TBK Chapter Fifty-nine (Patreon)

Fortunately, the others hadn’t gone far this time, with Lianhua standing pale but steadfast against Gaoda’s urging. She was ignoring him, glaring instead at Chi Yincang, who seemed not to have noticed. When Raff dropped Kaz at her feet, that glare shifted to the tall warrior, but she quickly knelt beside Kaz, who was weak from Raff draining his ki, however unintentionally.

“Are you all right?” she asked softly, starting to reach for him. When he flinched away, she hesitated and withdrew, allowing him to stand on his own.

Kaz’s legs were shaky, but he clenched his jaw and nodded, glancing sidelong at Gaoda, who was crowding far too close for comfort, trying to stay within Lianhua’s shield. That shield was steadily growing thinner, and Lianhua weaker, so Kaz had no choice but to remain strong.

“The next set of stairs is close. Davik and Scov must have been heading for it. If we hurry, we may be able to make it within a quarter hour. Hopefully, the next level will be clearer.”

Lianhua’s head bowed, and damp tendrils of hair that had escaped her head adornments fell down in untidy wisps. Her skin gleamed with sweat, and to Kaz’s sight, the shield she had fought so hard to maintain looked like it might fail at any moment.

“All right,” she said.

Kaz nodded, wishing he had enough strength to help her. Unfortunately, his own channels were dangerously low, and Li wasn’t in much better shape.

In fact, of the five of them, Chi Yincang now looked the best, and that was only because one half of his ki was relatively intact. The single meridian in Raff’s chest was roiling as it tangled the clean ki it had taken from Kaz back into mingled gray mana, except for sparks of red that popped and fizzed as they traveled into his limbs and organs. Gaoda was in better shape than Lianhua, but his ki wasn’t anywhere near its usual sapphire and gold luster, especially since he was still maintaining his light orb at its full, unnecessary brilliance.

They were noticeably slower as they passed through the winding passages that led to the next staircase. Kaz had deliberately led them away from the larger tunnels, fearing that those were more likely to be used by the rampaging creatures that occupied the level.

Either he was right, or they got lucky, because while they were attacked once by a small pack of bizarrely aggressive fuergar, Raff and Chi Yincang were able to defeat the creatures without using ki. Lianhua quietly noted that all of the creatures had cores, a fact which Kaz had already noted, but couldn’t tell the others.

They had nearly reached the final cavern when Lianhua’s shield finally flickered and vanished, and the human female crumpled. Chi Yincang caught her, then silently handed her limp body to Raff after checking to make sure that her mask was firmly in place.

Once the shield was gone, there was no need for them to stay together, so their group separated with something akin to relief. Kaz moved further ahead, leaving Gaoda and Raff in the middle, while Chi Yincang sank back to the end, though he didn’t vanish as he usually would have.

“Here,” Kaz whispered, as the tunnel ended in a wall with a long crack that started a few feet above the floor. He tapped it. “The stairs are just on the other side. It’ll be tight, but the wall is only about four feet thick, so if we can squeeze through, we’ll just have to cross the cavern.”

Raff was staring at the narrow crevice, expression dubious. “I’ll have to take off my cuirass at least. I don’t like th’ idea of going in there defenseless as a softshell crab.”

“I’ll go first,” Kaz offered. “I’ll make sure there’s not another battle going on, though I can’t hear anything. I know another way, but it’s more likely to already be… occupied.”

Gaoda waggled a hand at him. “Go on then.” Usually, this was the point at which Lianhua would speak up for Kaz, but she was still lying, silent and pale, in Raff’s arms, so Kaz just ducked his head and clambered up and into the crevice.

It was tighter than he remembered, but he made it through without any great difficulty. To his surprise, dim light filtered in through the other end, and it wasn’t all the red of the ever-burning torches that lined the stairs. The flickering yellow-orange of normal torchlight mingled with the red, creating a flickering dance of yellow to the deep, red-orange of spessartite.

Cautiously, Kaz peered out of the crack, which was higher in this wall than the one he’d entered. He was now a good six feet above the floor, bringing him closer to the ceiling than the ground, so he had a good view of the cavern, without being easily visible himself.

To his surprise, six male kobolds stood guard at the stairs. Their weapons were unsheathed, their fur and loincloths matted and filthy, and the ground around their paws was littered with fallen foes, including female kobolds.

A soft howl echoed up the stairs, and one of the males, a tall one with fur the grayish-brown color of smoky quartz, howled in return. This was the ‘all-clear’ howl of one warrior to another, and Kaz wondered how bad things were that all of them bearing visible wounds and surrounded by evidence of a recent fight counted as ‘all clear’.

Kaz pulled back and returned to the party, happy to see Lianhua now sitting on the floor with her eyes mostly open as she sipped from a cup. He gave her a little yip of greeting, then remembered she wasn’t a kobold, and said, “Lianhua!”

She tilted her head back and gave him a shadow of her usual bright smile. “Kaz. They said… you went ahead.”

He nodded, though he didn’t climb down beside her. “There are warriors guarding the stairs, and I heard others call from below. I think they’re keeping the creatures affected by the fulan, or whatever it is, up here.”

She just nodded, but Raff asked, “All male?”

Kaz nodded again. “The only females I saw were dead. I think… they’re killing them, too.” And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Gaoda snorted. “That’s something at least. Did you speak to them? Do you think they’ll attack us, too?”

“No,” Kaz admitted. “I thought I should tell you what I saw first.”

“You should-”

Lianhua pressed a hand against the wall, struggling to rise. “Cousin Gaoda. I want to get out of here.”

Gaoda froze with his mouth open, then closed it with a click as a strangely unpleasant smile crossed his face. “Of course, cousin. Raff, are you ready?”

The warrior grunted, hands rising reluctantly to the buckles that held his armor on. It took some doing, but he managed to pry them open, filth flaking away as he did so, until he finally pulled the piece that covered his chest and shoulders free. Blood stained the padded clothing beneath it, but none looked fresh, so Kaz thought it was all left over from his fight when they arrived on the level.

Raff put the armor into his bag, which was usually strapped around his back. There was no way the armor should have fit, but somehow it did, as all the human’s items somehow did. Kaz hadn’t recovered enough to put much ki into his eyes beyond what they simply needed to function now, but he thought he saw a spark jump from the bag to the armor right before the metal shell vanished. Perhaps when the human took it out again, Kaz would be able to watch more closely, and see if he could tell what was happening.

The whole process took less than five minutes, but it felt like forever to Kaz. It was possible they were less than a hundred feet from relative safety, and the urge to head towards it was almost overwhelming.

Kaz went first, partially because he was already in the crevice, but he was closely followed by Chi Yincang, then Gaoda, Lianhua, and finally Raff. There was a short delay as Raff discovered that his padded clothes hung up on the rock, and he had to back out and remove that as well, but Kaz barely noticed, since he was already peering out into the cavern again.

There were two large tunnels leading in, as well as two smaller ones and the crevice Kaz was currently perching in. To his recollection, one of the large tunnels led to the den of the tribe that had controlled this staircase when the Broken Knives came through, and the second led as straight as any tunnel ever ran within the mountain, directly to the other staircase.

It was from this second passage that the thing emerged.

The monster was huge. It had seven heads, each looking like it should belong to a separate creature, and they all snapped, howled, hissed, and screeched at once. Two thick tentacles protruded from the front of the body, while a dozen different legs marched in pairs down the torso. One set wouldn’t have looked out of place on a kobold’s body, though it would have to be the largest kobold Kaz had ever heard of.

One head, a reptilian thing on a particularly long neck, nearly reached the ceiling, and it could easily have snapped Kaz right out of his hiding spot if it had noticed him. Fortunately for him, however, it was focused on the six kobolds guarding the stairs.

The warriors fell back, forming a single group in a show of unity that was unusual among kobolds in the higher levels.  They raised their weapons, but Kaz could tell they didn’t think they had a chance against the creature. As one, they raised their muzzles and howled; the low, ululating howl of a kobold who had met a foe he couldn’t defeat, and was warning the tribe to flee.

An answering howl came from below as a tentacle snapped out, wrapping around the waist of the foremost kobold. The others hacked at it, but their blades bounced off the thick skin, and the tentacle pulled the male forward, raising him from the floor and toward a head with the gaping, tooth-filled maw of a janjio.

Kaz could see the male’s life and his own chance at safety about to end. If these guards died now, there was no way the kobolds below would believe that the party had nothing to do with it. They would have to fight the warriors at the end of the stairs - and possibly a full tribe, complete with females - or they could fight this monster here and now.

He had seconds to decide. Should he attack the thing while it wasn’t ready, knowing full well that the rest of his party was already weakened, and Gaoda might well choose to just let Kaz die, rather than helping? Or should he sit and watch helplessly as six kobolds who had stood against a hundred horrors before were literally torn apart before his very eyes?

The answer was sheer idiocy.

Kaz was so, so tired of being helpless. He had been kept a pup far longer than he should have, forced to stand by instead of joining his tribe as a proper warrior. He was physically a strong kobold, but he was still far weaker than even Lianhua. By training and tradition, he had always been the lowest of the low, with no power, no voice, and no choice. He hadn’t even been allowed an opinion by anyone except Rega.

But with the ever-growing power of his core, he didn’t have to be weak any more. He didn’t have to step over yet another fallen kobold on his way to find another place to hide. He had finally, finally completed his spirit hunt, though no one but him would ever recognize it, and a warrior wouldn’t just stand by and watch.

Baring his teeth, Kaz flung himself forward as the monster passed the crevice in which he crouched.