Chapter One hundred-fourteen (Patreon)

The stairs curved as Kaz ascended, vanishing only twenty steps ahead of him. The slope was steep, and though Lianhua hadn’t seemed heavy when Kaz picked her up, by the time he had passed four short landings, each with an arched opening leading to a hall filled with crimson light, his legs ached. The only good thing was that these steps were noticeably shorter than the nine inch rise he was used to, so while there were more of them, he could take two or three at a time without much effort.

When he reached the fifth landing, Kaz paused, leaning back against the wall to shift Lianhua’s weight. Li whistled worriedly, and he glanced up at her, which was surprisingly difficult while she sat between his ears. She had taken to gripping his ears with her little paws, rather than his fur, and the prickle of her claws against his skin made it nearly impossible not to twitch them in an effort to shake away whatever was tickling him.

Kaz looked up as the sound of another cascade of stones reached him. Over the last few minutes, the vibrations had nearly stopped, and even the noise of falling rocks had grown quieter and further apart. Kaz had hoped that the battle had either moved away or was nearing its end, but if so, whoever was losing still had some fight left in them.

Honestly, Kaz wasn’t sure who he expected to see still standing after all was said and done. The density of Zhangwo’s mana was greater than anything he had seen before. On the other hand, the humans outnumbered him, and while Gaoda and Chi Yincang would run out of their refined ki more easily than Zhangwo would run out of raw mana, ki was both more versatile and more efficient. Zhangwo had his rings, though, and while Kaz didn’t know exactly what they did, he was certain they were more than decorative.

Li seemed equally uncertain. Whenever Kaz imagined the humans surrounding Zhangwo and striking him down through their combined strength, she returned an image of Gaoda, pale and weak as he struggled to refill his reservoir of ki. Kaz wasn’t so sure, however. Gaoda was certainly unlikable, but that didn’t make him a poor warrior, and Kaz had seen him in action. He had had nearly a full day to meditate, and hadn’t used much ki for several days before that. All the humans should be in good shape for a sustained fight, as evidenced by the ongoing destruction above.

Abruptly, the alarm fell silent, and into that silence fell a loud boom, which echoed down the stairs, and Kaz was glad he was leaning against the wall. This was both the loudest explosion and the strongest quake, and it was immediately followed by several more. Something had just shifted, and Kaz had no idea if that was good news or bad.

Li clicked at him urgently, and Kaz pried his back from the wall with a muffled whine. He was desperately trying to preserve his ki, and he was also well aware of what happened whenever he filled his flesh with more ki than it could handle. He needed to be prepared for whatever he was walking into, but this meant that he wasn’t using nearly as much power to reinforce his muscles as he could have.

More steps, and two more landings, passed before the first stone fell on him. It wasn’t large, as stones went, but it came from overhead, and overhead was, presumably, more of the steps. But if the stairs were starting to crumble, Kaz needed to leave them, and soon. Nucai hadn’t said when to stop climbing, so Kaz had assumed they would end eventually, but he couldn’t have gone up more than one level so far. Perhaps one and a half, if they were shorter levels. He certainly hadn’t climbed four levels yet, which meant he was going to have to find another way up.

Kaz looked at the opening beside him, then winced as a falling rock glanced off his shoulder, barely missing Lianhua. She was still unconscious, and Kaz was beginning to worry that being under the influence of the collar for so long might affect her in some more permanent way. He could see that her ki was still being restricted by the ring around her throat, and he wondered if not enough was reaching her upper dantian to allow her to recover. He wished he had enough time to figure it out, but he didn’t.

As a chunk of stone the size of his head cracked loose from the ceiling overhead, Kaz took the step that shifted him out of the stairwell and into the hall. Now that the siren had stopped, he could hear shouting and the sound of people running, but the words overlapped too much to understand. The voices were deeper than those of the humans, but no howls or barks could be heard, so Kaz guessed he was hearing husede alone. There weren’t even any of the high-pitched screeches that would indicate the presence of mosui, so perhaps this level was only for the gray dwarves.

The noise was noticeably louder to Kaz’s right, so he turned to the left. Glancing up at Li, he murmured, “Can you hide all of us if someone comes?”

The little dragon puffed up her chest, firmly assuring him that she could. A moment later, an image entered his mind, showing a kobold - still blue, in spite of Kaz’s current condition - a golden dragon at least three times Li’s actual size, and Lianhua, who looked just a bit dirtier and more injured than she actually was. A husede appeared, and the dragon shimmered beautifully as the trio disappeared. However, this lasted for only a brief while before they snapped back into focus again.

Kaz looked up again as his paws took him left at a turn, then left again. “So you’re not sure how long it’ll last?”

Grudging affirmation.

Kaz smiled, wishing again that he could stroke her soft scales. “It’s more than I can do, and everyone is in such a hurry, it’ll probably be more than enough. Thank you.” Li clutched his ear, rubbing the side of her jaw against the fur, and Kaz chuckled.

More turns, and each time, Kaz felt as if his paws knew a path his mind didn’t. It took far too long to understand what his ‘sense of the mountain’ was telling him. For the first time in his life, at least the first that he could remember, he had nearly reached the very center of the mountain. Not top to bottom, because by now he was closer to the Deep than the heights, but whatever his instincts considered the ‘heart’ of the mountain now lay almost directly below him. He could almost see a thread like the one connecting him to Li, leading down to the depths.

This reminded him of the strange ki-chain that had briefly appeared when he and Lianhua exchanged promises, and he wondered if it was possible for a mountain to witness their oath. If so, he thought perhaps it had.

One turn, then a long, curving hall, something like the one that had led to Zhangwo’s den, except that it didn’t grow smaller as it rose. The voices were growing louder now, and Kaz’s rational mind battled with the instinct that told him he needed to continue on. The approaching shuffle of feet on stone made him duck to the side, trying to hide against the wall as he had done in the zhiwu nest. Then he realized that Lianhua’s body made him protrude into the hall much too far, and even if Li could conceal them, all it would take was for a husede to brush against him to shatter the illusion.

Turning, he dashed back to the last hall, gently laying Lianhua’s body on the floor, tucked up against the wall. Then he pressed himself up beside her, and held still as the footsteps neared. Voices rose, two husede arguing loudly as they nearly ran through the halls.

“We should just wait! If Zhangwo loses, the kobolds won’t know how to use the collars. We can take the city from them if they try to keep it. Or we could go home!”

“Home?” A slightly higher-pitched voice responded. “I was born here, and so were you, Erith! All we have are stories passed down about the great homeland we were stolen from. Our grandparents were told those same stories, and their grandparents before them. This is our home. I’d just prefer it without any mosui in it.”

The deeper voice sounded desperate as it said, “Then just walk a little slower. I don’t know where the humans came from, but the dark one is actually holding Zhangwo at bay. Give him a few more minutes, and we may be free for the first time in centuries!”

“Free to do what?” the other snapped. “The mosui ignore most of us, so long as we do our jobs. It’s not a bad life. But what would these kobolds want from us, and what would you expect from the race who must have written us off as lost a millennia ago? Let’s just do as Zhangwo ordered us and fire the ki cannons.”

Li had moved to his shoulder, stretching out her wings so one extended behind Kaz’s head, and the other hovered over Lianhua. He could sense her concentration, and she was pulling harder on his ki than she had done in a long while.

Two husede rounded the corner, the male slightly shorter and wider than the female, but both wearing a version of the robes all husede in the city wore. Bright collars, nearly identical to Lianhua’s, circled their throats, and the male tugged at his without seeming to realize what he was doing.

As they passed directly in front of him, Kaz’s mind whirled. He didn’t know what a ‘cannon’ was, but if Zhangwo thought it would turn the tide of battle, then Kaz was certain it would be bad for the humans. If these two were the only husede dispatched to fire them, then if he could stop them, that would, in turn, be good.

Before he could think better of his decision, Kaz launched himself toward the female husede. He didn’t have his knife out, since he hadn’t thought to take it from its sheath before Li began hiding them, but no kobold was ever entirely without weapons.

Kaz landed on the female’s back, claws digging deep into her hips and sides. He wrapped his elbow around her throat, just above the collar, and pressed his other hand against the back of her head, pressing forward. Tightening his arm, he squeezed against the sides of her neck, and the female let out a strangled cry.

She didn’t fall to her knees, however, as a kobold might have done in a similar situation. Instead, she grabbed at Kaz’s arms, trying to pull his arm down. He was forced to push more ki than he liked into his muscles in order to maintain his hold, and he could feel her mana raging through her body as she struggled against him.

Kaz glared over at the male husede, who was gawking at them, looking entirely unsure what to do. He looked younger than the female, but had nearly as much mana in his body, and Kaz thought these two had some of the densest mana he’d seen before Zhangwo. Perhaps they were chosen for that, because they certainly hadn’t been selected for their fighting skills.

“You want to wait?” Kaz barked, and the male - Erith? - jumped. “Let Zhangwo fall. I know the humans, and I will-”

He stopped as the female jerked her head back, trying to strike Kaz’s face with her skull. Putting more ki into the hand gripping the back of her head, Kaz growled, digging in the claws that gouged deep into her hips. She whimpered, and Kaz felt the tiniest hint of give in her as he tightened his hold on the sides of her throat.

“Let Thabil go!” Erith shouted. He was trying to look fierce, holding out the only weapon he had, which was one of the devices the mosui used to control the collars.

Kaz stretched his neck, showing the male that he wore no collar, and the threat was entirely useless. Erith’s arm dropped, and he looked desperately from the blood now soaking Thabil’s robes to her face, which was rapidly turning an unhealthy red beneath the gray of her skin.

“Promise to show me how to disable these ‘ki cannons’, and I’ll let her live,” Kaz said. He didn’t really want to kill the husede anyway, but if Erith did anything except agree, he would have to snap her neck in order to have his hands free to fight or chase down the other male.

“I-”

Kaz tightened his arm again, and Thabil’s knees finally gave out. She dropped to the ground, but Kaz managed to keep his grip as she went limp. He thought she was faking, rather than being truly unconscious, but it wouldn’t be long before pretense became reality.

Erith swallowed hard, then his hand opened, dropping the control device to the ground. It bounced, then rolled, and Li sprang toward it, grasping it in her greedy little paws. It was only when Erith gasped that Kaz realized Li had been holding her concealment over Lianhua this whole time. Now, Lianhua’s bloody form was revealed at the same time the last of the resistance left Thabil’s body.