Chapter One hundred-nine (Patreon)

Once again, the world was filled with red, and as it reformed, Kaz saw that wherever the platform was taking him, there were a few blurry figures already present. In fact, one seemed to walk right through him, and he felt a sudden spike in the amount of power the platform was drawing from him as he and his conveyance seemed to shimmer back into a more ethereal insubstantiality. This gave Kaz enough time to gather his wits and realize that appearing unexpectedly in the middle of a group of people - husede by their shadowy shapes and the oddly well-defined collars around their necks - was probably not a good idea.

Though he had already used much of his red ki, Kaz spun the last of it into a bright crimson thread and laid it again into the rune beneath his fingertips. To his immense relief, the three figures soon walked away, seeming heavily burdened by bags or boxes that brought their height to something closer to that of a short human, rather than a tall kobold.

Kaz’s thread fizzled and burned up, and he and the platform jerked back into reality with an abruptness that made his stomach drop. The dark shape to his right solidified into another platform, with its burden of yumi waiting to be taken away by the husede. Quickly, he dodged that direction, hiding behind the long, wide bundle.

There he waited, hardly daring to breathe as he ‘looked’ through the yumi and took in the sight of hazy mana of the right shape and conformation to be inside someone’s middle dantian, hovering not far from his hiding place. Pricking up his ears, he tried to listen for some clue about the person, but they just stood there, and all he could tell from that disembodied dantian was that they were shifting in place, but not actually going anywhere.

Both Kaz and the misty dantian jumped as the loudest sound Kaz had ever heard blared through the space. It was like a bell had somehow gotten stuck at the moment the clapper touched metal, and it went on and on. Raised voices were nearly lost amidst the din, and Kaz heard several muffled clatters as husede dropped their burdens. The dantian he had been watching turned and moved away at a rate that indicated its owner was running.

Kaz clapped his hands over his ears, not quite daring to pull the ki from them, in case he missed something that might explain what was going on. The sound didn’t quiet as much as he’d hoped, and it took him a moment to realize that Li was hearing the same thing, and relaying it to him. He turned his attention to her, and saw that the husede who had been scouring the halls for the missing ‘fuergar’ were also abandoning their tasks and running away.

Kaz and Li poked their noses out of their respective hiding places at the same time, and for a moment, the two images overlapped in Kaz’s vision. An empty hall lay superimposed over a broad, open room filled with all kinds of things, many of which now lay scattered over the floor. Raw metal glinted among yumi reeds that had been partially stripped down to long, thin pieces, but between them lay an empty stone floor that was darker and shinier than the one that was actually in front of Kaz.

At the same moment, both realized that this was their chance to move, and Kaz was already running by the time he realized the little dragon was as well. He urged her to return to her hiding place, but it was half-hearted at best, since they both knew that eventually one of the husede would think to look up, even though a fuergar shouldn’t be able to climb the polished stone walls of the hall.

Li returned stark refusal, and Kaz had to turn his attention away as he came to the first exit from the room. Two bags of raw ore spilled out onto the floor in front of it, and Kaz could feel waves of heat coming from the short tunnel. He guessed that this was where the husede smelted their ore, and while he was intensely curious how they made a fire hot enough to melt mithril and adamantium, now was most definitely not the time to investigate.

He hurried on, trying to ignore the blaring sound that continued to echo through both his and Li’s ears, and glanced down the next tunnel. A bundle of yumi reeds lay on the floor, partially blocking the path, and while Kaz could jump over it, he decided to investigate the next few tunnels before deciding which way to go.

The next tunnel was empty of fallen items, but the one after that had three jugs set neatly to one side. A closer inspection showed that they contained the same thick black fluid as the ones causing so much havoc on the storage floor, which made Kaz realize what was happening.

It was his fault. Well, his and his attackers. The bell must serve to let all the husede know that an emergency was taking place, and they had all gone to help deal with it. If the fire wasn’t raging, Kaz would probably still be huddled behind that first roll of reeds, waiting to be discovered, so while his recent experience had been terrifying, he was now glad that it had happened. Given the size of the conflagration, any husede involved in stopping or cleaning up after it would be gone for quite a while.

Li plucked this thought from his mind and sent back smug satisfaction, hastening her own escape. Kaz urged her to be cautious, since they didn’t know if the mosui were equally occupied. Grudgingly, she admitted he was correct and slowed her pace again, even as Kaz ignored his own advice and sped up.

Two more tunnels, one with gems on the floor, and one that seemed empty at first glance. Kaz’s ki-sight told him something entirely different, however, and he crouched down, picking up a small pouch that had been set at the side of the tunnel as carefully as the liquid-filled urns had been. Pulling open the top, he spilled a single crystal into his palm.

It blazed with golden light, and Kaz clenched his fist around it. It was a yellow ki-crystal, and after his time in the mine, Kaz had an idea just how rare and precious these were. Just holding it in his hand, he felt the yellow ki in his cycle surge toward it in a way his red ki didn’t respond to the ubiquitous red crystals. Was that because there was only the one, or because this crystal was different? Quickly tucking it into his pack, Kaz determined to investigate it later, after saving Li, and, if possible, Lianhua.

Colored light flickered at the end of this tunnel, and Kaz took a step toward it, drawn as he hadn’t been even by the forge. If there were more crystals like this down there, how much more powerful could he become? But he had decided to check them all before making his decision, and he would wait. This was certainly the way he would go if nothing else seemed more promising, however.

The next tunnel held no clues as to its destination, and neither did the one after that. This left only one, and he glanced down it almost indifferently, having already decided to head back to the one where he’d found the crystal. Something on the wall caught his attention, however, and he stopped. Advancing down the passage a few steps, he stared at the picture carved into the otherwise smooth wall.

Nine flat lines, with a single rectangle passing through the center of all of them, and in the very middle of that, a red crystal glowed invitingly. He tapped the slightly oversized figure next to the stacked set of lines indicating a staircase, and grinned as he pressed the red crystal, causing the door to swivel open and reveal a set of stairs leading up.

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As Kaz discovered the set of stairs for which he had been searching, Li was seeking a similar path to him. She flew through hall after empty hall, looking at closed doors and wishing that she had Kaz’s dexterous hands rather than her own small, clawed paws. Though she doubted if she could turn a handle that was the size of her chest, even if she had a set of so-convenient thumbs. Her small size was a constant source of annoyance and mild embarrassment for her, not that she would admit that to the kobold.

The blaring tone of the alarm ceased so abruptly she wobbled in the air, and a sharp stab of pain went through her injured shoulder. The wing seemed to be fine, but the muscles that controlled it were very definitely bruised, and her wounded paw ached as well. Li had only been hurt a few times before, and she always found it quite bothersome.

Her ears continued to echo with the absent sound, and she eventually realized that it was still going on, wherever Kaz was. Perhaps that meant that the husede on her level were supposed to return to their duties, which also meant that her time of freedom was limited. She needed to find a new place to hide, one which didn’t cause such a crick in her long, elegant neck.

Looking around, she realized that she had found her way to a wide, open space. She felt safer the higher she was above the ground, so each time she came to an intersection, she had taken the tunnel with the higher ceiling. This had led her at last to this place, where the ceiling was at least twice as high as that male human Kaz called Raff.

She had no idea where the mosui wanted with such a space, since they seemed barely larger than herself - a fact which she viewed with some satisfaction - and it seemed to make more sense for their tunnels to get smaller, rather than larger. One thing she had discovered during her short life, however, was that the creatures occupying this strange, closed world in which she wandered seemed to feel little to no compulsion to act with any kind of intelligence.

With a few flaps of her wings, which should have been effortless, but were instead quite uncomfortable, she peered into one of the small alcoves from which red light emitted, discovering that it was nearly identical to the one in which she had been hiding. No, resting. Somehow she felt sure that dragons didn’t hide, and she would do well to remember it.

Circling the room, she saw that all of the recesses were the same, and finally stopped long enough to climb far enough into the last one and gulp down the crystal resting there. Darkness fell, which was actually quite pleasant after the constant glare of the space in which she had been trapped for what had to have been days, judging by the gnawing in her belly.

She had wanted to eat the crystal there so very, very much, but knew she couldn’t, since the simple lack of light would likely attract the very attention she was attempting to avoid. Not that she was hiding, no, simply making a prudent choice to avoid notice until she recovered.

Now, the chip of red she had gulped down made its way to her belly, where she felt the warm flush of ki join her cycle. She couldn’t see ki, at least not as well as her kobold companion, though his skill did seem to function through their bond, at least a little. Nonetheless, she perceived it with some other sense than mere sight, and to her great delight, she could manipulate it more easily than Kaz. So he could see power? Well, she could touch it. Most of the time.

At least she could do it often enough and well enough that she was able to help him with whatever bothersome thing he was doing at the time. Such as trying to avoid dying, which he seemed to do with tiresome regularity. If he would simply stop allowing his curiosity and unnecessarily sympathetic personality to guide his choices, life would be far easier and more convenient for her, which was really what mattered.

Letting the weight of her slender, graceful tail pull her back out of the small hole, she enjoyed the feeling of warmth spreading from her stomach and the push of air against her wings. Turning in an exquisitely executed twist, she dove down to investigate the three tunnels that exited this spacious chamber, other than the one through which she had entered.

Before she even reached the first, she veered away from it. The distinct and too-familiar scent of fulan was coming from that direction, along with a whiff of acrid smoke. It might well lead down - in fact, it almost certainly did -  but she had no interest in risking unnecessary exposure to the spores. Kaz could come to her, as was only right and fit.

The second tunnel had nothing in particular to either recommend or condemn it, but the third… Oh, the third had something very interesting indeed. There, beneath the earthy scent of mosui, and the musky-metallic aroma of husede, lay one that she recognized. Light and gently sweet, it was the aroma of the human female.

Li hesitated, circling lazily in midair as she tried to decide what to do. She was quite conflicted in her feelings toward this one. On one claw, Kaz liked her, and Li was somewhat inclined to forbearance toward things her kobold liked. On the other claw, Kaz liked her, and Li wasn’t entirely sure she approved of him liking any being other than herself. Still, he clearly prioritized Li over Lianhua, so it was probably all right.

On a third claw, it was Lianhua’s fault that they had gotten into this mess in the first place. Yes, well, perhaps it was slightly Li’s fault, since she was the one who had been trying to impress the human - entirely unnecessarily, of course, since the female was clearly properly dazzled by Li’s mere existence - but she had overextended herself and fallen briefly unconscious.

That is, she took a short nap, and when she woke, she and Lianhua were already on the other side of the strange stone door, and were descending the stairs. Li had heard the same squeals as Lianhua, but entirely lacked the urge to investigate and ‘help’, and thus had tried to lift herself away from the human, but found that she was still too tired to fly.

When they saw the first fulan spores, Li had redoubled her efforts, but Lianhua had been determined to find out what was causing the noise. She even started speaking to Li in much the same way Kaz did, moving her disturbingly flexible lips and tongue to make the strange noises that served as speech for those who couldn’t communicate in better ways.

Lianhua offered to put Li into a ‘mask’, which Li made quite clear was unacceptable by biting the female’s ear. It wasn’t as soft as the dragon thought it should be, but she could still draw blood if she bit down hard enough. After that, she saw the faint, hazy shimmer of a shield form around them, and the spores were pushed out of the way. Li had no idea why the human hadn’t simply done this in the first place, since it allowed Li to ride in comfort, but at least it had been done at last.

Then, of course, they fell in the hole. That, at least, was entirely Lianhua’s fault, since watching her own enormous feet should be the very least of her responsibilities. Li also wasn’t to blame for the fact that she herself had tried to fly off Lianhua’s shoulder as they plummeted to the ground, because what else was a dragon to do when her mount tumbled so abruptly?

As a result, however, Li had breathed in quite a bit of the dust that fell around them, and the world had gone black. When she woke, Li was in the box. She had no idea what had happened between the time she fell into unconsciousness, and when Lianhua opened the box to feed her, but she did know that the human female had very nearly managed to make up for the whole mess by doing something to unlock and open Li’s prison and facilitate her escape.

As she made one last turn, still torn between possible safety and the high probability that following Lianhua’s scent would lead to becoming further embroiled in whatever the malicious mosui were up to, she caught a glint of light reflecting from her forelimb. Turning an eye on it, Li looked at the lovely golden bauble Kaz claimed Lianhua had given her. Li had been very young at the time, so she didn’t remember it clearly herself, but she had seen it in the kobold’s memories, and she reluctantly had to admit that there was little room for doubt.

Heaving a great sigh, the dragon flapped her wings, vanishing down the tunnel that smelled of Lianhua.