Chapter Two hundred seven (Patreon)

Kyla crouched beneath a heavy cloth spread over several boxes. She’d been there for a good while now, and she was beginning to regret her choices.

When she decided that spending her spirit hunt in the world outside the mountain would be even better than spending it on the mid-levels, she’d thought it was a brilliant idea. Of course, a spirit hunt was meant to be spent alone, and she fully intended to stay by the gate when Kaz and the humans left.

But then Kaz saw her. Felt her? And he wasn’t nearly so injured as he’d been pretending, which she already knew because she heard the Goldcoat healer, old Jul, tell her father so. It was supposed to be a secret, because everyone else was watching the chiefs get ready to open the mountain for the first time in years, but Kyla was there. Kyla was always there. Somewhere.

As always, she got a little thrill at the realization that she could do something that neither her mother nor her sister could do. One of the old books written by past chiefs had described the technique, pulling power around her like a shield, but creating heat rather than a wall. And it was hot inside the hidden space she created, often leaving her exhausted and parched, but it was worth it, because she was free.

Not always. Not in the most important ways. But she could leave when the barking and growling started. She could flee her den, her mother, the secrets they kept and the lies that they fed to the rest of the puppies. She read the books, she climbed the Tree, and she listened. Kyla knew things she was never meant to know.

And all of her knowledge, her ability, her habit of doing what she wanted because no one would know… All those things had led to this moment, and in retrospect, she could definitely see a few times when things could, perhaps, have been improved by not. Just not.

Not, for instance, leaving Kaz and the humans as soon as they left the city. It would probably have been better to wait a day. Maybe two. Wait until they had settled someplace, and she knew more about this place, because humans were strange

Kyla had assumed that a city was a city. This one was inhabited by humans rather than kobolds, but the humans she’d met - Raff, Lianhua, and even Chi Yincang - were odd, but not unkind. And they weren’t even odd in any particularly worrisome way. She could go to this human city, spend a week on her spirit hunt, and then meet Lianhua at the ‘park’ some evening.

How many fascinating things would she find? No one else, not even the great chiefs, would have better beads and charms for their necklace. Kyla might not be a great chief, but even Ija wasn’t, at least not now, and the Woodblades would be needing subsidiary tribes. Surely Ija and Gram would see that Kyla was perfect to lead one of them. Kyla could still help her sister, still be more than just another member of the tribe to the person who had done far more to raise her than Vega ever had.

A loud noise rose from outside Kyla’s hidey hole, and she flinched back. What was that? What was any of it? She understood carts and farms and money and knew how to tell the difference between males thanks to her books and the training she received as the daughter of a chief. But the actual sounds and smells were like an assault. How could the humans live like this? More importantly, didn’t it ever stop?

A soft squeak told her that Mei had returned, and Kyla looked down to see a little pink nose and inquisitive eyes appear beneath the edge of the cloth. The first time the fuergar ran off - while Kyla still believed she was about to have a grand adventure - Kyla’s heart had almost broken. But the rodent always came back, usually with some treasure caught between her teeth, which she dropped at Kyla’s feet like a puppy bringing its mother a pretty rock.

This time, the thing she brought was a small copper coin. Kyla accepted it, adding it to the stack of similar coins beside her. There were three other coppers, a silver, and one thing that was round like a coin, with a half-circle attached to the back, and no image stamped into it. Kyla wasn’t certain what that one was, but Mei brought it to her, so she kept it anyway.

Digging into her pack, Kyla offered the fuergar another small piece of yumi root. The roots kept for a long time, unlike the sprouts, so Kyla still had quite a few. Honestly, she could live off of them for the rest of the week, but she didn’t really want to. What she wanted was to find Kaz and stay with him. After a few days, maybe she’d try again. Or maybe she’d return to her original plan and go back to the gate, spending her time exploring the forest nearby until the chiefs opened the mountain again.

But Kyla was lost. This was a strange feeling for her. She’d been lost before, of course, but so long as she stayed in the Deep, she was safe enough. No one liked the Magmablades, but no one would risk angering Vega, either. Plus, Kyla’s father, Rudu, was well-liked and known to most of the chiefs. Kyla had never really understood why he’d chosen to accept Vega as his mate. That was one secret not even she had been able to discover.

Kyla lifted the edge of the fabric, watching and listening. Darkness had fallen some time ago, and from what Kyla knew, that meant it was time for humans to sleep. But they didn’t. If anything, they’d only grown louder and more boisterous than before. More of the voices she heard were in the deeper registers, which Kyla knew meant they probably belonged to males, but otherwise nothing had changed.

Humans were noisy. And smelly. And loud. And they stank. They yelled, and their shoes clattered against the roads like niu hooves on stone. One male had even urinated on the building next to Kyla’s hiding place. Like a puppy. Could he not wait until he reached a waste crevice? Given the general overall stench of the place, did humans not use waste crevices?

A door clattered open, and a male stumbled from the building. A wave of fermented air flowed up from the space between the fabric and the road, making Kyla drop the cloth and clap her hands over her muzzle. That particular smell had become stronger and stronger ever since it grew dark, and it made her want to sneeze.

Mei looked up at her, large eyes bright with worry, or so Kyla imagined, and the fuergar’s whiskers quivered as she placed one paw on Kyla’s knee. For the thousandth time, Kyla’s heart clenched in her chest. How could any creature be so adorable? Especially a creature whose kin Kyla had eaten a thousand times before. Now, just the thought made her stomach roil, adding nausea to the tickle in her nose. Which was very bad, because if she sneezed now, vomit would come after, and even if she used the last of her power to conceal herself again, the sounds and scents would give her presence away.

The human male had staggered away down the street, knees and ankles turning away from each other as if they would go in opposite directions. He was howling loudly, garbled words carrying above the sound of other humans yelling for him to stop.

She had to leave. Had to find Kaz in this miasma of smells. But Kaz didn’t really smell like Kaz right now, even if she could isolate his scent among all the others. She definitely hadn’t thought this through. Had only seen an opportunity and taken it. Foolish, selfish, immature Kyla. Causing trouble again.

Mei squeaked softly, and Kyla looked down. The fuergar was poised at the edge of the thick cloth, her nose already out, no doubt ready to go looking for her next prize. But Kyla didn’t want her to go. Didn’t want to be alone. Didn’t want to be forced to leave while Mei was gone, taking the chance that she would never see her pet again.

This time, when Mei ran, so did Kyla. She didn’t even bother using her ki to hide herself, just grabbed the stack of coins and depended on the darkness and the almost too-large cloak to hide her. It was full dark, and the smoke rising from almost every home blanketed the sky, blocking even the light of the clouds and the narrow slice of moon. Scattered poles topped with clear lights lined the wider streets, creating pools of illumination. In between those pools were shadows that faded into blackness, and it was here that Kyla and Mei scurried, flattening themselves against the walls whenever they heard voices or footsteps.

Mei seemed to know exactly where she was going, skirting the lights and the occasional cracked shutter as she moved, quick but not with the look of a frightened creature. Her eyes gleamed a soft brown, lighter than copper but darker than gold, and her long whiskers dragged gently against the wall. Seeing her confidence, Kyla began to gather her own, feeling the tension of the past hours fade slightly.

“Where are we going? Did you find Kaz?” Kyla whispered as they paused to let a pair of human males go by. They had their arms over each other’s shoulders, and were weaving from side to side so much that Kyla thought for a moment one of them would actually trip over her. Then they were gone, and Mei looked at Kyla again, squeaking with soft insistence.

Kyla gave a quiet yip of laughter, feeling a little more of her worry drain away. She was moving again, and moving was always good. Bad things happened when you stayed in one place too long.

Deep tunnels of blackness began to appear as they moved deeper into the city. Her kobold vision allowed her to see lumps in the darkness, and as she continued following her fuergar, more and more of them looked like figures. Humans, sleeping not in a hut but on the hard ground, huddled beside buildings, out of the way. Who were they? Were they not of this tribe, this city, and so they had no place to rest? But even in the mountain, a kobold of an allied tribe would be given a safe place to sleep, and if they weren’t allied, they should be home by the time exhaustion took them.

A realization took her. She would have to sleep on the street tonight. Close her eyes and rest surrounded by humans, none of whom would react well if they came upon her unknowingly. That much Raff had said, over and over. Unless he or one of the other humans were with her, she was absolutely not to allow anyone else to realize what she was. Foolishly, she had thought that would be easy enough, but there were no unused tunnels, no forgotten dens, no between places here. Every foot was used, as it was in the Deep.

Mei turned sharply, her little claws scratching against the stones as she vanished down one of the side streets. Kyla realized she had fallen behind and hurried to catch up, following the sound more than the smell of the fuergar. Smells here were blurred, lost, muddy as the side of a river, and Kyla was no tracker.

Kyla caught sight of the animal’s tail vanishing through a hole in the wall ahead. A hint of moonlight turned the flash of skin from silver to pink for one precious moment, and Kyla lunged after her, hand thrust through the opening. To catch nothing.

It was small. Too small? Kyla snorted. She might not be a tracker, she definitely wasn’t a fighter, but she was an expert at sneaking and hiding. First, she looked through to make sure no danger lurked on the other side of the wall, but saw nothing but a small, dim space. The only light filtered through a few tiles that had fallen from the ceiling above, allowing entrance to the tiniest trickle of moonlight. A trickle was enough for kobold eyes.

What she did not see worried her far more than what she did. There was no sign of Mei. Kyla took off her pack, then her cloak, and extended her arms ahead of her, making her narrow chest even narrower, and began to wriggle through the crumbling bricks. Her new robe caught on a jagged edge, making an ominous tearing sound, and she froze. Backing up, she managed to get it unstuck, then dragged herself the rest of the way through, leaving a furrow in the dust, and filth on her clothes.

With a soft, worried whine, Kyla reached back through and tugged her cloak to her. The pack was harder, since it was stuffed to its limit holding everything she’d thought she might need on her spirit hunt. Of course, when she packed it, she hadn’t expected to go into the human world, so half the things she’d packed were all but useless. Still, she couldn’t bear to leave those reminders of home behind before she absolutely had to.

Briefly, she thought that time was now, but the pack finally pulled through, the sturdy niu-fur fabric not even snagged, though a few of the beads Kyla had sewn onto it fell loose, clattering across the ground. They rolled beneath what looked like a pile of fallen tiles and dead leaves, and then the soft, familiar plink plink sound of something falling down into a hole with stone at the bottom.

Kyla’s eyes widened, and she hurried over, brushing the debris aside until she revealed a rough hole in the floor. A tunnel led downwards, several feet of dirt giving way to the stone she’d heard. She stuck her nose into it and drew in a long, deep breath. There was the distinct smell of moist dirt, something moldy, urine, and… fuergar. Mei had gone this way.

The bottom of the hole was eight to ten feet down, but the walls were rough enough that getting up and down shouldn’t be too difficult. She peered down, trying to see if there was anywhere else to go. There had to be, though, didn’t there? Even a fuergar couldn’t vanish into nothing. They could, however, gnaw their way through stone. Was it possible that Mei was creating a burrow for them?

Kyla dropped her pack and cloak down, then flipped over and lowered her legs over the edge. Her paws scrambled for purchase, and the far side of the tunnel was close enough that her tail dragged against it awkwardly. She was a good climber, though, thanks to all her practice climbing up and down the Tree, and when the substance beneath her hands shifted from rocky dirt to stone, she released her grip, landing easily atop her belongings.

Mei’s scent was stronger here, without other smells to override it. Kyla glanced around, soon seeing the small, dark tunnel near her knees. There was barely enough room to crouch and examine it, but she managed. To her surprise, it didn’t look like it had been made by fuergar teeth at all. Instead, it was smooth, almost like the stones had been shaped before they were put in place, creating a perfect arch, which was now cracked and partially broken.

She scratched at the stone, finding it oddly textured and slightly soft. It wasn’t brick, and it wasn’t like Lianhua’s beautiful cups and plated, but it was crafted, made of something that wasn’t solid stone, for some particular purpose. Why were the humans burying tunnels beneath their houses? This was too small for most humans to squeeze through, and would be a tight fit even for Kyla. Did human children play down here?

She shook her head, and her nose scraped painfully against the tunnel’s edge. She rubbed at her muzzle, whimpering. A questioning squeak came in answer, and then the sound of scratching claws announced Mei’s return. The fuergar popped out of the tunnel as if she’d done it many times before, looking up at Kyla. Her round, delicate ears framed her quivering nose, and Kyla quickly scooped her up, feeling the reassuring thud of the creature’s heart beating against her palms.

“Thank you for coming back,” Kyla murmured. “Can’t you stay with me?”

The fuergar opened her mouth, allowing yet another coin to fall out. This one had the shine of silver beneath the dirt. It also had a very distinct bite taken out of one edge.

Kyla’s eyes widened. “You’ve been bringing me food,” she said. “I give you some of my food, and you give me some of yours. Did I interrupt you in the middle of eating this time?”

Mei squeaked again, but the meaning of the sound was lost on Kyla. Then the rodent began to make her ‘let me down’ wriggle, and Kyla obediently released her. It was hard. Harder than it ever had been before, but she always remembered that Kaz said Li stayed with him because she wanted to. Knowing that she could go allowed her to stay. Kyla had to let Mei go so the fuergar could return.

The rodent immediately disappeared down the tunnel again, and this time Kyla didn’t hesitate. She tied the backpack and cloak into a single bundle that she then tied to her belt so it dragged along behind her. Crawling forward, she followed the scent of Mei.