Chapter One hundred seventeen (Patreon)

Kaz and Lianhua reached the husede at the same time. Lianhua’s hands grasped those of the other female, pulling them away from the pedestals even as the hum began to rise. Kaz, who had used his chair as a launching point, was able to grasp her around the ribs, clawed fingers unerringly digging into the wounds hidden beneath her robe.

Thabil howled, her voice a deep roar of anguished fury, even as she was simultaneously pulled and thrown from her seat. Kaz didn’t think Lianhua would be able to pin the much more powerfully built female if Thabil wasn’t injured, but she was, and Lianhua was almost as furious and desperate as the husede. The three of them tumbled to the ground, Li lifting off of Kaz’s shoulder to hover over them.

As soon as Thabil was down, Lianhua looked up, meeting Kaz’s eyes. She was laying across Thabil’s back, her arm around the husede’s throat in a grip not unlike the one Kaz had used not long before. As Thabil thrashed, Lianhua twisted and rolled, managing to maintain her hold by shifting the grip of her arm and the placement of her hips and legs.

“Kaz,” Lianhua gasped, “can you control this thing?”

Kaz settled back on his haunches, ears perked as he glanced quickly around. Chi Yincang was still trying to get free, but his blows were noticeably weaker and more awkward now. Zhangwo’s lips were moving, but Kaz didn’t know what the mosui leader was saying. Whatever it was, he was so intent on it that he didn’t notice someone else creeping up behind him.

It was Raff, and if Zhangwo and Chi Yincang looked rough, Raff looked as if he was on his last legs. His hair and beard were matted with blood, and his armor was dented. Several pieces looked as if they were still in place only through force of long habit, and he was completely missing one of his foot coverings. The sword in his hands was still rock steady, however, and beneath the streaks of blood, his expression was hard and focused.

With a final look at Lianhua and Thabil, who seemed to have given up, Kaz scrambled into the chair Thabil had been occupying. Li settled onto his shoulder as he placed his hands on the pedestals. He immediately noticed a difference between these and the ones in front of the other chair.

He had only had his hands on them for a moment, but it had felt much like being too close to one of the humans when they were cultivating. He had no control over what was happening, it had just started pulling his ki out of him. This time, however, while he definitely felt the drain, it was less powerful, and when he pulled back, it released him easily. He was also glad to discover that he didn’t have to go through the effort of weaving his ki into mana. This had been called a ki cannon, and that was exactly what it seemed to be.

Once he thought he had some understanding of what was happening, he looked back at the wall again. Now, as his eyes shifted from one combatant to the next, the white circles moved as well. They hung over Raff as the tall human raised his sword, slashing down and across, directly at Zhangwo’s exposed throat.

Which wasn’t there any more. Somehow, the mosui spun out of the way, nearly throwing Chi Yincang’s body directly into the path of Raff’s attack. The image faithfully relayed the expression of alarm on his face as he desperately tried to twist an inexorable blow into a complete miss. And failed.

The blade, half as long as Raff was tall, slashed Chi Yincang’s chest, sending him backwards to collapse into a heap of black hair and robes. Raff took one step forward, as if to check on the other male’s condition, then gathered himself and turned to face Zhangwo instead.

The mosui leader was laughing. His sharp, bloody teeth were exposed, his too-wide mouth gaping beneath his short snout. Holding out his arms, he raised them in a universal gesture of triumph.

Kaz shot him. The white circles focused in on that horrible smile, and Kaz drew in a deep breath, compressing his core as he did so. On his shoulder, Li gathered her own power, though she simply spun her cycle more quickly, rather than mimicking his attempt at cultivation. As Kaz and Li breathed out, their ki surged.

Each time Kaz did this, compressing and releasing his ki, allowing it to saturate his channels and his body, even if it was piece by piece, he could feel himself changing. Lianhua had told him that a cultivator’s end goal was to become one with ki, but Kaz had no interest in that. He didn’t want to ‘ascend’ or become one of the gods Ogden had occasionally mentioned. He just wanted to be Kaz, with his friend Li, free to be exactly who and what they wanted to be.

And so he resisted. He had felt the result of allowing the ki to flow without constraint, and never wanted to suffer the pain and weakness of a cracked and broken core again. He also didn’t want to become other, and so when he worked to grow, he held tightly, perhaps unconsciously, to the image of himself as Kaz, kobold, son of Oda and Ghazt, friend of a dragon, striving to become more of who he was, rather than what anyone else believed he should be.

But now, seeing his friends - yes, friends, because that was how he thought of them, no matter what they might think of him in turn - endangered, Kaz let it all go. Unlike when he had nearly blown up his own body, he maintained control of the ki that flowed out of him, directing it into the pedestals, where it met and mingled with something that felt like it was much, much larger than a few chairs and whatever generated the burst of ki in the cavern beyond.

Kaz reached down, and the mountain reached up, and when they met, something happened that was entirely different from what Thabil had done. The room was subsumed in all the colors of ki, and every shade in between. Ruby and sapphire mixed into amethyst, obsidian and moonstone made brilliant, smoky diamond. The hum rose, transcending a single resonant note, to become a triumphant chord, as if multiple voices were raised at once in a single howl.

On the wall, Raff and Zhangwo froze, their eyes turning up. Zhangwo’s expression had time to shift from gloating to confusion before a single beam of light flashed down to vaporize his head. In his seat, Kaz watched, strangely detached, wondering why it had seemed so important to strike down such a petty little being. He was the mountain, timeless and great, infested by crawling, biting insects who were rarely even worth swatting. Yet he had invested no small amount of his power in crushing this one, and-

Li bit him. Sharp teeth, stronger than they had been before, chomped hard on the thin, tender rim of his ear, and Kaz yelped, clapping his hand to the small wound. In the process, he broke contact with the control pedestal, and the overwhelming feeling of being one with the mountain snapped like a leather cord trying to lift too large a load.

Kaz lowered his fingers, seeing a droplet of crimson blood smeared across fine blue fur. He blinked. Holding his arms out in front of him, he was shocked to see that the melted, bleached, broken gray fur that had barely been clinging to his body was falling away. It drifted through the air as he moved, and beneath it lay a thin, soft fuzz of distinctly blue fur.

“Kaz?” Lianhua’s shaky voice brought him to himself as he began to brush at himself, sending clouds of short hairs falling onto the chair and ground.

Looking over at her, he realized that at some point, she had released Thabil. Erith, too, had recovered somewhat, and now sat, holding his head and staring at Kaz. In fact, they were all staring at Kaz, and he felt his ears lower at being the absolute focus of their astonished attention.

Behind them, the image of the destroyed city and the two humans, along with the remains of Zhangwo, vanished, returning to the smooth gray stone of the mosui buildings. With Zhangwo dead, Kaz hoped that Raff and Gaoda - wherever he was, because in spite of his earlier thoughts, Kaz was certain that he had managed to avoid serious injury - as well as the Redmane kobolds, could take care of any remaining mosui.

“Kaz?” Lianhua said again, voice steadier this time. Slowly, she climbed to her feet, watching Kaz as if he might do something completely unexpected, like wake an ancient device and use it to deal instant, unavoidable death.

Kaz tilted his head, feeling slightly dizzy as he did so. Turning his focus inward, he realized why. His channels were healed, or perhaps he no longer needed to heal them. His flesh was saturated with ki, central dantian spinning in a gleeful swirl, and while his channels were distinctly still there, ki moved in and out of them as easily as water moved through a pool. For the first time in weeks, Kaz didn’t have to maintain a constant, habitual grip on the flow of his ki, because it moved naturally through his entire body in a balanced and steady cycle.

A hand hesitantly touched his shoulder, and Kaz snapped back to the present, meeting Lianhua’s eyes as she stared down at him, worry clear in her eyes. “Are you all right?” she asked.

He shook his head, then nodded, then shook his head again. “I… think so?” he said.

She looked instantly relieved. He wondered why, but then she said, “You were speaking, but not in any language I know. And your face-” She bit her lip so hard he was afraid she might injure herself, but finally said, “You didn’t look like yourself.”

On his shoulder, Li whistled, a sound that went up and down in an agreeing but interrogative way. She sent him an image of himself, all of his fur standing straight out from his body, his muzzle looking both longer and more pointed than usual, while his eyes shifted colors in very much the same way Li’s did.

He shook his head. “I don’t remember saying anything. I just wanted to fire the cannon, but when I sent my ki into it, it was like… it was waiting for me.”

“What was?” Lianhua asked softly.

“The mountain,” Kaz said simply, and they stared at each other for a long, long moment.

Then the wall in front of them, where they had been watching the battle, began to crack and bulge. The tip of something sharp protruded through it, slicing up and around in a broad circle. Everyone scrambled back as the metal cut once, then twice more, creating an X in the middle of the circle. A muffled exclamation came from the other side, and then the top quadrant of the circle fell in, crashing to the ground in an explosive burst.

“Be careful, Chi Yincang!” Raff shouted, his voice much clearer now. “It’s not gonna do any good if you kill yourself or Lianhua in gettin’ to her!”

Not unexpectedly, there was no response, but the next section of wall was pushed in more gently, toppling to the side without breaking. On the other side stood Raff, smiling apologetically through the blood crusting his face, and Chi Yincang, whose emotionless mask cracked as his eyes landed on Lianhua.

“Granddaughter,” he said, voice rougher than Kaz had ever heard it before, and Lianhua lurched, taking one step toward him.

“Grandfather?” she asked, peering at the dark warrior closely. Kaz did the same, and saw that behind the mask of blood, Chi Yincang’s eyes, which usually had black but entirely normal irises, were now entirely obsidian, edge to edge and corner to corner. A memory flashed through Kaz’s mind, of Chi Yincang kneeling in the darkness of the cavern where they had recovered from fighting the enormous lopo. When Kaz brought back the firemoss for Lianhua, he had seen Chi Yincang’s eyes look exactly like this, though it had lasted for such a short time that he had nearly convinced himself he was seeing things.

A warm, relieved smile stretched Chi Yincang’s lips, and he nodded. “Chi Yincang has been keeping me apprised of your progress, and when he told me you had vanished-”

His voice broke, and he climbed through the gap, stretching out his arms. With an inarticulate cry, Lianhua fell into them, tears streaming from her eyes as she hugged him tightly. The two held each other for a moment, before Lianhua’s grandfather gently pushed her back, hands trembling. Fresh crimson had joined the sticky blood already streaking his face, flowing steadily from both nostrils and into his mouth.

“I have to let Chi Yincang go,” he said regretfully. “I’ve already held him for far too long. That thing, whatever it was, was strong. I’ve been fighting it for nearly an hour, and Chi Yincang’s body can’t take my power much longer.”

Looking around, he tracked over the two husede, who were huddled together in a corner of the room. Next, they touched on Raff, who was leaning against the wall not far away, eyes on the gray dwarves, rather than the small family reunion.

Finally, he looked at Kaz, and his jet-black eyes seemed to stab into the kobold’s heart, turning it over and over as he examined everything that made Kaz who he was. Nodding, he said, “I’d like to meet you, kobold. In person. Chi Yincang tells me your presence has been a great comfort to Lianhua, so I’ll leave it as a request.”

His tone reminded Kaz that while he might be a doting grandparent, Lianhua had said no one short of the emperor, who seemed to be a chief of chiefs, dared to oppose him. Kaz was also certain that if this person told Chi Yincang to bring Kaz to him, Chi Yincang would do everything within his own not-inconsiderable power to make sure that happened. Kaz wasn’t quite as certain as he once was that Chi Yincang would be successful, but he didn’t really want to find out the hard way.

Instead, he bowed his head. “Lianhua invited me to visit, and I agreed,” he said, hoping that humans had the same ideas of the rights of guests as kobolds did.

Chi Yincang’s lips turned up into an unfamiliar smile, and he nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, and the blackness drained from his eyes like water from a bowl. Chi Yincang’s face immediately settled into its usual blankness. Looking at Lianhua, he pressed his fist to his chest.

“On your command, lady,” he said, and the only sign of the fierce battle he’d just fought was the fact that he leaned on his weapon slightly, rather than returning it immediately to his ring.

Lianhua nodded back, wiping away the remains of her tears with the back of one hand. “Is anyone still fighting?”

Raff spoke up. “Nah. When that weird guy showed up, Gaoda took one look at ‘im and hared off after the mosui, saying he’d make sure they couldn’t sneak up behind us. I expect by now he’s killed the lot of ‘em, if only to prove that he was doing something useful while the two of us were kept busy by just one enemy.”

A complex expression crossed Lianhua’s face, and Kaz couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed that Gaoda was probably both alive and uninjured. “I see,” she said, tone neutral.

Turning to Thabil, she asked, “Will the husede listen to you if you tell them to stop fighting?”

The other female finally managed to struggle to her feet, though her usual confidence was significantly diminished. “Yes,” she said. “Once they know Zhangwo is dead, they’ll stop anyway. He had a way to activate all the collars at once, in case of a rebellion. With him gone, we can defeat the mosui, and they know it.”

“All right,” Lianhua said, exhausted but determined. “Then let’s find Gaoda Xiang and put an end to this.”