Chapter One hundred forty-five (Patreon)

It took a little while for Berin to get everyone sorted out, but Kaz noticed the male she’d been speaking to vanished almost immediately. The rest of them were left standing until Kibbiz arrived from the den to lead their small group to the water cavern.

It was, indeed, astonishing. Kaz had seen many small trickles of water, and droplets often fell from the ends of growing stalactites, but here, clear water shot from a hole in the wall. Kaz was actually able to walk under the water, stop, and stare up at what looked like a stream flowing through air. Carefully, he raised his hand and poked a finger into it, and the water split, coursing around the digit and pushing against it hard enough that it required some effort to keep it in place.

“Oh! A spout waterfall!” Lianhua exclaimed, face lighting up. She reached out to touch the arching stream, making a little face at the chill of it. Shaking off her hand, she sighed. “It is pretty, but too cold for a proper shower. I’ll just wash my face and hands.”

When she pulled one of the small, sweet-smelling bars of soap from her pouch and reached for the falling stream, Kaz laid his hand on her arm. “I have an idea,” he told her, and grinned before looking around for the bowls he knew had to be there somewhere.

Sure enough, several stone bowls were stacked neatly nearby. These would be used to wash dishes, loincloths, and puppies who got into something the parents didn’t want to lick clean. The dirty water would then be dumped down a nearby pit or crevice, where it would vanish into the depths of the mountain.

Crossing to the stack, Kaz picked up the top one, then caught some of the glittering waterfall in it. He carried it off to the side, then poked his finger in and pulled on the red ki in his central dantian. There was probably enough in his cycle, without using the stored power, but he thought it was better to form a habit of using the excess, so someday he didn’t accidentally drain his channels when he could have simply used what he already had.

After a moment, steam began to rise from the surface of the water, and Kaz pulled back his power and his hand. Li clicked excitedly and leaped from his shoulder, splashing into the low, shallow bowl, where she promptly began to tug at the loose bits of skin that were starting to separate at her joints.

Kaz yelped, giving the dragon a mock glare. “That wasn’t for you!”

Li rolled an unimpressed eye at him and spouted a little water toward his snout. Kaz shook his head, sending her a picture of herself, stuck in the wall, with water streaming eternally from her mouth in place of the hole in the wall that had presumably been created by the Waveblades. Li gave a bubbly sort of whistle, then scooped water into the curve of her wing and splashed it at Kaz.

“What are you doing?” Kaz turned at the sound of the curious little voice, finding that at some point the pink puppy, Kyla, had snuck up beside him. Now, she stared at Li in clear fascination, her eyes bright with wonder.

Kaz stuttered for a moment, wondering if this female could somehow tell that neither he nor Li were what they seemed to be. But no, while she was certainly interested, she didn’t look frightened or even wary, so she must be just another puppy who found the idea of a tame fuergar appealing.

“Li likes baths almost as much as Lianhua does,” he told her. “I was trying to get some water for Lianhua, but Li stole it.”

Lianhua came up beside them, her own eyes twinkling as she looked between Kaz and the female who might be his cousin. She held up another bowl, already full of water. “I got my own,” she said cheerfully. “What do I need to do now, Kaz?”

Kyla looked between the human and Kaz, looking almost as interested in them as she was in the dragon. “You’re not as ugly as Mother said you would be,” she said, with the bluntness of youth. “Are you really a human?”

Lianhua blinked, then laughed and set the bowl down beside Kaz. “I really am human,” she affirmed. “What did your mother say we looked like?”

The puppy squashed her palm against her damp black nose. “Flat face,” she said, voice nasal. “No fur anywhere. Eyes that stick out. Flat feet the size of mature rougu mushrooms.”

Lianhua almost choked, then laughed again, shaking her head. Raff settled down beside her, crouching so he was ready to rise, but clearly amused by the conversation as well. He tugged at the fur on his face, which had grown quite a bit longer since Kaz met him. Where it had once neatly laid against his chin and jaw, now it curled, wild and long, down his neck.

“What about this?” he asked, grinning. “Some humans are almost as furry as kobolds, eh?”

Kyla gave him a dismissive look. “Mother says I shouldn’t speak to males from other tribes.” She glanced down at Li, then back up at Kaz, before her ears flattened slightly and she said, “Though humans don’t count, do they? And I just wanted to ask this male about the fuergar. I’ve never seen one that didn’t try to fight or run away.”

“This male is named Kaz,” Kaz said, “and I don’t count either. I’m traveling with the humans, and I’m not part of a tribe any more.”

This was the first time he had ever seriously claimed to be tribeless, and Kaz felt his chest tighten at how easy it was, but Kyla didn’t seem to notice. She nodded sagely, as if she met kobolds just like Kaz every day.

“Are you going to join the Irondiggers then? And can I hold your fuergar?” she asked, still watching Li, who had managed to remove most of the shedding skin from her tail and paws.

A little thrill ran through him, and he said, “Do you know where the Irondiggers are?” as if he didn’t really care about the answer.

Kyla shrugged impatiently, reaching toward Li, who immediately backed toward Kaz and snapped her teeth at the approaching fingers. “Everyone knows that. They’re stuck in the Deep, too. They keep asking the great chiefs to let them go to the mid-levels, but the chiefs aren’t allowing anyone through. Mother says they’re all old relics who should have been replaced years ago.”

As if suddenly realizing what she’d said, Kyla snapped her mouth closed with a click, her eyes darting around the cavern. Apparently, she didn’t consider Kibbiz or the puppies washing dishes a threat, so she huffed a sigh of relief.

Kaz felt a wave of relief when he heard that the Irondiggers were close, and stuck. As long as the mid-levels were closed, his group didn’t need to hurry to contact them, which should give him at least a few days to find the Magmablades and dig into their history.

Reaching out, he scooped Li out of the bowl, leaving behind soft, discarded strips of skin. He set her up on his shoulder, where she looped her tail around his throat and continued grooming herself. Once the dragon was slightly less likely to bite the overly-enthusiatic pup, Kaz turned to Lianhua. Under the pretense of helping her adjust its position on the uneven stone floor, he dipped his fingers in and summoned more red ki. This time he stopped before steam began to rise, but Lianhua clearly sensed that he was doing something, and dipped her own fingers in. With a pleased smile, she started to wash her face and hands.

Kaz took his original bowl and stood, and Kyla scrambled to stand as well. She looked unhappy when she realized how much taller he was, but she walked beside him as he moved toward the drain crevice.

“Why don’t you have a warrior necklace?” she asked abruptly, staring at his neck, which was only adorned by Li’s tail. “Did you lose it?”

He dumped the dirty water more quickly than he meant to, startled by the direct question. “My chief said I wasn’t ready for my spirit hunt yet.”

Kyla frowned as she looked him up and down. “You look ready to me,” she declared confidently. “You’re as large as my father, and you’re not a numb-mind. But you have a fuergar like my friend Arkic. He caught it in a trap, and it already bit him three times, but he won’t let it go or eat it.”

Kaz smiled a little as he went to get more water to rinse his bowl. “Is that so? What does your den mother think about that?”

Kyla’s previously unwavering gaze slid away from Kaz’s. “I don’t think she knows.”

This surprised Kaz. Rega always knew what the Broken Knife puppies were up to. Sometimes she chose not to do anything about it, if she thought it would be safe for them to learn their lesson naturally, but she was always there to help if things went wrong, clean their small wounds, or cuddle a whimpering pup. How had a puppy been injured three times without the den mother doing something about it?

The pup glanced around, then leaned forward, whispering so loudly that she might as well have been speaking in her normal voice. “We don’t actually have a den mother. My moth- The chief says it’s a waste, and we don’t have any females to spare. Some of the males keep an eye on us, and of course there are warriors nearby when we go gathering, but mostly the older pups watch over the younger ones when our parents are working.”

“But who teaches you the stories and the howling?” Kaz asked. Aside from protecting the pups and making sure they didn’t get into anything they couldn’t get out of, a den mother’s greatest task was to make sure all the puppies learned the rules and history of the tribe. He supposed that parents could do it, but in his tribe, it had always been Rega’s task, and even though he now realized his tribe wasn’t normal, he thought this part had been.

One of Kyla’s shoulders lifted in a half-hearted shrug. “We watch, and we listen. The older puppies do what they can.”

Kaz didn’t frown, because he thought the young female would stop confiding in him if she sensed disapproval, but internally he was certain that this was wrong. It sounded like the part of the Magmablades who stayed in the Deep were just as broken as the part that left, if in a different way.

Silently, he urged Li to climb down his arm, and reluctantly, she did so. He began brushing the old scales away from  her back and wings, and she settled down, eyes half closed and throat vibrating softly in contentment. As he’d hoped, Kyla’s golden gaze was caught by the interaction, so Kaz ventured a question.

“How long… has your mother been chief?” he asked, using a claw to scratch under Li’s chin.

“Years and years,” Kyla replied absently, fingers twitching at her sides as she fought not to reach out and touch the happy creature. “She became chief before the Breaking.”

“The Breaking?” Kaz repeated, gently stroking the curve of a wing.

“Mmm,” Kyla agreed. “When my mother’s evil sisters destroyed everything we Magmablades had built. Mother says the only reason we still have a tribe is because she had the courage to do the right thing, and tell the great chiefs what Oda was doing. If it weren’t for her, we all would have been killed or exiled.”

Kaz lowered his voice even further, tickling Li under one arm so she lifted the limb to expose the itchy skin beneath. “But they can’t get rid of you all, or the forges won’t work.”

Kyla grimaced. “There are plenty of part-Magmablade pups from males traded to other tribes. They could just do what we’ve been doing with the Woodblades, and try to make a new tribe from whatever was left.”

Her eyes went wide, and she stepped back, holding her hands out defensively. “That’s what everyone has been doing. The Waveblades had a new blue puppy born just last year, and the Mithrilblades are hoping the Woodblade males their tribe took in will produce new Woodblades soon as well. There’s nothing strange about what we’re doing!”

Except that the Waveblades and Mithrilblades were still great tribes, while the Magmablades weren’t. Still, that didn’t seem like something worth panicking over, so why did Kyla look like she’d just spilled a big secret?

The sweet smell of soap came up from behind him, and as Lianhua dumped her own bowl, she said, “Kibbiz says it’s time to eat. I reminded her we ate not long ago, but she seems pretty insistent.”

Beside Kaz, Kyla spoke up, her usual confidence returning. “The Goldcoats eat together once a day. Even the males and puppies. It’s something the Goldblades do, so of course they have to as well. Tezne or Berin will tell everybody what happened today, and if there were any battles, the leader of the warriors will talk about that. The den mother will let everyone know what the gatherers found, and if anyone needs anything, they’ll speak up so someone else can offer to help.”

That sounded very pleasant to Kaz. Even when Oda bothered to listen to the other members of the tribe, she could rarely be bothered to actually do anything about their concerns. Everyone just solved their own problems, and if they couldn’t, the problem just remained until it resolved on its own or became so large that Oda couldn’t ignore it.

“So she probably wants t’ show us off?” Raff asked, scratching at his fur. It was damp, so it looked like Lianhua had convinced him to wash as well, at least a little.

Kyla smirked. “More like use you to show that the Goldblades have been right all along. Everyone else said that with the mountain closed, we wouldn’t see humans here any more. But Idla has insisted you would make your way down through the mountain eventually, and even sent one of her most loyal tribes to watch over the stairs.”

The humans exchanged glances that Kaz didn’t know how to interpret. Lianhua hadn’t really come looking for ore and weapons, after all, and as far as Kaz knew, none of the other humans had bothered to try making their way here, so the Goldblades were probably wrong after all.

“All right, then,” Lianhua said, settling her clean bowl back in the stack. “I suppose we should go and see what Berin has to say.”