Chapter Ninety (Patreon)

A squeaky, high-pitched voice spoke impatiently from somewhere above, saying, “Get it. Collar it. Go!”

With a deep sigh, the male who had spoken first tossed a rope down into the pit. It was made of some material Kaz had never seen before, far smoother than the braided leather kobolds usually used. The other kobold swung a leg over the side and slid down, dropping to his paws to crouch beside Kaz.

Kaz laid there, watching everything. He really had two options: fight, or go along with whatever was happening. Now that he had control of his ki, he might well win against the two males, but he had no idea what else was up there. Either his vision was still blurry from the fall, or there was a blob of gray power at the top of the pit that looked like nothing he had ever seen before.

On the other hand, he was beginning to suspect what had happened to Li and Lianhua. If he was correct, allowing these two to do whatever they were going to do - short of killing him, of course - would probably bring him to his missing companions more quickly than anything else.

Gray dust rose around the newcomer’s paws, coating his equally gray fur up to the knees. He grimaced, shaking a leg, and muttered, “I hate this part.”

Reaching down, the stranger closed a firm but not cruel grip around Kaz’s arm, pulling him up into a sitting position. The male’s face finally resolved out of the darkness, showing a long, narrow muzzle and a very faded ring of red dye around his neck. Half-hidden within the long, red-dyed fur, a metallic circle glinted.

“Your eyes are open, pup. Come on, onto your paws. I’m not hauling you out of here unless I have to.”

Kaz blinked, deciding to play up the fact that he was just a puppy, and allowed a soft whine to escape him. He trembled in the other male’s grasp, and the gray-furred kobold sighed, lowering his voice as he leaned in.

“Don’t bother,” he murmured bitterly, for Kaz’s ears only. “I’ve seen them take pups far younger than you, and they treat them no differently than adults. Climb up and accept the collar, and he’ll only show you how it works once.” He shuddered. “Believe me, that’s enough.”

Kaz dipped his chin in a nod, straightening until the other male let him go, then clapped him on the shoulder.

“I’m Surta of the Redmane tribe,” he said, watching Kaz as he moved over to grab hold of the rope. His brown eyes lingered on the knife at Kaz’s waist, but he made no attempt to take it. “Up there’s Dax of the Bronzearms. Lots of Bronzearms here.”

His lip rose at the name of the other tribe, showing teeth, but there was no real animosity in it, only a subdued resentment. He grasped the rope, holding it still, and nodded toward Kaz. “Climb up. Don’t try to run, or the mosui will stop you, and you don’t want that.”

Kaz nodded again, then clambered up the rope. He could have done it using only his arms, but he made a show of how difficult it was, bracing his paws against the stone wall and grunting each time he switched hands. When he got close to the top, he paused, expecting the kobold named Dax to offer him a hand, but the male just stared at Kaz with dead eyes, holding onto the rope that was anchored around his waist. He was almost as thin as the Redmane females, and his brown fur was dusty and unkempt.

With a great groan, Kaz flung a hand over the lip of the hole, clasping the rope as it rose toward Dax, then pulled himself out, flipping over so he was lying on his back, breathing hard and staring up at the red-lit ceiling.

The high-pitched voice squeaked again, this time making sounds that seemed to be speech, but in no language Kaz understood. Now that it wasn’t intelligible, he realized that what he had thought could be a kobold pup had been this creature, making sounds to lure him into this trap.

The rope quivered against his leg as Surta climbed up out of the hole, jumping out easily and nudging Kaz with a paw, saying, “Get up, pup. Time for your first lesson. If you learn it well, it might be the only one you need.”

Still acting as if he was battered, bruised, and weak, Kaz rolled over and climbed to his paws again. A dark, shadowy figure stepped close as he did, snapping something around his neck. It was tight, and for a moment he was afraid it was going to choke him, but then red-hot fire flowed out of it, and he forgot everything else.

With a howl of pain, Kaz fell to his knees, lifting his hands to claw at the thing Surta had called a ‘collar’. The agony stopped as quickly as it had come, however, and Surta was there to help him to his paws yet again.

“Stand up, but not too straight,” the other male murmured. “They hate it when we’re taller than them. Do what you’re told, and that won’t happen again.”

Kaz blinked moisture from his eyes and nodded. This time his trembling was real as he half-bowed toward the squat, shadowy figure. It chittered, lifting a huge, flat hand with wide claws as long as Kaz’s forearm. It had broad, stubby arms covered in dark fur so short and dense it looked like it was bald, and its nose was longer than a human’s, but shorter than a kobold’s, and flat on the end. Several finger-length tentacles waved gently around its damp, pink nostrils, and tiny eyes stared at him from within heavy folds of skin. Just beneath that skin lay a roiling mass of gray mana, far denser than anything Raff had ever taken in.

“Good,” it squeaked, though it seemed to have difficulty forming the sound of the ‘d’, so it sounded more like a particularly strident ‘goo’. “Back now.” Seemingly satisfied, it turned its back on the three kobolds and waddled away, its short legs and broad, flat lower paws making it sway comically from side to side. Kaz would have laughed, but there was nothing funny about a creature who could and would inflict such pain on others without showing a shred of remorse.

At some point, Dax had silently wrapped the rope up, and now had it slung across his chest, from one shoulder to the opposite hip. Both of the males had knives hanging from their belt, and their pack looked full, so it didn’t seem that the mosui felt the need to take their captive’s weapons and items. Probably because they could instantly incapacitate anyone wearing a collar. It showed an arrogance that made Kaz even warier than he had been before.

Dax fell into step behind the mosui, and Surta prodded Kaz into following after the brown-furred male. Not bothering to lower his voice this time, Surta said, “You belong to the mosui now, pup, just like us. I don’t know how long it’s been since Dax was taken. He doesn’t talk much. Only a few months for me, though, just since the Bronzearms chased us out of our old den, and we found the stairs you came down. I was one of the first taken, so I’ve been trying to help the others as they came in.”

Kaz glanced at the mosui’s  back, then whispered, “Have you tried to…”

Surta laughed, and the sound of it was deeply sardonic. He still didn’t lower his volume as he said, “Don’t bother, pup. Whispering or trying to escape. They can’t see worth a puppy’s first bark, but they smell and hear everything. Any of them can activate that collar from anywhere, too, and even if you managed to get it off, there’s nowhere to go. Once you’re in the mines, unless they pull you to bring in new workers, like us, you’ll never leave again.”

Kaz laid his hand on the hilt of his knife, tilting his head meaningfully toward the mosui’s broad, defenseless back, and Surta’s hand whipped out faster than Kaz would have guessed the middle-aged male could move. He slapped Kaz’s hand away, and shook his head, lips curling in something that looked more like fear than anger.

“Don’t even try,” he barked. “Unless you manage to do it in one stroke, which you won’t, he’ll make you wish your head had been burned off your neck. I’ve seen it attempted, and the knife barely broke the mosui’s skin.”

A shrill chittering emerged from the mosui, but it didn’t turn its head on its short neck. Kaz wondered if it could.

“No kill,” it shrieked. “Strong, strong. You try, I burn.” It chittered again, and Kaz realized this was its version of a laugh.

Kaz shuddered, dropping his hand back to his side. “They don’t take our weapons, then?”

This time, Surta laughed. “Why bother? You’ll need it to defend yourself from the beasts in the mines, and some of the other kobolds as well, if they think you’re weak.” He looked meaningfully at Dax’s back, where the ribs showed clearly beneath the other male’s fur. “You get food based on how many crystals you bring in. More crystals means more food, but there are a few of us who don’t care to work that hard. They just take the crystals other miners bring in, and let them starve.”

“The mosui allow that?” Kaz asked, shocked.

The gray male shrugged. “What do they care? They get crystals, and end up with fewer mouths to feed. Speaking of which,” he eyed Kaz’s pack hungrily, “you have any food in there? Anything but bugs and fungus.”

Kaz resisted the urge to clutch at his pack protectively. Instead, he hunched his shoulders, turning slightly as if to offer the pack to the other male.

“Nothing,” he said. “The fulan has infested everything. We don’t dare eat any of the beasts that are left, and the plants are all gone. We’ll run out of stored food soon, and then we’ll have to try to make it to the upper levels.”

The mosui gave its squeaky laugh again, and Surta sighed, looking away from Kaz’s pack dismissively.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Ehlan had already ordered us to stop gathering from that level when I was taken. That’s why I was here. I was the warrior in charge of a group of gatherers, sent to try to find clean food. They let four full groups come down, then took us all. Nearly every older pup in the tribe, and several of the young warriors, too.”

He scratched his ear, then added, “That said, you’ll want to keep your pack with you. Some of the others, they’ll take your things and either keep them, or refuse to give them back unless you can bring them enough crystals to trade for whatever’s inside. Most of us respect each other’s privacy, at least as much as we can, but the ones who’ve been here a long time seem to have forgotten what it’s like to be part of a proper tribe.”

Kaz hesitated before asking, “You said the mosui treat adults and puppies the same. Are the pups… all right?”

With a sigh, Surta nodded. “Most of them. The mosui don’t care how old you are, but we do. The stronger males share some of their crystals with the little ones, and we let them have the easiest areas to mine. It’s hard on them, but they’re surviving. I’d hoped that Ehlan learned her lesson, and we wouldn’t get any more puppies, but here you are. At least you’re practically grown.”

Kaz glanced between the two male kobolds, trying to feign nonchalance. “And the females? Are they all back in this mine?”

Surta’s step hitched, and his voice was rough when he answered after a long pause. “We don’t talk about the females.”

And that was it. He didn’t speak another word until they reached the city.