Chapter One hundred eighty-one (Patreon)

Kaz knew they had been followed before Raff and Lianhua could even set his paws on the ground. He took a moment to be astonished by the way it squished up between his toes, soft and warm, and not at all like the ground he had walked on for his entire life. In that moment, his opportunity to send their stalker home was lost.

“Kyla,” he croaked, looking toward the core that seemed to be floating in nothingness. It was mostly red, but had a strong swirl of gold and blue mingling among the ruby, and he didn’t need to see the pup’s pink fur to recognize it.

The young kobold chuffed impatiently as she stepped closer, and Li showed Kaz as the pup shimmered back into existence, dropping the illusory haze she seemed to summon at will. At his side, Raff and Lianhua both let out sounds of surprise.

“I’ll be glad when this is over, just so you lot will stop surprisin’ me,” the large human complained. “Never thought I’d be stuck with so many magic users when I agreed to take a bunch of tourists into old Scarabus mountain. Honestly, I figured it’d be the easiest gold I ever made, since you’d come screamin’ back out as soon as the going got tough.”

Chi Yincang appeared behind Kyla, making the puppy jump and squeal in her own turn. He seemed to hover menacingly, the shadows cast by the stone arch making his black boots disappear into the murky green ground.

Lianhua rubbed her hand across her eyes wearily, leaving a streak of something dark across her cheekbone. “Kyla, you have to go back,” she said.

The puppy shrugged her shoulders, which were heavily weighed down by a bulging niu-fur pack. “How?” she asked cheerfully. “The portal is closed.”

They all turned to look, as though they weren’t already well aware that the dark membrane hanging in the center of the stone archway had burst. Even Kaz turned his blind eyes in that direction. He was pushing blue ki into them now that they were out of the mountain, and he could already make out faint shadows in the darkness.

“How does it open?” Lianhua asked, staring up at it. She released Kaz’s arm, barely seeming to notice that he was now standing with only Raff’s support.

Raff shook his head. “I told ya when we came here in the first place. It used to open for three days, at the summer and winter solstices. I don’t know what day it is, but I’d guess we have another month or so before summer solstice, if the kobolds even decide to open the mountain like they used to. Seems to me they’d be more likely to wait until things are settled again, if they bother at all.”

Lianhua waved her hand. “I remember. I meant how do we let the kobolds know they need to open it? There has to be a way, right, Kyla?” She set her hands on her hips and looked at the pink kobold.

Kyla glared back, jaw set and silent, until at last she looked away in a submissive gesture. “There is a way. But Gram can’t do it again right now, so I’ll have to wait.” She lifted her eyes, staring up into the black expanse of sky above them. Lianhua had told Kaz about the sun and the moon when she explained how seasons changed, so Kaz knew it must be nighttime now, but the moon was so bright by itself that he wondered how he would be able to bear the sun when it rose.

Raff sighed, ruffling his hair with his free hand. He, too, stared up at the sky, and said, “I reckon we’re a few nights off the full moon. If it’s waning, bein’ in the wilds will only become harder and more dangerous as the nights get darker. The closest inn is a two day hike from here, but if we’re lucky we might be able to get horses there. But if we stay with this scamp, we’ll probably be out during the dark of the moon, and that’s no good time to be away from civilization.”

Kyla’s ears perked up. “I could go with you.”

Raff blinked, then looked toward Lianhua. She folded her arms, obviously conflicted, then glanced toward Kaz. “Let’s rest tonight,” she said. “We can discuss it more in the morning. Maybe someone will realize Kyla is missing and open the portal to find her.”

Kaz shook his head, resisting the urge to rub his itching eyes. “You told them you’re going on your spirit hunt, didn’t you?” he asked the puppy, his voice clearer as his throat healed.

The pup’s claws scratched at the soft ground, making an unfamiliar sound and causing her to lift her paw, shaking away clumps of dirt from between her toes. She reached down and plucked something from one of the tufts of fur by her ankle, muttering, “Yes.”

He gave in and scrubbed his hand across his nose, ignoring the stubs of fur that crisped away beneath his hand. “Then no one will look for her. Even if she doesn’t come back in a week, they’ll only keep waiting. It’s possible that someone might try to find out what happened to her if she isn’t back in ten days.”

Kyla looked up, shocked. “Of course they’ll go looking! What if I was hurt or lost, and couldn’t make it back? Who would just let a puppy die because they failed their first spirit hunt?”

The silence stretched, then Kaz said, “First?” in a voice he barely recognized as his own.

Nodding, Kyla said, “Of course. It’s embarrassing to fail the first time, but it happens. My cousin Loor had to try three times. That’s why he became Jul’s assistant; he’s a terrible warrior, but he’s not stupid.”

Kaz closed his eyes, and Li pressed her head against his cheek, whistling comfortingly. Kyla watched, realizing that something she said had hurt him, but unsure how or why.

Finally, Kaz drew in a shuddering breath and said, “Do you want to go with us?”

Kyla nodded enthusiastically, though behind her Raff was crossing his forearms and shaking his head vigorously. As one, they all turned to look at Lianhua again. Lianhua shook her head, saying again, “We all need rest. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Dismissing the puppy, she turned to Kaz, leaning forward to peer into his eyes. “You seem a lot better already. Given the way Li was acting, I thought you might be playing up your injuries a bit in order to convince Idla and the others to let you go, but even your eyes look a little clearer.”

Raff let out a snort of laughter. “I caught that, too. You’re not a half-bad actor, Blue, but your flyin’ rat is about as convincin’ as a kid in a school play. Good thing those kobolds didn’t know how she gets when you’re actually hurt, or the game woulda been up.”

Li hissed angrily when Raff called her a flying rat, then let out a roiling cloud of vapor when he went on to deride her acting skills, but internally, Kaz had to agree. It seemed that feeling passed through his bond to the dragon, because she turned her annoyance on Kaz next, nipping at his ear, though her teeth didn’t break the skin.

Chi Yincang had turned around, staring out over the open area that surrounded them. There were plants that looked like small versions of the Tree all around the edges, and some broken bricks scattered among the vegetation that covered the ground, but the dark male wasn’t looking at any of those things. In fact, he had his head tilted in a way that told Kaz he was probably listening instead.

There was a momentary lull in the conversation, and Kaz heard it, too. There was something moving out there, somewhere. His sense of which direction a sound was coming from was thrown off by the complete lack of solid stone walls, but he turned in place, watching through Li’s eyes as he listened with his own ears.

It was Kyla, though, who poked her nose almost straight up into the air and yelped, “Fuergar!” before bounding off toward a particularly dense patch of trees. Kaz lifted his own nose, but all he could smell was a faint, sweet scent, and the overwhelming reek of the shiyan he had just helped kill. It seemed that his nose would also need a little time to recover.

Raff was close behind the puppy, his sword already out, though he didn’t start pushing mana into it yet. The pool of mana in his chest was still very low, and he hadn’t started refilling it yet, though the gray cloud of undifferentiated power gathered around him as he ran.

Kaz started to follow, but nearly tripped over his own paws. He was looking through Li’s eyes, which were below and off to the side of his own, and so his sense of where his own body was and how he needed to move through the world was skewed. Add the fact that something damp seemed to be wrapping itself around his ankles, and he didn’t need Lianhua’s hand on his arm, holding him in place.

“Let them,” Lianhua said. “There shouldn’t be anything out there that Raff can’t handle, at least this close to the full moon.” She tugged at his arm, turning him gently toward her. “Kaz, are you really going to be all right?”

Kaz glanced toward Chi Yincang, seeing the opposing black and white ki that mingled in the human’s dantians. Somehow, Chi Yincang always seemed to know everything anyway, so did it really matter if Kaz spoke in front of him or - at least theoretically - behind his back?

“Yes,” he told Lianhua firmly, ignoring the niggling doubt in the back of his mind. He was sure that everything except his eyes would be fine, and he hoped for the best there as well. If not, Li would simply have to see for him, at least for now. He felt the dragon’s warm assurance that she would do so, and his poor, naked tail wagged as he went on.

“When we were in the Tree, and I touched that old core, I saw something. Something that you need to know about.” At the light in her eyes, he shook his head. “Not now, but soon. Suffice it to say that I learned a few new skills, or at least of a few skills, though it remains to be seen if I can do them myself. I think one of them will allow me to travel with you without drawing comment.”

Lianhua’s pale brows shot up, and she glanced toward Li. “That was a dragon’s core, so I assume you saw something dragon-related. Did you figure out how to do Li’s disappearing trick?”

He forgot how quick she was, able to put together two claws with two paws and come up with a whole kobold. “Ah, something like that. In a way.”

On his shoulder, Li let out an amused puff of vapor, sending him an image of himself, half dragon and half kobold, flailing furry wings as he attempted to blend into a rocky wall. Kaz was about to respond when he heard Kyla’s voice lifted in an exultant howl.

“She found something,” he told Lianhua, and they both looked toward the sound. The plants were thrashing, but even Li couldn’t see anything more than a few glimpses of brightly colored fur in between shadowy leaves and branches.

Raff emerged from the mayhem, calling back to them even as he continued to watch the small trees shake. “It’s a fuergar all right,” he said. “In rough shape, too. Pretty fur, though. Might make a bit sellin’ it if the pup doesn’t tear it up catchin’ it.”

As if responding to her name, which perhaps she was, Kyla let out a sharp yelp, then stood up, clutching a mid-sized fuergar by the scruff of its neck as if it was a puppy. The light of the moon showed that its fur was indeed a pleasant silvery shade of copper-gold, but more importantly, Kaz saw the distinct gleam of a core in its belly.

“Kyla,” he called, about to warn her that this wasn’t a normal rodent, but at the sound of his voice, the fuergar’s head whipped around. Large, beady eyes stared at him with a disturbing gleam of intelligence, even at this distance, and then the fuergar curled up on itself, uncoiling with a burst of energy that forced a flush of power out of its core. It was uncomfortably close to what Kaz had done to shatter his own core once, but thankfully the creature was nowhere near as powerful as he was, so it just made Kyla yelp and pull her hand back.

The fuergar hit the ground running, little legs churning the damp ground as it ran, not away from Kaz and the others, but directly toward them. It was a good distance away when it began, and by the time it crossed half the clearing, Kaz could see the long streaks that he had taken for shadows or natural variations in its fur coloring were actually dried blood. It was mostly clean on the bottom, but its back and head, where it couldn’t reach to clean itself properly, were crusted and dark.

It began to slow as it drew close to him, taking a few last staggering steps, then falling with an exhausted squeak. Kaz knelt, instinctively reaching out toward it, then drew back his hand quickly. It was never safe to approach a cornered fuergar.

This one, however, didn’t draw away or even bare its teeth. Instead, it lifted its pointed pink nose, nostrils quivering, and drew in a deep breath, taking in his scent. It drew back a bit, probably repelled by the lingering odor of ichor, but then its eyes went to Li, who was perched on Kaz’s shoulder, staring back.

With a shuddering sigh, the fuergar let its head fall forward until it nearly brushed Kaz’s paw, then closed its eyes. Its sides heaved once, then again, before falling quiet.