The Broken Knife

Times for waking and sleeping were no longer defined by the females brightening or dimming the lights around the den, so Kaz had no idea what time it was when sounds of movement woke him. He opened his eyes to see Raff and Chi Yincang preparing a pot of something over Raff’s fire. Groggily, he sat up. Something fell away from his body as he did so, and he glanced down in surprise.

At some point, someone had covered him with the piece of fabric Lianhua had been using to stay warm. Lying on the ground where his head had been, he also saw a bundle like the one she had been resting her head on, and he glanced over to see her sitting nearby, smiling at him.

She looked good, though he thought her skin was still a little paler than it had been before. It was hard to tell, since she was always so colorless that if her fur grew properly all over her body, she would fit right in among the Palefur tribe.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked softly, motioning to the covering and the head-pad.

He nodded, picking them up and handing them to her. “Thank you. How are you feeling?”

She shrugged, tugging up the bottom of her robe so he could see that her injury was still pink, but no longer inflamed or blistered. “Cultivators heal quickly, though it’ll take me longer than any of them.”

Lianhua tilted her head toward the males, and Kaz looked at Raff and Chi Yincang, who no longer had visible wounds at all. He could see faint, pale marks where the worst of the injuries had been, but only the scratch on Chi Yincang’s neck that he had applied the firemoss to was still red at all. Kaz winced at the sight. It seemed that his ‘remedy’ had caused more damage than the original attack.

The female seemed to read his mind, and she gave him a smile as she smoothed her robe back into place. “It’s okay. I could feel that venom invading my body, and then the burning.” She flinched a little. “It helped, though, and eventually…”

She trailed off, forehead-fur drawing together. “I don’t know. I think I passed out, and when I woke again, the poison was gone. There’s some lingering damage in my ki channels, which is strange, but I need to meditate anyway, and I’m sure it’ll clear up when I do.”

Kaz tilted his head. “Meditate?”

Lianhua chuckled. “I suppose it’s not something most people do, but cultivators meditate almost every day.” She settled back, crossing her legs and placing her hands palm up on her knees, touching her first finger and thumb together to create a relaxed circle. Closing her eyes, she drew in a breath through her nose, then released it through her mouth slowly.

On a whim, Kaz pushed ki into his eyes, and watched in amazement as the spinning energy in Lianhua’s belly and head whirled faster, condensing and pulling in the gray mist from the air around her, while the power coursing through her channels slowed to match her breathing. This forced the ki in her belly to stay in place longer before flowing out, though the space it occupied remained the same. The ki seemed to press in on itself, then pulse out with her exhalation, allowing the pressure to release, while also pushing more ki than usual through her channels. He noticed that the blue, gold, and black color of the ki that flowed out was clearer and brighter, as well.

Lianhua opened her eyes again, letting her hands fall to her sides and, after a moment, her ki flow returned to normal. “The goal is to increase your ki capacity, while also widening your channels. If you do it right, you can flush out the impurities caused by taking in tainted ki, and even open new dantians. Eventually, the improvements remain even when you aren’t meditating, which is what allows people to refine their souls and bodies.”

Raff huffed a laugh as he held out bowls of some thick substance to Lianhua and Kaz. Kaz yipped softly in surprise, having been so focused on what was happening in Lianhua’s body that he hadn’t even noticed the large male approach.

“Lotta bellybutton gazing, if you ask me,” Raff said. “This lot’ll sit around for hours like that, then complain about ‘ki density’ and ‘filthy ki’. Our mages get stronger the hard way; by doing. They start out with a bigger mana pool than other people, then learn spells, cast them until they can’t anymore, and keep learnin’ bigger, stronger spells. No ki or naps required.”

Kaz dipped a finger into the goop in the bowl, eyeing Lianhua as she used her sticks to place some into her mouth. She wrinkled her nose, but continued to eat, so Kaz scooped some up as well. It was hot, and tasted faintly burned beneath the bland flavor, but it was edible, so he ate the rest without complaint, while thinking about what the two humans had told him.

There did indeed seem to be some link between what Raff called ‘mana’, and the others called ‘ki’. Kaz thought that the gray stuff that the humans condensed from the air was probably mana, which Raff used just as it was. It was something like using fresh firemoss, which burned for a long time, but more slowly, and produced a great deal of smoke and soot.

Ki, on the other hand, appeared to be more like refined firemoss oil. It took work to make, which made the whole process slower, but when it burned, it was much brighter, though it didn’t last nearly as long as raw firemoss, which could smolder for days. Firemoss oil also burned cleanly, leaving little to no residue, depending on how well it had been prepared.

He could definitely see the utility in both, and sometimes a kobold tribe would intentionally set fire to a patch of firemoss, usually if they needed long-lasting light while a female was away, or recovering from an illness or injury. Breathing too much of the smoke it produced could make you dizzy, however, and children or the elderly had even been known to pass out, making it a dangerous thing to use on a regular basis.

The refined oil had far more uses, and didn’t cause harm to anyone unless it spread somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be. The only way to put it out was to completely smother it, which was next to impossible with anything larger than the tiny dabs kobolds used on their torches.

Neither of these scenarios applied precisely to his or the dragonling’s situation, though. All of the humans started by taking in mana, but Kaz and Li’s cores seemed to produce ki without needing anything from outside their own bodies. In fact, Kaz wasn’t certain he could pull mana in if he tried.

Glancing around, he saw that the others were still sitting, chatting or eating. If he was quick about it, maybe he could try this meditation himself. He set the bowl down on the ground beside him, then tried to cross his legs the way Lianhua had. He quickly found that his knees didn’t bend the same way hers did. Still, he did the best he could, then rested his hands on his thighs, circling thumb and forefinger. Closing his eyes, Kaz breathed in through his nose, then out through his mouth, focusing his strange internal vision on his core.

Nothing happened. His core spun, happily churning out ki, which flowed out through the channel along his backbone, spun, circled, and mingled with Li’s ki in his head, and then flowed back down to his core through the channel that traced down the front of his body. Now that he was looking, he could see the narrower channels that led to and from his limbs, but they didn’t really seem to do much except accept ki that vanished without trace, presumably being used by his body in some way.

He turned his focus outside of himself, watching the flow of energy along the cords linking himself, Li, and the seed. The seed seemed to primarily need the golden ki, which poured down the link, falling into the bottomless pit within the peculiar object. Li, on the other hand, took in all the colors of ki, but only gave him back gold, white, and black, leaving him to wonder where the blue and red had gone, so he turned his attention to the dragon.

Li’s core spun, pulling in Kaz’s ki like it was unraveling strands of Lianhua’s long head-fur. Five colors went in, but only three flowed out through the little dragon’s channels. Somehow, the core was filtering what Li didn’t use, but where did it go?

Frowning, he pushed more ki into his eyes, even though he wasn’t actually using physical vision at all. It helped, though, and he could finally ‘see’ a very, very fine mist of blue and red, diffusing into the dragon’s body, then out into the air, where it vanished.

Was that where mana came from? Was it produced as ki by creatures with cores, who then used what they could, and shunted the rest back out into the world? Would the rejected ki soon lose its brilliant color and merge with the gray fog that the humans then used for their own magic? Didn’t that mean that when humans killed beasts for their cores, they were actually destroying the very thing that gave them their own power? What did they use the cores for, anyway?

A hand gently touched his shoulder, and his eyes flew open. Only then did he realize that he hadn’t even really tried to pull mana into his own body, and he sighed in frustration as he looked up into Lianhua’s bemused eyes.

“Were you trying to meditate?” she asked.

His ears lowered slightly, but he nodded, and her expression shifted to one of fascination. “How did it go? Did you sense anything?”

Gaoda stepped out from behind her, clicking his tongue in derision. “Of course he didn’t. He’s just a kobold, and a male at that. Beasts can’t cultivate.”

Lianhua glared at him. “That’s not true. What about divine beasts?”

The male waved a dismissive hand. “Mythology and speculation. Besides, Blue is far from divine.”

“His name is-”

Kaz stood hastily, though his knees complained as they pulled out of the awkward position he’d folded them into. “It’s all right,” he said. “Is it time to go?”

Gaoda nodded, as did Lianhua, though with more reluctance. Kaz looked around, and realized that he’d somehow failed to notice as the fire was put out and everything put away. He hadn’t thought he’d spent that long trying to meditate, but perhaps something about the process of turning his attention inward also affected the way he perceived time? That would explain why Raff said the other humans could spend hours meditating.

That was something to think about at another time, though, since right now he needed to figure out how to get the humans from here to the stairs down to the next level. He turned in place, staring out at the cavern, from the passage behind them, to the stalactites hanging far above, probably concealing at least a few young lopo, to the menacing shape of the mammoth lopo in the distance, barely illuminated by the edges of Gaoda’s ki orb.

He glanced at Lianhua, who shook her head subtly. She’d found no sign of the building the Bittergrub had claimed to see, and with the lopo protecting the center of the cavern, there was no way Kaz could claim the stairs were back that way so they could explore the area more. This was likely a dead end for her investigation, which had very nearly become a dead end for the investigator as well.

Sighing, Kaz motioned to the humans, and Raff took his place in the lead, while Chi Yincang disappeared into the darkness, and Lianhua and Gaoda fell in behind Kaz. They began to walk while Kaz examined his internal map and sense of where he was in relation to the rest of the mountain.

After several minutes of silent walking, Kaz said, “We’ll need to go this way for quite a while. I only know of one way down from here, and while the lopo cavern is closer to it than the other way we could have come, it’ll still take a while to get there.”

“Like that’s new,” Gaoda muttered. “Nothing in this place is convenient to anything else. It’s like you’ve all intentionally made it as complicated as possible.”

Kaz shrugged, following close on Raff’s heels so he could tell the male if they needed to turn or go back. It wasn’t safe for Kaz to stay in the lead, but Raff got grumpy if he had to retrace his steps even a short distance.

“I don’t think it was on purpose. The finished tunnels mostly connect stairways and large caverns. It’s just that so many of the stairs either can’t be used anymore, or are controlled by tribes that demand payment for passage. The rough ones like this,” he trailed a hand over the rugged surface of the stone wall, “seem to be entirely natural, though sometimes they were formed by fuergar or other beasts who eat or burrow through stone and ore. We kobolds use all of them, though we’ll widen the ones we use most often.”

“Raff told us these fuergar use the minerals they ingest to strengthen their bones and teeth, and their fur actually works as well as low-quality armor,” Lianhua said from behind him. “Are there other creatures that do something similar?”

Kaz nodded, absently tugging a handful of jejing moss from the wall. “Several. You may have noticed there’s more rock than anything else in the mountain. If a creature can eat it, they’ll never go hungry.”

“It seems like kobolds eat everything other than stone,” Lianhua said, though her tone was interested, rather than judgemental. “What is that you picked up?”

Kaz held it up. He didn’t want to open his pack to put it inside while the humans were watching, so he should have left the moss behind, but jejing was both useful and somewhat rare, so he’d grabbed it without thinking.

“Jejing,” he told her. “It keeps wounds from sickening and turning black, and we also burn it when someone dies, to keep spirits from attaching themselves to the body.”

“Oh. Does that… happen?”

He shrugged. “Never in my memory, but we always used jejing.”

Looking ahead, he caught a glimpse of something at the edge of their advancing sphere of light and held up a hand.

“Raff,” he said softly, and the human froze.

“What?” Raff asked, setting his hand to the hilt of his sword.

“Just wait a moment,” Kaz told him, stepping past to examine the totem that had caught his attention. It was one he didn’t recognize, made of a broad, flat-faced skull perched atop a long bone. Strips of deep red leather had been wound through the mouth, ears, and nasal cavity in a complex pattern. The teeth had been pulled, and dangled from the ends of the leather strips, clicking together as Kaz reached out to turn it.

He shook his head, stepping back. “I don’t recognize this one. My tribe passed through here a while ago, and we didn’t linger.”

“Let me help you then,” a strange voice said as a completely black-furred kobold stepped from the shadows ahead. He held a bow, held ready with an arrow aimed right at Kaz, and behind him stood two more males, also with raised bows.

“We’re the Blackbow tribe, and this is our territory.”