The Broken Knife

Lianhua smiled brightly, hurrying forward. “Kaz was just telling me a little more about these lopo. It sounds like you and Chi Yincang shouldn’t have any problem with them.”

Gaoda’s expression cleared, and his chest puffed out. “Of course not. They’re just low-grade beasts. We’ll go down first, and clear them out before you even get there.”

Lianhua hesitated. “Are you certain, Gaoda? It seems wiser to-”

Gaoda waved away her concern. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll show you that I’m a man you can count on, cousin.”

The female’s smile froze in place, but she nodded. “Of course, Gaoda Xiang.”

Turning, Gaoda pointed down into the depths of the pit. “Chi Yincang already went in. I’ll follow, and you three start down after five minutes or so. That should be plenty of time for us to clear out this infestation.” He focused on Kaz. “Do you need Raff to carry you again?”

Kaz flashed back to the horrible experience of Raff pulling power directly from his core, and shuddered. “No, thank you.” He held up his taloned fingers. “I can climb down a slope without aid.”

Raff looked relieved. “That’s good. I was worried you’d fall off, there at the end. I’ll go down ahead of you, and if you start to slip, I can grab you.”

Kaz wanted to protest that he’d be fine, but he knew arguing was futile. He just wouldn’t slip, and that fact would speak for itself.

Gaoda walked to the edge of the black hole, and the light from his ki ball flared, illuminating the long slope inside. It was too steep an angle to walk upright, so they would need to climb down on all fours, though unless some part of it became much smoother than what he could see, finding grips wouldn’t be difficult.

The human, of course, couldn’t be bothered to go down the normal way. With a ‘watch this’ glance at Lianhua, Gaoda set his feet on the rocky slope and began to bound down it, quickly disappearing into the depths.

Raff sighed. “I suppose I have’ta do that now, too,” he muttered. “Pellis curse him.” Lifting his light stone, he stepped out after Gaoda, though he slid more than jumped, maintaining his balance through a demonstration of impossible dexterity as he stepped over the small bumps and crevices that should have tripped him up.

As the last of the light faded, Lianhua held out her hand, concentrating. Kaz had begun keeping a bit of ki in his eyes whenever there wasn’t a risk of being seen by a kobold female, not wanting to miss anything about the myriad ways the humans used their power. Now, he watched as a rune formed of golden ki flashed into existence over Lianhua’s palm. Half a heartbeat later, it flooded with a light so brilliant both of them were left blinking.

Lianhua cleared her throat, glancing sidelong at Kaz as she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Ah, sorry. That’s why Gaoda usually controls the light. Part of establishing a good foundation is learning ki control, but he’s actually better at it than I am.”

She sounded crestfallen, and Kaz hesitated. When she and Gaoda were together, Kaz could clearly see that while the ball of light in her chest was a fair bit smaller than Gaoda’s, both the pathways through which her ki flowed and her head and belly nodes were larger and clearer. He wasn’t so sure that her control was lacking, just that she had more power to control in the first place. Should he tell her so? But surely she already knew, and if she didn’t, what would he reveal about himself by speaking?

In the end, the moment passed as Lianhua pushed ki out to her hands and feet until they were enveloped in a golden glow. She pulled her robe up, tucking it into her belt so it wouldn’t get in her way, before sliding her toes into some of the crevices the males had jumped and stepped over. Lowering herself over the edge, she looked up at him, and he quickly followed.

=+=+=+=

The climb seemed endless. Kaz sank into a sort of stupor as his body moved automatically, hand over hand, paw after paw. After one of his claws snapped off in a particularly tight crack, he, too, pushed ki into his fingers and toes, though he did it slowly, stopping as soon as he felt the draw begin to exceed what his core was producing. After all, he’d already discovered that he could overtax his ki channels by trying to pull too much power from them at once.

When he picked up the dragon egg and the not-rock Lianhua had called a ‘seed’, he had hoped to use them to replace the plants and small animals he used to drain his overflow of power. They were doing an admirable job of that, to the point that the bonds joining them were so strong that he wasn’t sure what would happen if he severed them, or even if he could. They also took up so much of his ki that he had very little left over to boost his strength or senses.

Since joining the humans, there had been several times when he needed to push power into his eyes or nose, and he could definitely see the use of reinforcing his muscles and skin. If he could speed up his cycle again, as he had done while saving the dragonling, could he produce more power? If he could learn to control it, as Lianhua said, maybe he could make only what he needed, when he needed it? Of course, there was always the danger that he might go too far. What if he did manage to speed up the cycle, and then couldn’t make it go back to the way it was?

Surrounded by the warm light of Lianhua’s orb, with ki reinforcing his grip, and hundreds of feet yet to descend, Kaz turned his vision to the brilliant flow of power running through him, starting with the bonds between himself, the dragon, and the seed.

The thin, pulsing link to the seed seemed exactly as it had been last time he looked. His power poured down it like a waterfall coursing over stone, falling into an empty chasm lit only by a miniscule spark of ki. He could tell the thing was alive, in some distant, dormant way, but the small flicker of power inside it still didn’t cycle, or even swirl like Raff’s foggy mana. He had a feeling that what it took from him was barely enough to maintain it in its current state, and he could spend the rest of his life feeding it without ever seeing a change.

When he turned his attention to the dragon, however, Kaz was shocked. He didn’t know when it had happened, but the little creature had formed a second link to him. It was only a tiny, fragile thread, leading from the node in its head directly to the one in his, but it was very definitely there. Even more importantly, instead of his power flowing into the dragon, this filament completed a cycle between them. Ki flowed from Kaz’s core to the dragon’s core, up the channel to its head, where a minute trickle returned to him, merging into his own power, streaming down the channel that ran along the front of his body and back into his core.

Kaz prodded the thread with his mental attention, and it hummed like a plucked cord. The dragon wriggled in his pack, hissing, and Kaz quickly pulled back. The link seemed undamaged, but the dragon was definitely unhappy with his action, and his own head throbbed painfully for a few moments.

This was… concerning. Kaz couldn’t keep the dragon, but what would happen when it came time for them to part? He had hoped that when the creature finally flew away, simple distance would attenuate their bond until it dissolved. Or perhaps when the creature matured, it wouldn’t need his power anymore, and it would naturally sever the connection. But if their cycles fused, how could they ever be separated?

He ‘looked’ at the node in his head, though how he could see something that existed behind his own eyes, he had no idea. Still, there it was, and he found that when he focused, he could see the exact spot where the dragonling’s ki met his own. The small influx actually did cause a tiny ripple, almost an eddy of power, pushing his cycle just a bit faster, until the energy spread out and was absorbed in the rest of the flow.

What should he do about it? Judging by the way the link between their cores had grown from a thread to something half the width of his smallest finger, it was entirely possible that this connection, too, would continue to develop. No matter how painful it was to them, should he try to tear it apart? Not at that moment, of course, but perhaps once the humans had gone to sleep for the night?

As Kaz considered his options, he was pulled back to the present when he felt his paw come down on something soft and warm. He nearly yelped as he yanked the limb back, before realizing he had stepped on Lianhua’s hand. Craning his head around, he looked down the slope, barely able to make her out below him. She was staring down into the blackness beneath them, and for once, it seemed she had heard something he hadn’t.

Fighting.

Somewhere not too far below them, the other humans were battling, and judging by the sounds, he didn’t think it was going quite as well as Gaoda had assured Lianhua it would.

Edging to the side, Kaz lowered himself a few more feet, until he was next to Lianhua. “What should we do?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not you. Me. I’m no warrior, but I was taught to defend myself, and my ki bolts can strike anywhere I can see. I’ll go ahead. You wait until there are no more sounds of fighting, and then come down.”

Kaz didn’t like it, but he knew he would only be a liability. He could use a knife, and, to some extent, his bare hands, but he had no distance attacks at all. That was why lopo were one of the few monsters that females were needed to fight.

Lianhua shifted her hands and feet, turning so she was facing mostly away from the wall. “I am not happy about this,” she muttered, releasing her death grip and pushing her body up so she was standing on the steep slope the same way Raff had. Instantly, she began to run, nearly tripping over herself as she struggled to avoid simply falling down the steep incline.

Taking her radiant orb and leaving Kaz in complete darkness.

Kobolds had excellent low-light vision, and could see quite well given any source of illumination at all, including the faint light cast by glow-worms and bioluminescent plants. The complete void that now surrounded Kaz was something he had rarely experienced, and when he had, it was usually in places that were so well known to him that he might as well have been able to see.

But this? So soon after Kaz had recounted the tale of crawling through a pitch-black tunnel toward almost-certain death, this darkness took his breath away. His muscles spasmed, fingers clenching in the crevices they gripped, and his belly pressed tight against the stone. A moment before, he had been completely confident in his ability to continue his climb, but now his heartbeat roared in his ears, drowning out the sound of metal on stone still echoing up from below.

Light.

He needed light. Even a little. The tiniest flicker would be enough, but he had nothing. Most kobolds carried a bundle containing oil-soaked moss that could be used to create a fire in an emergency, but the little dragon had eaten it along with almost everything else in his pack. Not that he could have gotten it out, much less struck a spark, at the moment.

In the darkness, the brilliant colors of his ki blazed even brighter, and Kaz realized he might have one way to create light. He cast his mind back, trying to remember the rune that had appeared in the air right before Lianhua’s orb had ignited. It was a curve with an open base, and two strokes sweeping up, crossed by another that widened as it passed from left to right.

He pictured it, a faint, hazy mark in the darkness, and threw energy at it in the same way he’d once fed power to the moss in the dragon’s cave. Ki surged, but found no purchase in the blurry rune, which faded like smoke in his mind’s eye. The power roiled back into the flow of his cycle, only to be shunted off into the dragon and the seed as it nearly overflowed his channels.

His body trembled, but he forced himself to take slow, deep breaths. Tightening his focus, he tried to build the rune again. He imagined the pure, white chalk Lianhua used, and drew each line of the rune with great care. Once it was done, he could tell that while the edges of it weren’t nearly as crisp and clear as Lianhua’s had been, it was far better than his first, panicked attempt.

Though… there was something not quite right about it. He felt his eyes squint as if he were looking at something real, instead of an insubstantial mark hanging in utter darkness. He had only seen the rune for a brief moment, but it had burned so brightly, he was certain he had envisioned it correctly.

And it was still wrong.

He felt something pluck at his mind, thrumming along that singular, delicate strand that bound his mind to that of the dragon. Another line formed, branching from the widening crosshatch as if he’d given his wrist one last flick at the very end. As soon as it was complete, the whole thing seemed to shimmer with a sense of finality.

Kaz thought about what Lianhua had said about control, and instead of flooding it with every bit of power he could pull from his channels, he ‘touched’ the open curve, gradually filling it like he would a part of his own body.

And there was light.