told her, pointing. “At least half a mile, I think.”
“Chi Yincang,” Lianhua said, and he stepped out of the shadow beside her and bowed slightly. “Go find the exit, and-”
“No, lady,” Chi Yincang said, bowing over one hand pressed to his chest. Lianhua stopped, mouth open, staring at him.
“What?” Lianhua finally spluttered. “You- You can’t-”
The dark male bowed more deeply. “Elder Long commands I stay with you at all times,” he said. “Your life has been endangered too often of late.”
Kaz looked at Li. The dragon had stopped pacing, and now stood as close to the edge of the pit as possible, her long neck stretched downward. “I’ll go,” he said. “I can use the platforms, and I can track Raff and Kyla by smell.”
Lianhua’s eyes widened. “Kyla?” She looked around as if expecting the young kobold to appear as suddenly as Chi Yincang. “Wasn’t she with us?”
“I haven’t seen her since we freed the last of the humans,” Kaz told her, feeling frustration rise up inside him. Generally, he assumed that other people would make their own choices without his input, and simply hoped they wouldn’t affect him in a negative way. Li had always been different, and now he found that Kyla was as well. He would be very unhappy if his little cousin was hurt, and when he found her again, he was going to let her know he was upset.
There was something oddly freeing in that thought, and he realized that he usually didn’t allow himself to be angry at others. He assumed that his opinion wouldn’t matter to them, which made anger a waste of energy. But he thought that not only would Kyla regret worrying him, he might actually convince her to stop running off. Perhaps she, too, just assumed that what she did didn’t really matter to anyone else, so he should let her know that wasn’t true.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
The sound of rising voices made Kaz and the others turn, and even Li looked up from her examination of the unchanging depths. The rhythmic thump of horse’s hooves on mingled dirt and broken roads came next, and Chi Yincang vanished again as Lianhua and Yingtao hurried out from under the remains of the building.
Li came back to Kaz and pressed her head against his side.
That was remarkably unselfish of her, but Kaz suspected she wanted another opportunity to investigate the other dragons. Raff had been only a cavern away from the great creatures, so making their way back to him brought Li closer to her goal as well.
Kaz crouched so Li could climb onto his back, and once she was firmly in place, they followed Lianhua and Yingtao. Having just thought about how angry he was that his cousin had gone off without saying anything, he didn’t want to do the same to his companions. Even though he’d just told them he would go looking for Raff, he wanted to be certain they weren’t left to wonder.
When he reached the building where he’d left the humans, however, he stopped and almost instinctively stepped back into the nearest shadow. Horses and carriages milled about, with people helping the injured inside.
Quickly, Kaz scanned them all, and saw no one who was as empty of either mana or ki as the xiyis’ victims. No one here held a duqiu or fangqiu, at least as far as he could tell, and they all looked as human as Lianhua and the others. But who were they, and how were they there?
Then he caught sight of a familiar face, though it held a very unfamiliar expression. Adara was smiling, and while there was still a slightly calculating edge to it, she also looked relieved. She gestured to two humans, each almost as large as Raff, and one unceremoniously scooped up a reed-thin male, while the other ushered a squawking female toward a cart.
“There we are, lords and ladies,” Adara said briskly. “No time to waste. I’ve prepared a safe place for you to rest and recover while we decide what to do.” Her smile widened, and Kaz noted the use of the word ‘we’. What happened to the female who said she only watched what went on in the city?
At that thought, he narrowed his eyes on the golden-haired female, but her mana cycle looked exactly the same as it had the first time he met her. The weak but tightly controlled flow of it was fairly unique, in his experience, so this wasn’t someone else pretending to be Adara, nor had Adara been bound by a duqiu.
The humans certainly didn’t seem to mind being taken care of, rather than being forced to walk out of the Scorched District. Kaz didn’t know how large it was, but he suspected these entrances would be placed as far from inhabited territory as possible, and the city seemed almost endless, so they could have been facing quite a walk. Had Adara made that walk, alone and injured, only to come back looking for them? That thought made Kaz feel a little ashamed for thinking so badly of her. He didn’t like Adara, but that didn’t mean she was evil.
“Kaz?”
Kaz and Li turned to see who had called for him, and saw Princess Reina, firmly holding the hand of another female who looked like an older version of her, but with reddish-gold hair instead of pink. Seeing no immediate danger, Kaz stepped out into the open, ready to run if anyone panicked at the sight of a kobold. The group of rescued humans had seemed nervous around him before he and Li cut their necks open, and these strangers didn’t know him at all.
Reina’s face lit up as she caught sight of him, and she waved him over. Several people nearby shifted as Kaz approached, but none of them drew a weapon. In fact, most of them seemed more confused by his presence than concerned. Had Adara warned them he would be with the others?
“Kaz, this is my mother, Queen Natalia,” Reina said.
Both females watched him, as if waiting for something, but Kaz wasn’t sure what they wanted. Hadn’t Lianhua once compared a queen to a great chief, though? Kaz pressed one hand to his chest and bowed over it, giving the salute of a kobold to the chief of another tribe.
The queen smiled, looking at her daughter. “You’re right, dear, he is quite intelligent. Does he speak, as well?”
Kaz felt the fur on the back of his neck lift, but stopped the growl that wanted to rumble from his throat. This female spoke as if he was a numb-mind who had managed to learn how to carve arrowheads from stone without breaking them.
Reina’s cheeks turned pink, and her eyes darted from Kaz to her mother. She said something, but Li was already speaking, and their bond was now so strong that her voice overrode that of the human.
Kaz’s tail wagged gently, and he felt his fur settle. This human chief didn’t matter to him. His dragon knew he was better than that, and nothing else mattered.
Looking at Reina, Kaz ignored the queen and said, “Do you need something?”
Reina turned even redder, and she said, “No, I- I told Mother that you could…turn into a human. And you saved me. Us, I mean, but also me, because you took that stone out of-” She stumbled to a halt, pressing her hand to her side.
Kaz leaned in, sniffing the area where the wound had been. The only smell was of something both acrid and sweet, probably a salve or other medicine, and sweaty human. “Is the wound healed?” he asked, curious. He still wasn’t sure exactly how ki and mana affected recovery from wounds, but it seemed to him that she should be mostly recovered.
Reina’s mother made a startled noise and pulled her daughter away from Kaz. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, kobold, but-”
A sound like a small explosion came from behind Kaz, and everyone stopped what they were doing, turning to stare back toward the building that hid the pit. A cloud of dust and debris flew into the air, and as it settled, broad wings came into view, followed by a long, serpentine body. It was a brown dragon, and on its back was-
“Raff!” Kaz barked, turning away from the two humans. Li half-lifted from his back before settling down again with a hiss of pain. Almost without thinking, Kaz withdrew another chip of blue ki-crystal from his pouch and gave it to her. He was getting low on blue, and would have to switch to red or yellow soon.
Raff was leaning forward, clutching something, but when he realized that they were outside again, he sat up. There, perched between two spikes on the dragon’s back, protected by Raff’s body, was Kyla, her ragged pink fur unmistakable. Kaz couldn’t make out Mei, but the fuergar’s distinctive ki pattern was there in front of Kyla as well. The greatest surprise, however, other than the fact that they were all riding on a dragon, was the brown-scaled xiyi sitting on the leather pad strapped to the dragon’s back. Somehow, Snen, Raff, Kyla, and Mei had all found each other. And something else had found them.
As the dragon rose higher into the air, the ground began to rumble, shaking almost as much as it had when the Rooster, Fengji, had escaped his own captivity. Had Raff and the others somehow managed to find and free another of the Divine Beasts?
Raff was waving his arms now, and Snen’s dragon dove toward Kaz and the others, skimming overhead as humans waved their weapons ineffectually. A few with mana had recovered enough to send weak attacks after it, but the dragon didn’t even seem to notice. The horses were beginning to panic, and only Adara’s large humans were keeping them from bolting.
Kaz was finally able to make out what Raff was yelling over the sound of wings and rumbling. “Run!” he called, sounding frantic, and Kyla added her own howl to his voice. Kaz knew that howl. “Flee, enemies are coming.”
Kaz spun, looking at the humans, most of whom seemed too focused on Snen and his dragon to even pay attention to the fact that the ground was still shaking. Kaz added his own howl to Raff and Kyla’s, looking for his friends.
Lianhua was standing with Yingtao and Chi Yincang. Like Kaz, all three of them were focused on the place from which the dragon had risen, not the dragon itself. They’d seen and recognized Raff and Kyla, if not Snen and Mei, and knew that wherever the danger was coming from, it wasn’t them.
The ground exploded upward again. This time, there was no way the debris could conceal the enormous dragon that rose from the earth. A gout of flame chased the smaller dragon as the black lifted into the air. His wings were so broad that the wind they created threatened to knock people off their feet. Fortunately, the beast didn’t seem to care about them, at least not at the moment. Instead, he roared furiously at Snen’s mount.
Kaz recognized that roar. It held ki that rolled out, attempting to force anyone nearby to their knees, and around him, he saw more than one human collapse beneath the pressure of it. The horses were stock still now, their eyes showing white all around the outside, and foam gathered at the corners of their mouths.
The brown dragon dove, barely dodging a snap of jaws large enough to bite it in half. It wobbled as it drew close to the ground, one wing almost brushing a broken wall, and Raff leaped off, bringing Kyla and Mei’s ki with him, though their bodies were hidden as he tucked and rolled, protecting them with his body.
Kaz suspected things would have ended badly, even for the powerful warrior, so he snapped up a shield at the last moment, grunting as Raff’s weight landed on it. Li caught it with her own power, however, boosting its strength so the three occupants hit the ground relatively gently as the shield dissipated around them.
The brown dragon, relieved of most of its burden, snapped its wings out again, swooping straight upwards in a way the bulky black dragon couldn’t replicate. It fled, with the terrible beast close on its tail. Small chased by large, they flew out over the city.