Senge and her brother, Brez, led the group back to their den. Senge repeatedly called it ‘temporary’, and after the third time, Kaz caught Brez giving his sister an amused glance. Apparently, the males, or at least Brez, didn’t think it would be as short-term as Senge did.

As they walked, the warriors around them relaxed slowly, though Kaz clearly saw two of them try to settle in at Lianhua’s back, where they could easily attack her if she went for Senge. Raff and Chi Yincang noticed as well, however, and moved into place behind the human female, preventing anyone else from getting close, much as kobold warriors would have done for their chief.

Once again, Kaz found himself in an odd, in-between place. The former captives remained silent, following Lianhua’s lead, and Senge’s warriors did the same for her. Kaz, however, no longer felt the need to follow the strict rules governing his people, and was less certain than he had once been that he completely understood them. It was strange to realize that he found himself more comfortable in the presence of the humans than the kobolds.

At last, Senge halted in the center of the hall, indicating a wide tunnel that led off to their right. “Our makeshift den is that way, but if you want, we can go on to the stairs. It might help if you see the extent of the damage.”

Lianhua immediately nodded, but Kaz saw the looks of exhaustion on the faces of most of the males they had brought with them. Stepping up beside her, he spoke softly. “Lianhua, the others,” he said, tilting his head to show which ‘others’ he meant.

Lianhua looked around, then bit her lip, obviously torn, so Kaz drew in a deep breath and did something he never would have imagined when he lived as his mother’s son. He spoke to a female without invitation.

“Could these males stay here or in the den while we go look at the stairs?” he asked, looking directly into Senge’s eyes. “They’re tired, and they need to rest.”

Around him, warriors stiffened, and the fur on Brez’s neck lifted. A low growl emanated from deep in his chest, but Kaz ignored it, keeping his eyes on Senge. On his shoulder, a disinterested-seeming Li watched the other kobolds through half-lidded eyes, ready to warn Kaz if any of them made a move.

For her part, Senge seemed too shocked to speak, at least until Lianhua nodded with relief. “That’s a good idea, Kaz,” she said before looking at Senge with a bright, close-lipped smile. “Would that be all right? If you’re not comfortable with them, or us, being in your den, we can camp out here somewhere instead.”

Senge shook her head, then nodded. “I was going to take you to the den. If you promise your males won’t cause any trouble, they can go ahead.”

Lianhua blinked, though Kaz had warned her that if they ran into kobolds, she would be expected to make decisions and take responsibility for their whole group. Looking back at the eight kobolds remaining with her, she asked, “Do you want to go with us, stay here, or go to the den?”

The males shifted uncomfortably at being given so many options, but surprisingly, Ratre answered. Either he’d come from a more permissive tribe, or he, like Kaz, had decided he wasn’t going to be silent and obedient any more. “The den,” he said, voice raspy. “We haven’t been in a proper den in… a long time.”

Lianhua nodded, then turned to Raff. “Would you- I mean, Raff, you stay with them. Make sure no misunderstandings happen, all right?”

Raff looked surprised, glanced at Chi Yincang, who didn’t react, and shrugged, grinning. “Whatever you say, m’lady.”

Senge sent one of her guards with them, and Raff followed the group of kobolds as they marched, slunk, and limped down the tunnel. Kaz was surprised to see Dett cast him a pleading look, but it was too late to call him back without attracting undue attention to the small kobold. Dett would just have to do what he did best, and sneak around the edges.

Their much-smaller group, made up of Senge, her remaining guards, Kaz, Lianhua, and Chi Yincang, continued on, and soon enough they reached the telltale arch that always came before the stairs. Whether it led to another short section of hallway or, more commonly, an open cavern containing the steps, these arches were ubiquitous and instantly recognizable by the worn carvings that covered them.

To Kaz’s surprise, Lianhua stopped as she passed through this one, her hand reaching out to not quite touch the stone. She was taller than any kobold, so the section she was looking at so intently hadn’t been eroded by generations of shoulders and fingers trailing over the stone.

After a moment, she took out her book and began sketching rapidly, then gave a click of her tongue and turned to Kaz, holding out the pen. “You’re a better artist than me,” she said casually. “Would you sketch this? This section here.”

She pointed, but Kaz was too busy trying to catch his breath to look properly. An artist? Him? Artists were something only those in the Deep could spare, where tribes were large enough, and resources abundant enough that there were ‘extra’ kobolds, and the tribe could provide for them in exchange for something so intangible as art.

With shaking fingers, Kaz reached out and took the pen. He looked up, and instantly recognized something he never would have been able to before. Runes. They were subtle, and almost artistic themselves. There were no extra flourishes, because that would have changed their meaning, but there were other carvings surrounding them, and these were so intricate that they almost completely obscured the graceful, sweeping lines of the words.

As Kaz drew, Lianhua stood on her toes, leaning in to see better, while her light orb drifted closer. As the shadows shifted, Kaz’s eyes widened. “Stop,” he said, voice vibrating with suppressed excitement. “Move the orb back. A little more. There!”

Stretching to his full height, he pointed with the end of the pen, wishing he was as tall as Lianhua. With a huff, Lianhua reached out, setting her hands on his waist and lifting, as everyone around them stared in astonishment.

Kaz ignored them all, though he wasn’t exactly comfortable with his position or the attention, and Li was even less pleased with the situation. If anyone else had dared to pick Kaz up, Li would have bitten them, but while she wasn’t yet willing to trust Lianhua again, she did recognize that the human wasn’t a threat to her kobold friend.

Kaz tucked the book and pen beneath his belt, then gingerly scratched at the blackened surface with a claw, revealing a crystal embedded in the curve of a rune. The ki in it was faint; barely there, in fact. In the next rune, a similar crystal lay hidden. There were five crystals in all, five colors, buried beneath centuries of smoke, and only visible to Kaz’s eyes because the first, the yellow, had caught a bit of the ki drifting from Lianhua’s orb and flashed for a brief moment.

“Are those ki-crystals?” Lianhua asked, sounding fascinated. She still held Kaz, but no longer lifted him quite as high, though her grip remained firm.

Kaz nodded. “They’re almost entirely drained. And I think this is only the top of them. They’re like-” He stopped, aware of the many pairs of perked ears turned toward him. Instead of finishing the sentence, he turned his hand so the crystal in his ring caught the light. Since his finger prevented light from passing through it, it just looked like a dull, dark stone at the moment, but Lianhua understood.

“More than they seem, hmm?” Lianhua mused. Looking back at Kaz, she asked, “Can you, ah, make them work?”

Give them ki, she meant, and Kaz hesitated. If he did that, would he be able to convince the watching kobolds that they’d imagined it, or that Lianhua had done it instead? His ear twitched as an idea occurred to him, and he briefly wished he could exchange images with Lianhua the same way he did with Li.

“Can you make five orbs?” he asked, then pointed to the small, visible pieces of the crystals. “And put them here?”

Lianhua stared for a moment, and then the corner of her mouth lifted as she shook her head slightly. “I can, yes,” she said, and suited action to words. Five light orbs touched the five crystals, and the blue, black, and gold ones lit, very slightly, though Kaz was probably the only one who could tell past the glare.

Reaching out, Kaz laid his hands over the runes, finding that he could just touch all of them if he extended his fingers as far as possible. Cautiously, he pushed ki through his hands, and the crystals lit up, the gold one shining so brightly that he could see his bones through the flesh and fur of his hand. 

As soon as he could see that it was working, Kaz tried to pull his hand back, but it was as if he’d tried to pull against the mountain itself. His increasingly visible bones seemed fused to the stone, and his ki drained away even faster than it had when the pouch attached itself to him.

Around him, yelps rang out as the light became visible even to the kobolds, and he was vaguely aware of them ducking or stumbling back. Lianhua tried to lower him down, but that just left Kaz dangling from the carved surface of the arch, so she quickly grasped his waist again, supporting him.

Li gave the loudest whistle he’d ever heard from her. An image started to form in his mind before it vanished, and instead he heard her say, <Idiot!> again, as she had once before.

He couldn’t laugh, not with his core and dantians draining so quickly that he thought he would be a hollowed out husk in less than a minute if it persisted. As his ki flowed out, he felt it fall away into a bottomless hole that made the emptiness in his seed seem like a puddle in comparison. He had connected with something in the mountain before, something that thought of itself as the mountain, but it was wrong. This, this was the mountain, filled with secrets and stone, crystals and bone, and it was hungry.

Then Li scrambled up his outstretched arm, spread her wings wide, and roared back at the mountain that was feasting on her kobold. It was a very, very small roar, but the mountain listened.

Kaz fell back into Lianhua’s arms, and the human staggered, pulling Kaz against her chest. A moment later, she dropped to her knees, laying him gently on the ground as she took hold of his hands, turning them palm up so she could stare at the five marks now visible there. Each rune was present, clear and sharp, each with a point of color resting within their curves. As Kaz watched, the black lines paled, then faded, leaving only slightly darker blue lines on his skin.

Li had fallen with Kaz, and she, too, watched the runes appear and then all but vanish. She was panting, her mouth open and tongue slightly extended, but she managed to hiss at the marks anyway. She lay stretched out on his chest, only her head raised enough to watch what was happening, and he could tell that she was nearly as empty of ki as he felt.

“What happened?” Lianhua started, then stopped as she and everyone else turned in the direction of the stairs.

A loud scraping sound came first, then the rumbling of stone against stone. The ground trembled as something enormous and heavy shifted, and the kobolds closed in around their leader protectively. Brez stood, facing the empty passage, pulling his golden knife from the sheath at his waist.

The sounds went on, and howls began to echo from behind them. Questioning howls, worried howls, which Brez responded to with a short, sharp sound. Kaz recognized it: ‘Be wary, but stay away.’

Something fell to land on Kaz’s nose, followed by several more, similar things. Chunks of black, cascading away from suddenly clean stone, the carvings as stark and sharp as the day they were made. Everyone except Kaz, Li, and the humans scampered back, staring in amazement as the arch refreshed itself, five crystals glittering from their places.

Lianhua was covered in grime, but she seemed not to notice as she stood, then reached down to help Kaz to his feet. He was shaky, but his legs held him up, and with each cycle of his core, he felt better. It would take some time and rest to recover, but as sad as he was to admit it, this was far from the first time this had happened, and he was practically used to it by now.

Li was right. He was an idiot.

With a sigh, he accepted Lianhua’s proffered arm, and the two of them made their way toward the stairs.