Battle raged around Kaz. Xiyi died, and Kaz cut rune-stones from the necks of humans one after another, adding an almost unnoticeable amount of blood to the gory trail they left behind. The gaunt males were first and easiest, the spheres sitting atop their spines, thin skin barely concealing the foreign object. In spite of his concern, it was a simple matter to close his ki around the starkly defined orbs, and the wounds hardly bled at all.

By the time he finished with these, they were through the warriors’ den. Kaz’s paws slipped in blood as he tried to cut the stone from a young human female, and he drew a crimson line across her shoulder as well. She was one of the ones who was unable or unwilling to fight, and she’d already tried to escape as he came for her. At this unintentional injury, she shrieked, and the other humans nearby looked toward Kaz, their faces hardening.

He ignored them, holding her still as he cut away the orb, flicking it against the wall, where it sizzled as it slid down. The others had rolled away, taking several seconds to dissolve. This one was different. Was it a duqiu instead of a fangqiu?

“What is it doing?” one of the females whimpered, staring from Kaz to the blood now staining the first female’s clothing.

Lianhua heard this, and as there were no xiyi in sight as they made their way through the passage that was supposed to lead to the food hall, she turned on the second female. Her lips were pinched tight, and her eyes were dark with anger. “He is making sure you don’t all just fall over dead.”

She pointed at the remains of the orb, which seemed so innocent, other than the blood that mingled into the dark streak. “Those things contain a poison that will kill you if it’s removed improperly, and the shamans - the xiyi mages - can set them off from a distance.”

The female clapped a hand to the back of her own neck, pinching the sphere that lay just beneath her skin. Glancing again at Kaz, she turned her back to Lianhua. “Can’t you take it out?”

Lianhua shook her head, the stern expression on her face a far cry from her usual sympathetic countenance. “Kaz is the only one who can save your lives. If - when - we leave this place, every one of those stones needs to be removed, or the xiyi may simply decide to kill you all.”

Hearing this, soft whimpers rose around them, and rather than having to track down the next person to work on, Kaz suddenly found himself beset by females, crowding far too close. Li snapped at them, her teeth and front claws on full display, and they withdrew, only to surge forward again as one kind of fear overcame the other.

Jianying roared again, and though this time it was muffled by the stone surrounding them, that didn’t weaken its impact. Several of the females stopped, staggering as they put their hands over their ears.

Li returned the roar, but every time she did she sounded a little weaker. Kaz had given her two more ki crystals, as she simply burned through the ki from the previous one, harnessing its power to push Jianying’s influence from her immediate surroundings.

Two more orbs hit the floor, one dissolving and one not, and Kaz wanted to look at them, determine what the difference was, but he couldn’t. Another cut, another sphere, and then they were in the food hall, and the shamans were there.

There were a few warriors as well, some in the simple clothing of guards, while others wore light leather armor. They had no cloaks on, not in their own domain, but Kaz was almost certain these were like the ones who had followed Jinn and Reina, because they almost all carried bows and shot arrows with strange tips that were invisible to his ki-sight.

As soon as the shamans saw the crowd of humans, they lifted their clawed hands. Their blue ki swirled, rising up and shooting toward the group. It looked like they were casting ki-bolts, but not, and when one struck a human with a rune-stone still in her neck, he knew why.

The stone began to glow with a foggy power, and the female’s face went slack. She turned on the male beside her, one of the ones carrying a xiyi blade, and lunged at him. When he instinctively cut at her, she didn’t even attempt to dodge, just continued on as her arm was laid open.

Lianhua’s horrified eyes met Kaz’s, and he could see she was thinking of the same thing he was. He had explained about the male with Doran, the one who had started using ki he hadn’t had a moment before and nearly killed Raff. Kaz had been forced to use his own ki to pull out that stone, and the male had died in the process.

Turning back to the enemy, Lianhua shouted, “Kill the shamans! Don’t let them use their power!”

Chi Yincang heard, making a long, low leap that carried him over the warriors to land in the center of the group of shamans. He began attacking, but shields sprang up around the xiyi, making even the powerful warrior’s weapon slide away. Kaz could see weak spots flicker each time the whirling blade impacted them, however, so Kaz knew that eventually Chi Yincang would break through, so long as nothing happened to distract him.

Kaz wished he could help, but he was busy leaping from one human to the next, slicing away the terrible little devices as quickly as he could. Two more females and a male turned on their companions, and then Kaz was delayed in reaching a male as he blinked against the power now contained in the stone he was trying to remove, forced to find the center with his fingers as his eyes were nearly blinded.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Someone screamed as they flew backwards, thrown by a burst of ki that burned the palms of its senseless wielder. Kaz could already tell that the victim was dead. Without Raff’s level of cultivation, the ki-bolt had torn out the male’s chest. Two more males grabbed the arms of the female who’d thrown the bolt, but her hands were already glowing with more ki.

One of the shamans fell as Chi Yincang’s weapon flared, breaking through a weak spot in the shield, and in response, a human shouted, clapping his hand to the back of his neck. His eyes rolled up, and he dropped to the floor, as dead as the male slumped against the wall.

Lianhua screamed for Chi Yincang to stop. Chi Yincang did not.

Li lifted from Kaz’s shoulders, her injured wing straining as she leaped for the nearest human with a rune-stone glowing in their neck. Kaz pinched another stone between his fingers, splitting himself between his body and Li’s, surrounding both stones with ki before his knife and Li’s teeth removed the spheres.

Two at a time, they leaped and flew, the humans grabbing those who were turning against them and forcing them to their knees in front of Kaz or Li. Two and two and two and then…they were done. Five human bodies lay on the ground, killed by their own people or Kaz’s failure to move fast enough.

Far more of the shamans were dead. Almost all of them, in fact, except for two who had simply fallen to the ground, arms splayed, prostrating themselves before Li. The dragon had ended up on the edge of the remaining humans, jaws and claws bloody, one wing limp. The two remaining shamans stared at her, completely ignoring Chi Yincang as they spoke words Kaz couldn’t seem to understand.

she told him wearily.

Kaz made his way to her, stepping around the bodies of those he hadn’t saved. He wasn’t sure he could lift her up, so instead he crouched down, and she came to him, climbing into his arms so she could lay her head on his shoulder. Jianying’s roar began again, but this time Li didn’t have the strength to push it back.

He looked over at Chi Yincang, who held the tip of his blade against a shaman’s neck. “Wait,” Kaz said, and the weapon lifted, just a bit.

Kaz’s knees creaked as he stood, but he stood. Crossing to the xiyi, he found the stones beneath their scales and compressed his core, urging more ki from it even as Jianying tried to suppress him. Somehow that horrendous voice had lost its power over Kaz, who had merged with his dragon to an even greater extent than before. What had once been a thread, then a cord that hung between Kaz and Li was now a chain, solid and unbreakable, and Kaz knew that whatever might have been true before, if one of them died now, the other would as well.

The container of ki that had once seemed so tricky to form was now simple, and Kaz slid his mage-blade beneath the scales of the first shaman, not even needing his hands to take out the orb. As he moved to the next xiyi, the rune-stone from the first rose untouched into the air and hurtled against a wall with so much force it left cracks around the smear of blood and dust. Even Chi Yincang took a step back at the violence of its flight.

The second orb followed the first, and then Kaz stood again, staring down at the two. “Get up,” he told them, though he wasn’t sure where the words came from. Something greater than himself was touching him, or perhaps Li, and it felt like the world itself was watching. “You can’t be forgiven for something you didn’t do. Regret your own choices instead. Do better.”

It was simple. Probably too simple. Certainly not profound, but the two xiyi got to their knees, long necks drooping. Kaz knew there was far more to what had happened today than he understood, and in some way these two were as much victims as the humans. So he walked past them. Through the exit Snen said would lead back to the surface. Behind him, the humans followed, circling wide around the two kneeling xiyi. Five of the strongest carried the fallen.

There was a platform in the room beyond. Kaz was somehow unsurprised to find that it was the same as the ones in the mage college. Not everyone could fit on it at once, but half of them crowded together with Lianhua in the center, holding onto the rope that controlled it. Slowly, it rose through a shaft cut through the stone above them.

Kaz stayed with the second group, which held most of those still able to fight, but he ignored them as he hugged Li to his chest. Her scales were dull again, and he wondered if she would even fit in his embrace after the next time she shed her skin.

she whispered, closing her eyes as she wrapped her tail around him.

he said, and for the first time he was sure she could hear him as clearly as he heard her.

Surprise, then delight, flooded their bond. she agreed.

Kaz’s tail almost wagged.

Li wiggled, and a sharp pain went through her wing. It was worse than before, and while Kaz still didn’t think it was broken, she never should have tried to use it before it was healed. he told her.

she said stubbornly.

he swore to her. They had done what they came to do. The humans were free, or almost. Plus, though they still didn’t know where Li’s family was, they had somewhere to start now. The xiyi had them, he was certain of it.

Silently, they watched as the platform returned. Lianhua, Yingtao, and Chi Yincang were the only passengers remaining on it, and judging by Lianhua’s expression, the space above must be safe, at least for the moment.

Humans surged forward, climbing onto the platform even before it settled completely to the ground, but they moved around Kaz much as they had the xiyi shamans. Kaz found that he didn’t mind, especially when he stepped up and instead of being packed in among the bloody, frightened crowd, there was a tiny open area all around him.

As the platform filled with ki and began to rise, Li said,

He looked down at her just before the stone swallowed them up. Several humans released startled or frightened gasps at what must have seemed to them like absolute darkness. To Kaz’s eyes, however, the platform itself was suffused with soft yellow ki, and the familiar ki-patterns of his friends stood just a few feet away. Li’s core and his spun in time, each suffused with glittering ribbons of all five colors, linked by a shimmering chain.

he asked, entranced by the beauty before him.

It was too late to get off the platform. Too late to search for his cousin. But he didn’t need to. Kaz knew exactly where Kyla was. She had gone back for Raff.