Chapter Two hundred (Patreon)

A hovering light orb illuminated a neatly folded stack of cloth beside the stream, with a glistening golden dragon perched on top of it. Li was fairly bubbling with excitement, and little puffs of mist emerged from her nostrils with every breath. Moisture darkened the green fabric, and Kaz reached toward the pile, intending to move the fabric out from under the dripping dragon.

Li hissed, lifting her wings defensively. <After you wash! Lianhua said you’re too dirty for clean clothes.>

Kaz lifted his arm, staring at the blue fur. He didn’t think he was that bad, especially not after hours spent riding in the rain. The black goo was very sticky, though, and he could see a few stubborn clumps still clinging to him.

<It’s the smell,> Li told him, shuddering perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.

He gave an experimental sniff, wrinkling his nose at the distinct whiff of something long dead and rotting. If even the humans could smell it, then Kaz must have become used to it. Poor Kyla. No wonder she hadn’t stayed with him for long.

Li bumped something else toward him with her tail, and Kaz saw it was one of Lianhua’s jars of smelly unguent. Next to it was a bar of soap. Kaz sighed, stepped into the water, and set to scrubbing.

It took a surprising amount of time before the dragon finally agreed that he had done a good enough job that he could stop. Honestly, he wasn’t that enthusiastic about putting on the layers of clothes that humans wore again, but Li was so excited that his tail began to wag as she did a little dance on the stone beside the stack.

He lifted the green item, which unfolded into a robe that looked like it would reach about halfway down his legs. It was made of a rougher fabric than the first one Lianhua had given him, but it also felt thicker and heavier, which actually felt quite pleasant as he swung it around his shoulders.

Beneath that lay a piece of bluish fabric which seemed to split into two pieces as he raised it up. It took him a while to realize that it was something like what Chi Yincang wore on his legs, which were much looser than the version Raff wore beneath his armor.

Kaz pulled them on, but the bottoms puddled on the floor beneath his paws. His proportions weren’t the same as a human’s, and these simply didn’t work. The robe covered most of his body anyway, so surely it was enough?

At last, he revealed a pair of what Lianhua had called ‘sandals’ when he saw one of the shopkeepers wearing them. They were the only footwear he’d seen that looked even vaguely comfortable. Simple straps held a flat piece of hardened leather or wood against the bottom of the foot, allowing humans to walk on hot or sharp surfaces. Kaz thought he might even try to create something similar for kobolds someday. The thick pads on their paws were quite durable, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to step on a pointy rock.

He set those aside with the leg coverings, then moved on to the long, rolled-up object that had been carefully hidden beneath the clothes. By this time Li was almost spinning in place, chanting, <Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!>

Kaz’s ear twitched as he tried to hide his amusement from her, but his fingers were nearly trembling as they gently tugged at the sturdy rope holding the bundle closed. He had only seen one thing like this while he was out with Lianhua, but it was in the shop they’d left rather abruptly when Li let them know Raff was in trouble. When had the human even had a chance to buy this? Lianhua took several minutes to buy anything, thanks to the extended haggling she seemed to revel in. Had she actually paid full price for it?

As the soft leather unrolled, Kaz caught his breath. Tubes of pigment, brushes, and slender sticks of charcoal were revealed. Each item was held in place by a small strap, so the whole could be rolled up quickly and easily. The shopkeeper had seen Kaz’s interest instantly, which Lianhua had already taught Kaz was a mistake, because the price of an item could double instantly if the owner was unscrupulous. They’d been told this would cost almost five gold, and Kaz heard Lianhua gasp in indignation at the price. But she had paid it? For him?

Pulling out the largest of the brushes, Kaz marveled at the stiffness of the bristles. Every one of them remained firmly in place as they ruffled against his thumb. Another brush was smaller, rounder, and softer, while a third was flat and cut at an angle. There were ten brushes in all, with the smallest being barely a quarter inch long, made up of only ten fine hairs that came to a delicate point.

Ten tubes of colored pigment came next, each marked with a sample of the color inside. Brilliant colors lay next to larger tubes of black and white, each made from some flexible pieces of what looked like tin. Kaz pressed a finger gently against the bulging middle of the tube of black paint, and it bent easily beneath his finger. How had they gotten the metal so thin?

Last came charcoal, which seemed to be something like chalk, in that it was soft and crumbly, leaving a rich streak of color behind when used. That streak could then be brushed and manipulated to create the illusion of depth and shadow, much like chalk, but these had powdered pigment mixed in when they were made, so they could be almost any color. There were ten in total, which was a number the humans seemed to prefer over the nine Kaz was so used to.

<Draw something!> Li cried, then corrected herself to, <Draw me!> She posed, curving her neck just so, as her wings spread to show off the subtle gradation of gold into blue, silver, and soft, shadowy black. There were a few pieces of heavy paper, much thicker than the sheets in Lianhua’s books, rolled up in the tube. Kaz took one out, and lost himself as he began to set paint to paper.

It was a disaster. There were lumps and smears everywhere, and the colors mixed into ugly shades of brownish green and yellow. Each brush clearly had its own purpose, but other than the small one being for detail, Kaz didn’t know what they were. When he finally gave up trying to fix the mess, Kaz washed the brushes in the stream - which was already running clear again, in spite of Lianhua’s prediction that it would be unusable after he bathed - and reluctantly showed it to Li.

The dragon had barely managed to resist the urge to look, especially once she sensed Kaz’s mounting frustration, and she was suspiciously silent for a long moment before asking, <This is what I look like?>

Kaz shook his head and tore the picture in half. “No,” he told her, showing her the way she looked through his eyes. Lustrous, delicate scales covered her body, and her long neck and tail were absolute grace. Her eyes nearly glowed with lambent gold light, and every movement she made was adorable, though that wasn’t a word he would have used in speaking to her.

Li stilled, head tilted as she focused on the picture Kaz was showing her. She sounded very thoughtful when she said, <Is that really how you see me?>

Kaz blinked. “Of course.”

<I’m going to keep you,> Li returned, suddenly completely serious. <You say that if I want to go, you’ll let me, but I won’t let you go. You’re mine, and I’m yours.> There was no room for Kaz to disagree, but he found that he didn’t want to.

Leaning forward, Kaz gently touched his nose to his dragon’s. “All right,” he murmured, and the two of them sat, nose to nose as the stream burbled behind them and the pieces of the failed painting slipped into the current, spinning and vanishing beneath the waves.

“Kaz?” he blinked, sitting up abruptly, unsure how long he’d just spent, floating in that space that was both between them and within him. Lianhua stood to one side, her eyes wide as she took them in, kobold and dragon, with the wet brushes and the tubes of paint scattered around them.

“Did you paint something?” Lianhua asked with a slightly awkward smile, as if sensing she’d interrupted something, but wasn’t sure what.

Kaz sighed, starting to gather his supplies and put them back into their places. “I tried. It didn’t go well. I don’t know how to paint.” Long ago, his father had promised to teach him, but once they left the Deep, Ghazt had never painted again, so far as Kaz knew.

Lianhua nodded, then grimaced. “Neither do I. My grandmother insisted I learn to draw and embroider, but I’m just not an artistic person, so I stick to pen and ink, and buy my clothes.” Her expression lightened, smile glowing like Li’s eyes as she went on, “Yingtao is the artist. Once I become a scholar, she’s going to go with me, and draw all of the wonderful things we discover. Much like you’ve been doing recently. She can paint, too, and I’m sure she’ll be happy to teach you.”

Kaz’s tail began to wag, and almost without thinking, he lifted Li to his shoulder, where she curled around his neck, her tail winding down his arm possessively. “That would be wonderful,” he said honestly. For a while, he’d truly believed that he would have to try and figure out how to paint by himself, and so far, that hadn’t been working.

The paints and brushes had all been returned to their places, so Kaz pulled out one of the two black charcoal sticks. Tucking the heavy paper away, he stood, staring at the broad expanse of bricks behind Lianhua. They were a uniform gray, made of oddly flat stone, and though they had crevices between them, those crevices were filled with some kind of gray sealant that was almost indistinguishable from the stone itself.

“May I draw-?” Kaz gestured meaningfully to the wall, and Lianhua’s brows rose.

“I don’t know,” she said, then raised her voice slightly as she called, “Raff?”

The big man appeared from the shadows around them a short while later. His hair was dark, and his bald face was greasy. He held a half-eaten rabbit in one large brown hand, and wore no armor. For a moment, even Kaz thought that a stranger had found his way into their camp. Then he smelled Raff’s distinctive aroma beneath that of the roasted meat, and the feeling of unfamiliarity vanished.

Handing a second rabbit to Kaz, Raff mumbled something, sounding interrogative. Apparently Lianhua understood, because she repeated Kaz’s question, which was good, because Kaz and Li both already had mouthfuls of warm, gamey meat.

Raff shrugged. “I guess. Don’t reckon anyone would care. I don’t think anyone comes here very often anyway. We don’t generally take quests near the Grimgar Wilds anymore.”

Lianhua shivered slightly. “I thought we must be getting close again. I can feel something coming from the south. It’s a bit like being back in the Deep, actually, where there’s so much ki that it all just kind of blends together.”

“Like mana,” Kaz offered, between bites, and both humans turned to look at him. Kaz had never known how to explain this, but now he had charcoal and a large, blank wall. He took four more of the charcoal sticks from the bundle of supplies and crossed to the wall.

Taking another large bite of rabbit, he passed the rest of it to Li, well aware that there probably wouldn’t be much left by the time he was done. Still, he didn’t want to wait, and his tail wagged like a puppy with a fresh bone as he began to sketch.

Broad sweeps of color took form, flowing through the faint outline of a body that was something between that of a kobold and a human. Actually, it looked quite a bit like the mixed-up form Kaz had taken when he tried to transform.

Kaz filled in a patch of color in the abdomen, a bit like a human’s dantian, but with a bit more of a rounded, solid shape. Channels led to the central dantian, a spinning mass of stored power. Up again to the bright, sharp color of the upper dantian, lying in the center of the forehead. Another large channel led back down, and then Kaz drew branches leading to the different parts of the body.

“Inside the body, each form of ki is purely one color,” Kaz told the watchers. “It works together, unless it’s being introduced by a pill or something else that came from elsewhere, but it never mixes. Creatures with cores produce it exactly like this, though sometimes it’s light,” he mixed a bit of white into a section of yellow, rubbing it together with his thumb until there was barely any color left at all, “and sometimes it’s very bright. Saturated.”

Raff’s mouth dropped open, and he seemed about to say something, but Lianhua elbowed him sharply in the side. She put a bit of ki into the movement, and Raff grunted as the pointy joint dug into his unprotected ribs.

“Humans, on the other hand, pull in mana from around them,” Kaz went on, blending black and white to make a gray cloud that seemed to be sucked into the figure’s skin. “It’s all one thing, and Raff uses it just like that, though I think he actually does pull a bit of red ki out of it, though it’s not intentional.”

Kaz drew another figure, this time filling the middle dantian with the thick gray fog of mana. Faint sparks of red danced through it, like lightning sparking through clouds. Going back to the first, he said, “Lianhua, Chi Yincang, and Gaoda all refine the mana into different colors of ki, but the ones they can’t use just drift away again as more mana.” More gray, this time made up of black and red, drifted away from the first figure.

“Since Raff uses mana exactly as it is, he’s faster and doesn’t have to keep as much stored in his central dantian. But it also seems,” Kaz hesitated, remembering the black gunk that flowed from his body when he increased his cultivation level, “dirtier than using ki. A lot is wasted, and just kind of vanishes into his body, or back out into the air.”

Raff grimaced, looking down at his freshly cleansed skin. “Is it hurtin’ me?” he asked.

Kaz stared into the human’s chest as if he might see more than he had every other time he looked, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t see mana very well until it’s very dense. I suppose that’s a good thing, or it would be in the way when I was trying to look at everything else, but it means that once it thins out enough, it might as well not be there at all. I don’t… think so, though. Not directly.”

Lianhua nodded thoughtfully, staring at the wall. “And us?”

Kaz turned back to his drawing. “Since you have to refine it into ki, it takes longer, so you have to cultivate and store more in your central dantian. Yours is a bit larger than Gaoda’s, but Chi Yincang’s is larger than either of yours. The ki he stores is denser, too.” He colored in the black and white parts of the central dantian so that they stood out starkly against the softer yellow, red, and blues.

Lianhua’s fingers hovered over the figure. “His cultivation level is higher, so that makes sense. But Kaz, what was that you said about creatures with cores?” Her voice was slightly higher pitched than usual, and nearly humming with excitement.

“We make the ki,” Kaz said simply. He drew a circle around the colored patch in the first figure’s abdomen. “As our cores turn, they create more ki, which we can use, store, or lose. The stronger we are, the more ki we produce, and the more we lose when we’re unable to use or store it all. It drifts away, mingling and mixing, turning into mana once it leaves our bodies.”

Raff and Lianhua exchanged a long glance, and Raff swallowed hard as Lianhua carefully asked, “Do you think that all ki comes from creatures with cores?”

Kaz thought about it, then nodded. “I’ve never seen it form anywhere else. That doesn’t mean it can’t, but it feels right to say that cores make mana. Then everything else around us, from plants to animals to humans, takes that in and uses it.”

Raff let out a low growl, and Lianhua paled slightly. Kaz looked between them and said, “Why does it matter?”

Lianhua let out a long, slow breath. “Because, Kaz, there are fewer and fewer creatures born with cores in every generation, and we - humans and demihumans alike - hunt and kill those we find to produce pills and potions to allow us to grow stronger. But if you’re right-”

“Then you’re killing the source of ki,” Kaz said numbly. “What would happen if you managed to kill them - us - all?”

Raff and Lianhua shook their heads, but Lianhua said softly, “I suspect there would be no more magic in the world. Back home in the Empire, a few scholars have begun to speak of just such a thing, citing whole areas where it’s difficult or no longer possible to cultivate. They have no idea why it’s happening, and it’s subtle, at least so far. There are still plenty of other areas where people can cultivate as well as ever, so no one has really listened. In fact, some cultivators are excited by the idea. The wealthy control all of the places with the highest ki density, and if other areas lose their ki, that would make them stronger, and their land more valuable.”

“Sounds like a recipe for disaster,” Raff said, and a quiet voice came from behind them.

“Indeed,” said Lianhua’s grandfather, in the form of Chi Yincang. His solid black eyes were staring at the two figures Kaz had sketched on the wall. “I will speak to the Emperor about this, young kobold,” he said, turning to look at Kaz. “And I believe that he will want to meet you almost as much as I do.”