Chapter Two hundred twelve (Patreon)

The whole city seemed to have devolved into a bizarre combination of stillness and chaos. As Kaz and Raff watched, every human who could dropped everything and fled, leaving the streets emptier than they had been in the several hours since Kaz arrived. Meanwhile, escaping animals fluttered, slid, and flew away.

Kaz finished his motion, using a spark of ki to burst open the lock on the wyvern’s cage before backing up quickly as the animal used the single digits on its wings to pull itself up and out. Its red eyes seemed slightly less mad and quite a bit more puzzled as it looked briefly at Kaz. Li poked her head out, and golden eyes met crimson. Something passed between them, something even Kaz couldn’t sense more than the edge of, and then the wyvern flapped its wings and lifted into the air.

As the reptile flew away, the bells began to ring again. This time, there was a very definite pattern to it, and Raff lifted his head, eyes going distant. “That’s the call to the eastern quarter,” he said. At Kaz’s look, he added, “Citizens with any fighting skills are expected to participate in defending the city, especially those of us who work as guards, soldiers, or mercenaries. We do drills once a month, and the crown buys beverages afterwards.”

 White teeth flashed. “It’s usually as much a party as practice, but we all know it’s serious, too, especially those who’ve been around for a while. We only had an incursion drop inside the city once before, and I was too young to fight then, but everyone remembers what it was like.” Raff shuddered.

Kaz pointed up to where the light had faded to nothing more than a narrow slit in the sky, distinguishable from the absent moon only because it lacked the moon’s graceful curve. “That’s an incursion?”

Raff shook his head. “That’s the Gate. The incursion is the thing that fell from it.” His expression grew bleak. “A thing that’s currently butchering people in another part of the city. But the guilds and the soldiers will take care of that. The worst part is-”

A thing came skittering into the open area, climbing easily over the fallen cages. Some small creatures that were still stuck inside shrieked, then fell very still as it passed over, either hoping to remain unnoticed, or dead. The monster looked a bit like a binyi, a very rare lizard from the mountain, but it was only half the size, and red ki burned through its body even as flames licked over its surface, reaching out to engulf everything it touched.

Raff growled, pulling his sword from its sheath. “A salamander. Not terribly hard to kill, so long as it doesn’t touch you.” He spared a glance for Kaz, grimacing. “You don’t have a weapon, do you? Just use your magic to hit it from a distance, eh? And keep an eye out. When there’s an incursion this big, there are usually lots of the little beasts.”

Sure enough, even as he finished speaking, two more of the lizards scurried out of the shadows, and a fourth ran across the roof of a nearby building. Fortunately, while the building itself had a good bit of wood in its construction, the roof consisted of something else, and whatever that something was, it resisted the salamander’s flames.

Now Kaz could hear the crackle of flames and the shouts of humans rising all around them. Somewhere, metal clashed, and a beast gave a terrible, roaring cry. Raff charged forward, taking off the first salamander’s head with a single sweep of his blade. The others drew back, and while the two on the ground headed for Raff, the one on the roof turned away.

Raff grunted as he skewered the next lizard, then yelled, “Get the one that’s running, Blue! The Pellis cursed things’ll burn down the city if they get a chance.”

More salamanders were making their way into the square, their low-slung bodies swaying and tails lashing as they scurried forward. Raff killed two more with a single swing of his sword, and then Kaz had to look away, focusing on the escaping creature.

Li wiggled out from under his cloak, leaping into the air and winging up high, showing Kaz the lizard’s path. Kaz crouched, resting the fingers of one hand on the ground as he poured ki into the muscles of his legs. Releasing it all at once, he sprang into the air, his arms reaching out for the edge of the roof.

He missed. Either it took far less power than it once had to propel him upwards, or he had so much more that it seemed relatively easy. Whatever the reason, he leaped all the way up onto the slanted roof of the house in one jump, then almost slid right back down again as he instinctively tried to dig in claws that he no longer had.

Kaz twisted in place, sitting down with a thump before springing back up, chasing after Li and the salamander. It left a charred, black line behind it, so it wasn’t difficult to follow, but he was still glad for Li’s guidance, which allowed him to run at full speed without having to worry there might be an unexpected gap or rise ahead of him.

The salamander was surprisingly fast, in spite of its ungainly appearance, but so was Kaz. He caught up sooner than he expected, almost tripping over the fiery lizard in his haste, and only Li’s, <Watch out!> made him turn away in time to avoid stepping on it.

The thing must have heard him coming, because it had turned, raising a frill that stood up all around its neck. Red and yellow skin stretched over the bony protrusion, making the head look like it was surrounded by much larger flames than the small flickers that traveled over the rest of its flesh.

Kaz quickly shot a ki-bolt at it, causing it to flinch back, emitting a hiss that sounded like steam emerging from beneath the lid of a cook pot. It shook its head, ignoring the gash along its shoulder, and then Li dove at it, spitting a thin stream of water. The water soaked its head, popping and steaming, and the monster snapped at the annoying little dragon.

Surging forward, Kaz flung another ki-bolt at it, aiming for the dull black line where Li’s water had put the fire out. His attack knocked its head to the side, away from Li, who dove in to spit another arch of black ki-filled water onto the lizard. This time there was pain in the angry hiss that answered the blow, and the salamander turned its black gaze toward Kaz.

It lunged, and Kaz danced back. He had a shield up, but that was meant to keep out attacks, not flames. Would it even work against fire? It certainly wouldn’t block the heat, and while he thought it would take a fair bit to make his flesh blister now, the salamander was filled with deep red ki. That ki likely meant that its bite and its flame would probably cause more damage than they should.

Kaz desperately wished he had a proper blade. The only one in his storage pouch was made of such poor metal that it would probably snap if he struck a blow on a monster holding so much ki. If he still had the Woodblade, he had no doubt the salamander would already be dead. As it was, he only had his ki-bolts, and he had no idea what he was doing with them. Unlike a kobold female, he hadn’t been trained to use his power.

Li flew in and out, little more than a glittering blur as she attempted to put out the salamander’s flames with her fountains and droplets of water. She was distracting it so Kaz could do something, and he was just standing there, regretting his lack of training!

Kaz gritted his teeth and called up his own black ki. Li had taken a good bit of it as it passed through her, but Kaz still had some in his central dantian. Now, he imagined holding a stick of chalk, sketching out a dark blade, then grasped its hilt in his hand, offering it all of the water ki he had gathered.

The imaginary blade - no, the image of a blade - fit perfectly in his palm. It was cool and damp, but not slippery, and when he thrust it toward the salamander, it seemed to slice through the lizard’s flames. As if realizing it finally faced a true threat, the monster tried to turn, lashing out with a tail dripping in fire as it ran.

Kaz cut off the tail. It dropped onto the rooftop, writhing as it rolled down to the edge and dropped off to the street below. The salamander shrieked, the sound of hot air bursting forth, and tried to run. Kaz had its measure now, though, and he thrust forward with his nebulous blade, stabbing down through its skull and directly into its brain.

With a final hiss, it collapsed, the life vanishing from its dark gaze. Kaz stood, panting, staring down at it as he felt the knife dissolve, the last of its power drifting away as a lingering gray mist of mana. Li landed on his shoulder, and he reached up to stroke her, not even thinking about it until he felt her flinch away.

Instantly, he turned his focus on the dragon, only then realizing that she’d been hurt. In order to get close enough for her water to damage the salamander, she’d also had to get close enough for its flames to lick at her flesh. The first time had only been warm, but each successive touch of fire had added to the damage until the edges of her wings felt scalded and hot.

Kaz stroked them gently, pushing blue ki into the spots where heat radiated from her flesh. He didn’t stop until they’d all been soothed, and the dragon was purring gently, leaning into his touch, rather than away.

<What will you do with that?> she asked finally, turning half-lidded eyes on the corpse at their feet.

Uncertain what she meant, Kaz looked down, only to see that the red ki saturating the salamander’s body had already dispersed, leaving only a single ember burning in its abdomen. A core.

Kaz swallowed hard, the vague feeling of hunger that had been stalking him for the last hours suddenly becoming a ravening beast. Before he could even make a conscious decision, he’d generated another knife, this one using metal ki, and was down on his knees, slicing into the too-warm body of the beast.

The white blade drifted into mana as Kaz dug out the core with trembling fingers. Beneath his touch, it seemed to pulse, a low thrumming entering his mind, and his blood. It was small, not even as large as the pad of his thumb, and it slipped between his teeth as easily as the sweet cap of a tanuo mushroom. He bit down, and it crunched.

It should have been difficult to eat. It looked like a stone, and he knew it was hard, but somehow instead it seemed to burst, becoming a juicy mass that tasted of nothing more than fire. It slid down his throat, reached his belly, surged through the blood that had pounded in anticipation, and heat rose up, consuming him and being consumed in return.

He was made of flames. Fire that raged, fire that warmed, a gentle fire that protected and nurtured, and a bitter, roaring conflagration that desired nothing more than destruction. Li reached out to his mind, trying to turn aside the destructive inferno, but red ki was the only one she didn’t have. The only one she couldn’t touch, even through him.

Kaz was alone. And then he wasn’t.

<breathe,> hissed a voice, familiar and yet not, already half-forgotten. <the flames are yours, to do with as you will. take them in. don’t fight them, or one of you will lose. there is no battle, only ki.>

Black touched him, water soothing the flames. No steam rose, no burst of crackling opposition, just smooth, even flows of cycling ki.

<you begin to understand,> Heishe whispered in his mind. <what you think you see, you do not. all is one, in an eternal cycle of becoming and ending.>

Kaz breathed, and as he did the feeling of his body began to return to him. He was sitting, Li in his lap, and their hearts beat together as their cycles flowed. Red surged through Kaz, pushing at that bond, and finally the faintest spark of red flickered to life in Li’s core.

<ahhhhhhh,> Heishe said, satisfaction pouring out of her. Kaz and Li felt the ancient serpent pull back, leaving them with a final susurration of thought. <grow, children. become sssss-trong together.>