Chapter Seventy-three (Patreon)

Gaoda scowled. “There are too many of your cursed tribes. Which one is this?”

Civ bowed his head at the tone, though Kaz could see the fur on his neck lift slightly. “The Bronzearms have recently risen from the Deep. They’re extremely aggressive.”

“Good!” Gaoda said, his ki orb brightening until all the kobolds flinched away from it. “I’m tired of tiptoeing around you furry savages. If we’re attacked in the mid-levels, we’re allowed to just kill them all, right? No posturing, no placating, no-”

“Gaoda Xiang!” Lianhua said, but the male turned on her, finger raised.

“You heard it yourself, cousin! Your kobold said-”

Chi Yincang stepped from the shadows, spear already in hand, and both of the other humans fell instantly silent, looking like pups who had been scolded by their den-mother. The dark male’s face was impassive as he said, “There is fulan ahead.”

Gaoda threw up his hands. “Of course there is! But this time, we use the masks alone. I won’t be left helpless again, especially when it’s obvious only creatures with cores are affected.”

Lianhua looked rebellious. “That is not obvious. We should-”

“Then create a personal shield, cousin,” Gaoda said. “That would be for the best, anyway. Grandfather entrusted your safety to me, and I will not be weak in front of these mewing dogs again.”

Lianhua looked at Chi Yincang, but he stood, silent and impassive now that his message had been delivered. She heaved a sigh and looked at Kaz.

“If we hold hands, I think I can keep you inside my shield as well,” she told him.

‘If you let me use your ki’ was what she meant, and it was amazing how quickly even she had jumped to that option. This was why he didn’t dare let any of the others know he had power, much less that they could steal it with a simple touch.

Kaz took an involuntary step back, and on his shoulder, Li gave a little hiss, waking from her most recent nap when she sensed his agitation. “If you have another mask, I’ll use that.” He had a bad feeling the first one might have been lost or destroyed during his battle with the monster on the previous level.

Hearing the argument, Raff had come back to join them, and he nodded agreement. “A mask is enough for me, too. I’m no mage, so that’s probably more than necessary, but I never turn down an extra layer of protection.”

Lianhua looked around at them all, then shook her head. “I still think a group shield would be best.”

Gaoda finally managed a conciliatory bow. “Of course. But we’re here to keep you safe, cousin. As you saw, even when we had the shield in place, we had to leave it when we were attacked. Worse, we had no strength left to fight.”

Lianhua’s mouth opened, then closed again, and she finally nodded. “Fine. But Kaz-”

Kaz shook his head, then hesitated and said, “Could you carry Li? She hated being wrapped up, but if she sits on your shoulder, she’ll be safe in your shield.”

Li whistled a loud protest at this idea, but Kaz reached up and stroked her head, sending her an image of herself, helplessly trapped in white fabric. She hunkered down defensively at the thought, and Kaz picked her up. She released his fur reluctantly, her tail wrapping around his wrist as he held her out toward Lianhua.

The human female nodded, accepting the golden dragon with hands that shook in eagerness. Her fingers stroked Li’s slender neck, and Kaz wondered if she felt stiff fuergar fur or smooth dragon scales. After all, she had given Kaz the rings that allowed Li to seem like nothing more than a rodent, so perhaps she had some resistance to its power because she knew it was an illusion? Kaz himself could barely see the false appearance any more, with his sight reinforced by ki and Li’s own self-image. Gaoda looked less than pleased by the exchange, but didn’t attempt to talk Lianhua out of settling the dragon on her own shoulder.

Lianhua closed her eyes, and she drew in a single slow breath, the ki in her lower dantian shrinking down smaller than Kaz had ever seen it before. Mana condensed from the air around her, and Kaz felt a tug on his core, even though he had taken several steps back after handing over the dragon. Her hand snapped out, and she drew a rune with four quick, sweeping strokes of her finger. This one was definitely less complex than the one she had used when she created the shield that protected the whole group, and when she flooded it with ki, a sheer bubble of power formed only around her head and shoulders.

The whole process took barely more than a second, and Lianhua opened her eyes with a satisfied smile. Her gaze went to Chi Yincang, and the corner of the warrior’s mouth moved up in a barely perceptible indication of approval.

“That it?” Raff asked, voice full of doubt. “Then what was the hubbub about before?”

Lianhua’s smile widened as she reached into her pouch and started pulling out the spiritual bamboo masks. “The ritual last time was to allow Gaoda and Chi Yincang to give me part of their ki. This, I can do by myself. Grandfather taught me this after the first time someone attempted to kidnap me using a soporific powder. If I can’t get the shield up fast enough to block an attack, then there’s no point in doing it at all.”

Kaz watched her ki as it cycled. He could see how much was flowing into the rune that was slowly dissolving into the crystalline bubble. It was far less than she’d needed for the larger version, and he thought she could maintain it indefinitely, so long as she didn’t need to use her power for anything else. He wondered if she could keep it up even when she slept, the way he could now hold the sheaths that reinforced his channels.

The female passed out a mask to each of the other humans. She had to help Kaz put his on again, but this time she used a long pink ribbon to tie the ends together, making the pouch over his snout large enough that he could speak without having to hold the cloth in place. He felt her drawing ki from him each time she brushed his skin, but she seemed to be making an effort to do so as little as possible, so he didn’t pull away.

“There,” she said as she stood back up, amethyst eyes bright with power. “This time it shouldn’t come off so easily.”

Kaz pushed his core to spin a little faster, replenishing the ki she’d taken, and looked at the dragon on her shoulder, rather than meeting those too-bright eyes. “Thank you,” he said.

=+=+=+=

It didn’t seem to bother the male kobolds that they didn’t get masks, and as they started forward again, Pils explained why Civ had been so unhappy to discover that the Bronzearms now controlled the stairs.

“They seem determined to make the mid-levels into a smaller version of the Deep,” he said. “There, a few tribes rule the others like females control males. In the rest of the mountain, each tribe is independent, though we sometimes form alliances that change as the tribes move around. The Bronzearms have been forcing out those who won’t submit, and take every kobold they can when they win in luegat or vara. Worse, instead of creating several small dens, they are expanding their territory.”

Lianhua glanced at him, frowning. “Isn’t that normal, though? It seems like small tribes have small territories, but larger tribes need more space. The only time we’ve seen tribes with multiple dens was when they were on more than one level.”

“Yes,” Pils agreed, “but that was on the upper levels. I’ve never been there, but Grandfather says the tribes move around when they use up the resources in the area, or another tribe pushes them out. The more territory they control, the more resources they have. Also, there are many passages between the levels, so most tribes control one or more, and they’re relatively easy to defend, because the beasts there are weak.”

He reached out toward a broad swath of yumao before catching sight of the telltale reddish-brown color of fulan hiding among the deep green fronds. His ears lowered unhappily before he continued.

“Here, food and water are far more plentiful, but the deeper you go, the fewer ways there are between levels. Once you enter the Nine, there’s only one set of stairs on each level, and the only safe areas are immediately around the stairs.”

Lianhua tilted her head. “The Nine are the nine levels in the very center of the mountain, correct? The ones the musui control?”

Civ growled softly, but Pils said, “Yes,” after only a small hesitation. “The musui are like zhiwu. They remain in their own territory, and are harmless unless provoked.”

Kaz caught a glimpse of Ilto from the corner of his eye. The young kobold’s ears were flat, and he looked away when he saw Kaz glance at him. So, something in that was misleading, if not an outright lie. It matched what Kaz knew of the musui, however, except that it left out one key point.

“And the best way to provoke them is to encroach on their territory,” he said. “Which is exactly what the Bronzearms have been doing, isn’t it?”

Pils’ step hitched, and then his chin jerked up and down. “It is.”

Kaz shook his head, looking at Lianhua. “When the musui are angered, whole tribes vanish in the night.”

She looked thoughtful, her hand waving as she tried to blow away a denser cloud of spores that rose up around them as Regz misjudged a jump and landed in a patch of fulan-covered moss. “Does the fulan only propagate through these spores?”

Kaz shrugged. “That’s how similar plants spread. A beast or insect walks through or eats part of an infested plant, carrying the spores wherever they go after that.”

Lianhua hummed thoughtfully, but didn’t say anything else. Kaz knew her well enough by now to be certain she was developing some theory, though she wouldn’t talk about it until she was ready.

Ahead of them, Raff halted so suddenly that Gaoda nearly ran into him. The tall man was staying closer to the group now that the hovering spores were beginning to reduce visibility. The muffled quiet of the tunnels and the obstructed view added to their rising sense of unease, making everyone draw a little nearer to each other.

“What is it?” Gaoda snapped, but even his voice was quieter than usual, as if he was loath to break the silence.

Raff stepped aside, allowing everyone to see what had made him stop. Six bodies lay on the ground in front of him. Four were male kobolds, and two were females. Both females had gaping wounds in their abdomens, and Kaz was certain that if they checked, they would find both cores missing.

By now everyone had a fairly good idea how this worked, so they all drew in together as they stared into the dim and foggy passage ahead. If some creature, kobold or otherwise, was eating cores, then there was at least one monstrosity growing more powerful even as they stood there.

Raff looked at the others, his eyes unwontedly serious above his white mask. “What do we do now?”

Gaoda’s ki-ball doubled, then tripled in size before splitting into three equal parts. The trio of orbs began to spin around his body, making Kaz and the other kobolds fall back. His mask twisted as the mouth beneath it stretched into some semblance of a grin.

“We go on,” he said. “And if anything gets in our way, we kill it.”