Chapter Ninety-five (Patreon)

Whether because he didn’t want to leave his peaceful dreams of flying, or because of the silence of the den, Kaz didn’t wake until the deep, rolling chime ran out again. He opened his eyes, finding that at some point he had curled up on his side, clutching his tail for comfort like he had when he was a young puppy.

He was the only kobold who had slept alone, and the others were all getting up as well, though they had to untangle themselves in order to do so. Again, there was no awkwardness in it, in spite of how strange it seemed to Kaz. They also didn’t speak to each other, not even to give first greetings, just went to the mine entrance and waited as the first of the miners began to return.

Kaz hadn’t thought about it before, but it was odd that they waited for the bell, instead of coming in or out when they were ready. It was obvious that the miners outside had been waiting for a little while at least. Was there some rule about only coming or going when you were supposed to? If so, how was it enforced?

He glanced at Dax, who was once again staring at the ground, clearly uninterested in talking to anyone, then Surta, who was one of the only kobolds taking the time to stand and stretch as he prepared for the day. He very definitely didn’t like Surta, but the male had given him a lot of information, in spite of Dax’s warning.

Kaz stepped over beside Surta, keeping his chin down and ears half-lowered in a submissive posture as he asked, “Are we not allowed to go in or out except when the bell rings?”

Surta looked startled, as if he’d completely forgotten Kaz existed and might need help, then reached up and tapped his own collar, his claw chiming dully against the metal. “You can only go through the entrance during the four hour trading period. After that, the collar will burn you if you try. You also have to leave the picks out there. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is. Just do what everyone else does, and you’ll be fine.”

Kaz nodded, then got in the line behind Dax, passing through the entrance of the mine for what was hopefully both the first and the last time. As he crossed the threshold, the air shimmered, growing noticeably colder. That temperature change was the first warning sign of a hoyi nest, and normally Kaz would have immediately returned to his den to report it. Hoyi were a good reason for a kobold tribe to relocate. No one even tried to clear them out, no matter how large their tribe was.

The line ahead stopped and started apparently at random, and Kaz nearly bumped into Dax’s back. As they proceeded, he was able to see that each miner was picking up a fresh sack made of woven niu fur and a gleaming pickaxe much like those Kaz’s tribe had had when they still lived in the Deep. That is to say, the lustrous gleam of the metal indicated that it was either pure mithril, or at least an alloy.

Kaz’s hand shook as he picked up his own pickaxe, marveling at the light weight and excellent balance. He had been too small to mine when they’d left, but his father had let him try his pickaxe, laughing when young Kaz had tumbled over his own tail at the weight of it. Now, it fit perfectly in his hand, and he thought that he could swing it all day, which was good, because that was exactly what he was expected to do. Not that he had any intention of doing so.

A small smirk twitched the corner of Dax’s mouth as he watched Kaz marvel at the tool, and when he saw that he’d been noticed, he tilted his head ever so slightly, indicating a particularly short and scrawny male with unusually light brown fur and blue eyes almost the color of Kaz’s. “Dett,” he mouthed, then turned and vanished through one of the four tunnels leading away from the rough cave in which they stood.

Remembering what he’d been told about the other male, Kaz waited, pretending to heft his pickaxe as he checked in with Li and kept one eye on Dett. The dragon was still sleeping, though he didn’t know how she could, after having spent so much of the previous day unconscious, but she was in no distress, so he set some small part of his consciousness to watch the link and focused properly on the other kobolds.

Dett was doing much the same as Kaz, lifting his pickaxe, shifting it from hand to hand, and stretching out his legs as if he were readying himself for a run. Around them, the other males trickled away down the tunnels, sometimes alone, and sometimes in pairs. When Kaz saw Dett take off down a tunnel not far behind an unusually burly miner, he set off after them as well.

The tunnel was flat, but cold, and grew progressively colder the further they went. Soon, frost rimed the stone walls, and Kaz’s breath began to curl in front of his nose, but on they went. He let the others get a good distance ahead, using his ki-infused nose to track them as the tunnels grew smaller and rougher, turning sharply several times. The cold definitely impacted his ability to smell, but each time he almost lost the trail, he just put more ki into his nose, only stopping when it began to ache, and he remembered the time he’d caused it to bleed by filling it with too much power.

He began to see crystals in the walls almost immediately, but they were small and dim, and the marks of pickaxes were nearby, so these must be too poor a quality for the mosui to accept. There were other crystals as well, and even a few gemstones, which might have been gathered to make jewelry or decorations in the Deep, though kobolds in the upper reaches rarely bothered with such things.

Eventually, he began seeing large crystals, though for whatever reason, these, too, were passed by. They were interspersed among broken, cloudy stones, so perhaps more experienced miners knew that meant they would be cloudy or prone to breakage as well, even though Kaz couldn’t see anything wrong with them as he hurried by.

His fingers were starting to burn where they gripped the cold metal of the mithril handle of the pick when he heard the familiar skitter of chitinous feet against stone. He associated that sound with zhiwu, or adult jiachin, but given the frost that now rimed the stone walls, he suspected this was made by something entirely different.

Still following his nose, but moving more cautiously now, Kaz turned another corner, and almost ran into his first hoyi. The thing came up to his waist, and the head and two large body segments were covered in blue chitin coated with a layer of white frost. Its antennae waved gently in the air, and it had no eyes that Kaz could see. It held a piece of raw metal in its pincers, and ignored Kaz completely, continuing on its way as Kaz screeched to a halt, nearly slipping on the streak of ice it left on the stone behind it.

This must be a worker, then. It was smaller than Kaz had been told, or perhaps this was a young one. Either way, seeing it had made Kaz’s heart start pounding in his chest, and apparently that was enough to wake up Li, because the dragon immediately began sending images of a blue kobold in peril, chased by monsters or falling down a hole.

Kaz pressed a hand to his chest, drawing in a deep breath as he tried to calm himself. He sent Li an image of where he was, showing her that he was completely safe, then yelped as a startlingly warm finger poked him in the chest.

“What do you want?” a voice demanded querulously. “I don’t have any crystals for you to steal, so you should follow someone else.”

Kaz stared down at the short, wiry kobold glaring at him. The other male’s finger still dug into Kaz’s ribs, and his expression was belligerent, but his tail was half-tucked. Dett wasn’t as confident as he’d like Kaz to believe.

Kaz hunched, making himself slightly shorter, though there was no way he could reduce himself to Dett’s height. “I’m new,” he said, reaching up to finger the fur at his throat, where a warrior’s necklace should hang. “I just… followed someone so I could find out what I’m supposed to do. No one wanted to help me.”

Dett’s blue eyes followed the movement, then narrowed as he realized that Kaz was a pup. His own hand withdrew, lifting to finger the roughly-made warrior’s necklace he wore. It only held a few teeth and two small skulls, and the holes drilled in the teeth had cracked the enamel, leaving them looking as if they would fall apart at any moment. The leather cord looked poorly tanned, and was of an uneven width, and Kaz wondered if Dax was actually right, and this male had never finished his spirit hunt, in spite of looking old enough to be Kaz’s father.

Dett’s gaze flickered behind Kaz, then looked down the crevice the hoyi had vanished into. A small smile twisted his mouth, and he said, “Yes, of course. I’d be happy to show you how to mine. Of course, you have to share your crystals with me, since I’ll be teaching you.”

Kaz nodded eagerly, then looked around, thoughts spinning. He hadn’t expected to confront the other male so soon, and wasn’t actually ready. If he asked directly about the stairs, would Dett tell him? No, that would just let him know that Kaz had already talked to someone else about him, and had followed him specifically. It was better to play along with Dett for a while, get him to relax, and then bring it up naturally.

“That’d be perfect,” he said, holding up his pick as if offering it to the other male. He had stuffed the bag into his belt a long time ago, so he would have at least one hand free, though the pickaxe certainly counted as a weapon by itself. Honestly, it might be a better weapon against the hoyi, with their thick chitin carapaces, than a knife. Though Kaz was almost certain that his own knife would cut chitin as easily as it had cut bone when he’d killed fuergar with it.

Dett snorted, waving away Kaz’s pick. “I have my own, remember? Come on.” His eyes lingered on the tunnel behind Kaz before flicking back to the narrower passage ahead.

Lifting his pick again, Dett indicated the crystals in the wall. These were the largest Kaz had seen yet, but Dett was clearly unimpressed. “The crystals are worthless until you get to where the hoyi are. There are just workers on the outskirts, and some miners spend all day here, trying to gather enough of these small ones to earn a meal. Those’re the kobolds you’ll see with the big bags.” He held his hands apart, indicating a space about a foot wide.

Hurrying forward, the small male peered around the next corner. After a moment, he made a ‘follow’ motion, and Kaz joined him, though they didn’t step around. Leaning forward, Kaz flinched as he caught the distinctive scent of blood, and Dett huffed softly in disappointment.

“I was afraid of that,” Dett said softly. “He walked into a warrior like a furless puppy.” Glancing back at Kaz, he added quickly, “Nothing I could do, of course. Once a warrior finds you, you’re dead. No reason for me to die, too.”

Tipping his head, Kaz saw exactly what he’s been afraid he would. The large male Dett had been following was lying on the ground in two pieces, his blood already frozen in a crimson pool. A much larger hoyi stood over him, jaws clicking loudly as its antennae waved. Kaz thought that this one would reach his chest, and its pincers were nearly twice as long as those of the worker.

As the two kobolds watched, worker hoyi emerged from nearby tunnels, scurrying forward until they could touch the fallen kobold with their antennae. Once they located the body, they scooped them up in their jaws, vanishing down the tunnel one of them had come from.

“How did they know to come?” Kaz murmured, unable to take his eyes from the scene.

He felt Dett shrug, and realized that his chest was touching the other male’s arm. The small area of shared body heat was incredibly warming after the constant chill that surrounded them, and Kaz suspected he knew how and why the other males had overcome their unwillingness to be touched, and why Dax had spent so long holding his warm bowl of stew.

“Vibrations, we think. Some of the ones from the mid-levels have run into the bugs before, though we’ve wiped them out in the Deep.” The narrow chest puffed up in momentary pride before Dett went on.

“They can track heat, too, but when one of them wants to call the others, they start clicking like that, and soon others show up. If several of us try to take on a warrior, it always calls more warriors, and when they kill one of us, they call workers. That’s why you never take on a hoyi, even a worker. They’ll try to run, but as soon as they start clicking, you know there’s a dozen warriors headed your way.”

The hoyi finished cleaning up the kobold’s remains, and the warrior clicked its jaws twice more before following after them. Kaz and Dett let out a simultaneous sigh as the frosty blue bugs vanished, and both stood straight again.

“If you see a warrior, freeze,” Dett said, snickering at his own joke as he indicated their frozen surroundings. “So long as they don’t get close enough to sense your heat, and you don’t make a single sound, they’ll go on their way. Of course, mining down here is a sure way to draw them in, so you have to wait until you find a single, perfect crystal, dig it out, and run before they get there.”

He glared up at Kaz. “Even if there are a dozen other crystals nearby, don’t try to get them. One crystal at a time. All it takes is three this size,” Dett held up a small fist, “and you’ll eat. Just make sure they’re clear.”

“What about the other crystals? Like the yellow one?” Kaz asked. Surta said those were only found deeper in the mine, and so were the stairs, so perhaps this would be a good chance to turn the conversation toward escape.

Creeping around the corner, Dett motioned for Kaz to follow. They walked over blood frozen so hard that they didn’t even leave paw-prints in it as they crossed to the next tunnel. “Don’t bother,” Dett whispered, leading the way. “You saw what happened to Zargo. Even if you found one of those, Surta would just take it. If you hide it, you’ll take a beating, and unless you’re starving, it’s not worth it.”

“Surta said he doesn’t let anyone starve,” Kaz offered, remembering the gray male leaving some of the miners with smaller bags alone. Now he knew that those probably held fewer but higher quality crystals, so why hadn’t Surta stolen from them as well?

Crouching down, Dett wriggled through a low-ceilinged passage with the ease of long practice. Kaz had a much more difficult time, leaving more of his brittle gray fur behind on the jagged and icy points protruding from the walls.

“Surta doesn’t care if you live or die,” Dett said, then shot a nervous glance at Kaz. “Though I didn’t say that. In fact, ignore that. Surta… Of course, Surta takes from those with more so his warriors are strong enough to guard the den.”

Kaz frowned. “Do the hoyi or other beasts often attack the den?”

Dett laughed. “Never. Never in all the time I’ve been here, which is longer than anyone else. But, ah, you never know. The day might come, and then Surta will be ready.”

The smaller kobold wouldn’t meet Kaz’s eyes, but that was all right. Kaz understood.

“You said you came from the Deep?” Kaz asked, trying to keep his tone as casual as if he wasn’t edging toward the questions he really wanted to ask.

For just a moment, Dett paused, throwing his shoulders back and lifting his muzzle proudly. “I am Dett, son of the chief of the Goldblade tribe, masters of the Deep! Someday, I’ll be mated to Avli, next chief of the Mithrilblade tribe. Then, I’ll send my warriors here to wipe out these musui, and all who have mocked me!”

Kaz didn’t know how to respond. In his world, males were disposable. A male who went missing was a male who would be replaced. Was it so different in the Deep? He didn’t remember Oda treating him any differently then than she had as they rose through the mountain. Or was this male simply delusional after being trapped in this place for so long? That certainly seemed the most likely answer, but Kaz didn’t want to alienate him by questioning his declaration, so he simply nodded acceptance.

Dett hesitated, blinking, then relaxed again, staring at Kaz. “That’s… it?” he asked. “You’re not going to call me a liar, or tell me I’m a fool?”

Kaz shook his head. “I don’t know your family. I hope they’ll come for you, and free us all.”

Slowly, Dett grinned, looking genuinely pleased. His tail wagged, and he reached up to clap Kaz on the arm. “Well then, so it shall be. When the Goldblades and Mithrilblades descend on this place, I’ll make certain they know you’re to be kept alive and brought to me. Use that broad back and powerful arm to keep me fed until then, and I’ll make certain you live the rest of your life in luxury.”

It was time, and Kaz had to clasp his free hand in a fist behind his back in order to keep its trembling from showing as he said, “But isn’t there another way? Perhaps we can all attack the husede when he comes to feed us, or maybe there’s a set of stairs, hidden somewhere-”

Dett stiffened. “It’s been tried. Every kobold who touches a musui or husede dies. As for the stairs-” he twitched, staring around, though given the small space in which they’d paused, there wasn’t much to see.

“Yes,” he murmured finally. “Maybe. If there were stairs, you would take them, wouldn’t you? You’re just a pup.” A foolish youngling, he left unspoken but implied.

Kaz nodded eagerly, pretending not to have noticed. “I want to go home,” he whimpered, letting his ears fold back and his tail tuck down. “I don’t like it here.”

Dett’s gaze was calculating, and nearly as cold as the ice that surrounded them. “Then I have something to show you. But first, you need to dig up some crystals for me.”