TBK Chapter Fifty-seven (Patreon)

The rest of their journey through that level held little other than more of the same. Fulan was everywhere; hanging in the air, covering the floor, thickly layered over what used to be the plant-life native to the mountain. They didn’t find any more groups of dead kobolds, but there were a few single females, and a couple of male-female pairs. One of these pairs had been slain by something that looked like an enormous janjio, except that it had four small eyes hidden in its dark gray fur, rather than no eyes in short brown fur.

At Kaz’s suggestion, Raff used his sword to cut open the beast, which had died with the male kobold’s knife driven through one eye. Inside its gut, they found a small amount of something gritty, but no sign of a core. Gaoda peevishly suggested that as long as they were slicing animals open, they should look in the kobolds as well, but everyone else ignored him.

Lianhua looked at the red-soaked granules perched on the tip of Raff’s sword and shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Raff flicked the stuff away, leaving his sword as clean and gleaming as ever. He slid it back into his sheath and shrugged. “No offense, Lianhua, but no one’s seen everythin’. That stuff looks kinda like the sand in a bird’s gizzard. A lotta critters in here eat stone, too. That could just be what’s left of its last meal.”

Lianhua looked less than convinced, but they soon became engrossed in making their way toward the stairs again, and the matter was forgotten. That was about half an hour before they reached their destination, and they all relaxed a little as they went down the relatively clear steps. Kaz, for one, drew in deeper breaths than he’d allowed himself in hours.

This staircase was as long as the last, and when they had gone a good distance down, Lianhua stumbled, making everyone stop to look at her. The humans were behind Kaz, and when he turned, he realized that he’d been focused on leading them quickly and safely through the tunnels that he hadn’t looked back since they’d examined the dead beast.

Lianhua’s face was nearly as pale as her hair, and her eyes were more gray than purple. Kaz could see that her channels were drained, and it was only because she was taking power from him that she was still able to maintain the shield.

“Gaoda, Chi Yincang? Can you help me boost the shield again? Otherwise, I think I have less than an hour left,” she said, voice as wan as her face.

Gaoda shook his head. “We haven’t exactly had time to recover, cousin. I doubt I could make more than three orbs right now, which is already a dangerously low number.”

Chi Yincang actually looked a bit regretful as he shook his head, and Kaz could see that while the males had both recovered a bit, their dantians were indeed slower and dimmer than usual. Chi Yincang’s white ki was still visibly denser than the black, instead of the two being in perfect balance.

Lianhua let out a resigned breath. “So, when the shield falls, we need to be out of the fulan, or depend on the masks to protect us as best they can.”

Gaoda looked toward Kaz, and his eyes narrowed. “Of those two, I know which I prefer. Kobold, it was your job to guide us out of this before-”

“Let’s just go,” Lianhua interrupted, taking a step, which forced the others to follow or be left outside the bubble of clear air. In the process, her hand brushed against Kaz’s arm, and a flush of color rose in her cheeks as the trickle of ki passing between them briefly became a steady stream. She froze and turned to look at him, eyes wide, but he shook his head at her, ears half-folded, and she snapped her mouth closed again.

Kaz drew in a shaky breath, knowing that he would have some explaining to do. There was no way Lianhua hadn’t put together that she was drawing power from him, not after this and the time he helped her during the battle with the zhiwu. Perhaps he should try feeding her power again, as he had done then, and see if he could prevent her from draining him too far. He was still wary, but with his core repaired, he supposed it was possible.

After that, he tried to touch her a little as they went down every other step. When her leg came forward, he let his own linger, or he turned slightly so his arm touched hers again. Each time, power flashed between them, and Kaz felt her power pull fiercely at his own, but since he was ready for it, it wasn’t too bad, especially since she couldn’t take two of his colors.

Like Chi Yincang, his balance was quickly thrown off, but he didn’t become too weak to continue, especially with Li helping. In fact, the dragon seemed grateful to have something to do, though she hissed softly each time she had to push a little more of her own ki to even out Kaz’s flow.

After a little while, Lianhua began to look better, and Kaz reduced his support to only every five or six stairs. When her eyes no longer looked faded, he stopped entirely, feeling that his own legs were becoming a little shaky. She was still taking a bit of his ki, even from a distance, but he could recover while she held the shield, then he could help again after a while.

That is, he could help if things didn’t go horribly awry before then. The sound of howling reached Kaz’s ears not long before even the humans would probably have noticed it, thanks to the fact that he’d pulled in all his power to keep the flow of his ki from becoming any more unbalanced.

Kaz held up a hand, and Lianhua nearly tripped over him as he froze halfway through a step. The contact sucked ki from his core, this time unexpectedly, and he swayed until Li quickly pushed the colors Lianhua had taken through their bond, then all but melted against his neck, exhausted.

He shook his head, trying to clear the ringing from his ears. “Do you hear that?”

Lianhua shook his head, but the males all frowned, and Kaz could see the dantians in their chests spin slightly faster as they all simultaneously reached for the mana in the air. Kaz instinctively pulled away as his ki started trying to flow out toward all of them at once, and he went down two steps, nearly leaving the shield entirely.

“Howling,” Chi Yincang murmured, and Raff nodded.

Kaz started to nod, but stopped as the world began to spin around him. “Yes,” he agreed. “Kobolds. But it’s not a howl I recognize. Most tribes have a few howls that are specific to them, so these could be some of those, but… I don’t know.”

Gaoda gave him a look. “A lot you don’t know, for a guide,” he said, but it seemed habitual, without his usual acrimony.

“May be someone waitin’ for us, you think?” Raff asked.

Kaz gave a very small shrug. “Or another battle, and this time we got here before the end.”

“We can’t wait,” Lianhua said, and Kaz saw that though she looked better, she was already flagging again.

Everyone nodded, and Kaz had to hurry forward as the humans closed in behind him. Each time he sped up in order to keep them and their ki-draining dantians away from him, they took it as an opportunity to move faster as well, and soon the whole group was all but running down the stairs. Kaz was just glad he could see the shield, because otherwise he would have gone in and out of it a dozen times during the impromptu five minute race. Fortunately, when the cavern at the bottom of the stairs came into view, everyone stopped, allowing Kaz to catch his breath, physically at least.

It looked like every tribe on the level had declared vara at once. Like the first level, there were still spores in the air, but they didn’t really impair visibility, and the floor was mostly clear except for patches where the fulan actually had something to feed on. Like the second level, bodies lay everywhere. This time, however, the fighting was still going on.

Kobolds mixed with monsters, all fighting tooth and claw. Not a single one of them seemed to care for their own life, only killing everyone else around them. Some of the female kobolds hurled attacks from a distance, but most of them were in the thick of it, clawing and slashing at anything that moved.

There were massive gold and silver fuergar fighting screaming janjio, and the first muju Kaz had seen up close slowly consumed the bodies of the fallen. A female kobold stumbled into it, instantly becoming trapped by its sticky surface, and she howled madly, biting not at the muju but at the zhiwu she had been fighting before she became stuck. At the moment her face was absorbed by the enormous blob, she still snarled and snapped, showing no sign of fear or pain.

“What in Pellis’ pits is going on?” Raff muttered, staring out over the chaos below.

Lianhua looked horrified. “I can’t even tell how many there are. A hundred? Two?”

She was right. The cavern was full of screaming, howling, battling creatures, and they climbed and waded through the dead and dying. As Kaz watched, a female kobold fell, and the male who had so desperately fought at her side turned and ran for the stairs. He was nearly there when a yanchong wrapped itself around him, and he howled in agony, showing the first reasonable response to pain Kaz had seen in any of the combatants. He was pulled back into the thrashing mob, and Kaz quickly lost sight of him as he was engulfed by a dozen attackers, beast and kobold alike.

Even Gaoda looked grim by now. “I don’t care why they’re here. How do we get through? We can clear a path, but the way they’re fighting, I don’t think they’ve got the sense to be afraid of us, so they’ll just close in again.”

“The shield won’t hold,” Lianhua said. She had her arms wrapped around herself, and she was even paler than she had been before. “I’ve barely been putting in enough ki to keep the spores out, but if one of those hits us, I’ll have to put everything into it, and I won’t last long.”

“They’re attackin’ anything that moves,” Raff said, his voice strange. “If I do somethin’ to attract ‘em all, the rest of you can get out while they’re busy. I haven’t gotten any good exercise in days. I could use a good brawl.”

Gaoda didn’t hesitate. “An excellent plan. I’ll let your guild know you were quite useful.”

Raff snorted and moved past them, stepping out of the shield as if they hadn’t all been desperately trying to stay inside it for half a day. The only indication that he wasn’t as calm as he acted was the nervous tug he gave his mask, making sure it was firmly in place.

“Don’t,” Lianhua said, reaching for him. “If we all work together, we-”

He rolled his shoulders, pulling his sword from its sheath. “Don’t worry. There’s no way a bunch of monsters and some pissant kobolds’re gonna kill me.”

Glancing at Kaz, he said, “Which way do I go from here, Blue?”

Kaz closed his eyes, picturing the level. The Broken Knives had actually stayed here for a good week after Oda had been injured fighting a binyi, and his mental map was fairly clear. He pointed to a dark opening in the wall to their left.

“Through there, go straight past four turns and a cave. Left. Right. Straight twice more. There’s a huge flowstone formation in a cave there. The shortest way is under it, then through the tunnel. You won’t see it until you’re almost in it. If you see any crystals, you’ve gone the wrong way.”

Raff’s eyes went distant as he muttered the directions under his breath, then he nodded and raised his sword. Mana coalesced from the air around him, and his sword lit as he pushed power into it. Kaz was far enough away that he wasn’t affected this time, and he could properly appreciate the display as Raff roared out a challenge that echoed through the cavern, overriding even the howls of embattled kobolds.

Heads turned, teeth were bared, and Raff launched himself from about ten steps above the ground, hurtling directly toward a spot where there was a momentary lull in the fighting. He landed in a crouch and swung his sword in a circle, slicing through everything around him. Heads turned, and the mass of creatures surged.

For a second, they all stood frozen, watching as four kobolds and a zhiwu threw themselves on the tall human. He shook them off, cutting down a kobold and the insect in a single swing, but he stood head and shoulders above most of the crowd, which made him a very tempting target.

Chi Yincang picked Lianhua and Gaoda up, holding them tucked under his arms as he bounded down the stairs. For the first time all day, he triggered his ability to all but disappear, leaving Kaz behind, now completely unshielded. The smell of fulan hit Kaz all at once, thick and rotten, and he, too, reached up to check his mask. Once he was sure it was tight, he pulled Li into his own arms and pinched the white cloth around her as well as he could, bending forward as if he could block the spores with his own body, then ran after the flicker of black and white ki that had already vanished into the tunnels.