Chapter Ninety-three (Patreon)

Time seemed to still. At his side, Surta stood frozen, his mouth twisted in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile. Dax was hunched near the other side of the square, as far from the other kobolds as he could get while remaining on the same platform. His expression was bitter, and he was looking at something from the corner of his eyes. It took Kaz a moment to track his gaze and realize he was looking at Surta. This confused Kaz, because the gray male had been nothing but helpful and friendly, at least as far as he could be given that they were both captives.

Only the husede next to the pedestal moved at all. Her finger moved as if through the thick glue made by boiling leather and sinew. Mana built up around it, thicker and darker, until it was almost black, though it was a truly dark black, not the luminescent black of ki.

Once again, Kaz allowed a trickle of red ki into his eyes, and flinched at the flare of crimson light. Squinting through it, however, he could see that the dark mana was traveling down into the pedestal, which separated the red ki from it, linking the thin thread to the overwhelming power of the crystals beneath their feet. This thread wound through the static ki of the stones, moving it just so.

Around them, the crowd of beings flickered and blurred, and Kaz’s stomach seemed to rise into his throat. He swallowed hard as the world outside their column of red ki shifted nauseatingly. The crowd outside vanished, replaced by different ones, the people in them of ever-changing heights and shapes. One. Two. Three, the crowd here the thinnest of all, and entirely made up of mosui, if their squat, round shapes were enough to judge by.

Then they were gone, and for a bare instant, red was joined by all the colors of ki, twining together in a cascade of ruby, gold, moonstone, obsidian, and the faintest hint of sapphire. Only two beings stood outside the effervescent hues; one small and round, and one twice its size, slim, with a collar around its neck so dense with mana that it seemed to eat the light around it. At their feet sat a small box that burned with red ki.

Gone again. Kaz could see the connection with Li, momentarily perfectly straight and leading to the red box, angle away, pointing almost directly overhead. More levels, these much less crowded, with only a few dim figures visible through the red light. There were some round musui, but most of these were the slightly taller, blocky figures of husede.

Kobolds only dominated the last two levels. Their slender shapes and pointed ears clearly differentiated them from the broad figures of either of the other two races. A few musui mingled among them, but they were rare, and no kobolds stood close to them.

The finger of the husede female who was controlling their platform finally connected with the surface of the pedestal, and everything around them leaped into motion, exactly as if the descent had never happened. Surta’s smile finally formed properly, and he clapped Kaz on the back.

“Look around you now, pup,” he said. “That’s what the crystals can do. Just pop you out of one place and into a completely different one between one breath and the next.”

Kaz stared at him. Had the other male really not experienced any of the time they had spent dropping down through nine levels? Had he not seen the shifting crowds and the two motionless figures beside that all-important box?

On the other side of the platform, Dax stepped off, heading for one of the tunnels exiting the wide cavern in which they all stood. Around them, empty squares stood silent testament to the other platforms that were all currently elsewhere, and Kaz vaguely wondered how the husede knew when someone on a less-commonly used level needed to be picked up.

Their husede didn’t speak, but her cold gaze was enough to urge the two kobolds to follow their fellow, and Surta ushered Kaz off the red crystal platform. When his paws touched one particular spot on the edge of the platform, he nearly stumbled as he felt something sharp jab into the pad of his toe. As he took his next step, he looked back and down, seeing that one of the crystals had cracked and broken, leaving it the cloudy color of common quartz.

Behind him, the husede clicked her tongue, muttering something as she looked at the fractured crystal. Crossing over to it, she crouched down, casually pulling it out, tossing it out to shatter against the stone floor of the cavern. Reaching into a pouch at her waist, she took out a new crystal, perfectly cut to match the others, and slotted it into the gap.

As it snicked into place, she touched it with a mana-filled finger, tracing its edges until she gave a satisfied nod. Kaz couldn’t tell exactly what she’d done, but when she returned to her place by the pedestal, ki lit up the platform as evenly as ever, and she and the square on which she stood seemed to vanish.

Kaz stared at the scattered spray of broken crystal. “What happened?”

Surta shrugged, walking around the shards so he wouldn’t cut his paws. “They do that sometimes. That’s why we’re all still here.”

He flicked his fingers at the multitude of tunnel openings leading away from the cavern. “Each of those leads to a different mine, or maybe just a different part of the same one. None of us has ever met someone from another mine in our own, so maybe they really are completely separate. Doesn’t really matter.”

Turning, he headed for the same tunnel Dax had vanished into, motioning for Kaz to follow him. “We mine the crystals, the musui take them, and give us food and other things. That way, when a crystal breaks, there are always more.” His voice grew venomous. “We wouldn’t want any of them to be inconvenienced, after all.”

Kaz stared at the other male’s back. His voice had shifted completely for a moment, and Kaz wished he could have seen Surta’s face at that moment. The older warrior didn’t even glance back, however, and they vanished into the dimly-lit tunnel without another word.

Now that they had nearly reached their destination, Surta grew less vocal, though he did pause when they reached a few small crystals embedded in the wall. These were tiny and raw, entirely different from the ones in the city, and Surta pointed to the largest of them.

“If you look in this one, you’ll see it looks cloudy. They don’t want that. The larger and clearer they are, the better. This is the only one of these large enough to even bother with, but the musui would throw it back in your face if you brought it to them. That’s only for the red ones, though.” He watched as Kaz obediently leaned closer to the crystal, seeing that it did, indeed, seem to have bubbles or bits of rock inside it.

Kaz looked up, surprised. “There are other colors? I’ve only seen red.”

The other kobold looked momentarily contemptuous, then wiped the expression away before Kaz could be certain he’d seen it. “Sure there are. They’re rare, though. Like finding mithril in an iron vein. The further in you go, the more likely you are to find one, but you’re also more likely to find a warrior hoyi, so not many of us risk it, and even fewer come back.”

Kaz shuddered. The segmented insects were one of the greatest dangers of the mid-levels. They were a bit like the zhiwu in that it wasn’t particularly dangerous to get close to the workers, but unlike the zhiwu, there were designated warriors that patrolled their hive, and meeting one of those was a death sentence for a single kobold. A group of six kobold warriors stood a chance against one, and if they had a female with them, it was even likely that all of them would survive. The giant bugs had no soft parts to target, and their pincers were infused with metal and could cut a kobold in half.

“Why would you even try, then?” Kaz asked, as they started forward again.

Surta shrugged. “The musui will take any crystal that isn’t red and give you a full meal for it, even if it’s tiny or cloudy. When you’ve run out of luck, and you’re about to starve, you’ll try anything to survive.”

Kaz shook his head. “In a tribe, the gatherers bring back food, the warriors guard everyone, while the females use their power to make firemoss gel, glue, leather, and everything else the tribe needs. Only the gatherers and occasionally the warriors bring back food, but everyone shares.” He didn’t mention the fact that females ate first, and puppies ate last, because he knew the other male was well aware that pups starved first when a tribe went hungry.

Surta paused and gave Kaz a disturbingly wide grin, showing far too many sharp teeth. “Now, see, that’s what I’ve been telling people,” he said. “We should each do what we’re best at, just like a tribe. Some of us are better at mining, and others are better at fighting, while still others,” he tapped his head, “are best at thinking. There are no females here, so unless someone is in charge, the strongest males just take what they want from the weaker ones.”

Cold brown eyes passed over Kaz’s body, pausing only briefly on his knife and his pack. “In fact,” he went on, “I’ve been taking on the job of chief. It’s hard, but I can keep the stronger warriors in line, with a little help. I stay back in the den, watching over each shift as they pass through, and all I ask is that each miner gives me a few of their crystals. That way, I can keep protecting them, and they can keep working. Everyone is safe, and everyone eats. I even make sure that those who don’t bring in enough, like poor Dax, don’t starve.”

Kaz’s eyes dropped, and he had to force down a low growl. Did Surta think Kaz was an idiot? Obviously, the male was doing exactly what he’d warned Kaz about, and forcing the other kobolds to give him some of the crystals they risked their lives for, while he stayed safe in the den. Just because he claimed to be ‘protecting’ the weaker ones from predators didn’t make him any less of one himself.

Still, it wouldn’t do Kaz any good to argue, and if other males really believed any of this, or if Surta had built himself a group of warriors to help him, then even if Kaz managed to convince Surta he wasn’t interested in being part of his scheme, there would be others waiting in the den to punish Kaz. Kobolds liked order, and what Surta proposed was similar to the system under which a den ran, but there were distinct undertones of something dark.

Kaz managed to shift his growl to a raspy whimper, though the fur on his neck still lifted involuntarily. He folded his ears and tucked his tail even as he lowered his chin. “That sounds… fair,” he managed to say, but he couldn’t meet the eyes of the kobold who had turned out to be something very different than he had seemed.

Surta huffed a laugh, and Kaz flinched as the other male squeezed his shoulder just tight enough to be painful. “Good, then,” he said. “You’re big, but you’re not a warrior, so we’ll start you as a miner. I’ll have one of the others show you how it works.”

Kaz nodded, then looked back down the tunnel behind them.

“All the tunnels lead to other mines? There’s no chance to… escape? Stairs, maybe?” he asked, forced by desperation to break out of his role as an obedient puppy for a moment. He very definitely didn’t want to head straight into a hoyi nest, but he also had no idea how to get back to the level where he was almost certain he’d seen Li. All the platforms were gone, and even if he could summon one and incapacitate the husede that ran it, he couldn’t use mana, or even see it until someone else started gathering it.

Surta turned away, once again leading the way down the rough, winding passage. His voice was cool as he said, “Far as I know. One of the oldest miners, Dett, claims he found some stairs deep in the hoyi hive, but they only went up. He was too afraid to try taking them, because anyone found out of their mine is punished severely, and he’s never been able to get back.”

Dett. Kaz memorized the name. If there were stairs that would take him toward Li, Kaz would seek them out, even if he had to go to the last place he wanted to. His link to the dragon told him that she was still safe and a little groggy, but whatever she was in was moving as if it was being carried. The angle of the filament hanging between them had stayed very nearly the same, so Kaz had exactly one goal.

Find a way up, and take it.