“So you made a kobold - me - with the same balance of ki as Qiangde, so that I could change the runes on the command crystals and release you. But something happened,” Kaz said, “and I don’t know what, exactly. You either don’t care if you’re stuck in an empty mountain any longer, or you believe you’ve found a way to remove the runes Qiangde placed in you when he made you into-”
“That’s enough,” Nucai said. His smile was gone, and his eyes were cold and flat as he stared at Kaz. “In fact, that’s more than enough. Now, tell me, where did you find the pouch?”
The pouch again. Kaz’s fingers moved over Li, hidden from Nucai behind Kaz’s body. Her ki was all but gone, an ember where there had been a conflagration. But it was there, the only sign of life. An ember could be rekindled if it was fed, but if you put too much firemoss on it at once, you could also smother it. Kaz pushed ki down the fragile bond between himself and his dragon, oh, so carefully.
“Zhangwo had it,” Kaz said absently. It was difficult to focus on Li and his words at the same time, but there were still things he didn’t want to say, so he had to be cautious. “It was on a shelf in his rooms. I took it, and then it turned out I could use it. I believed it was because it was unclaimed, but it was because it thought I was Qiangde, wasn’t it?”
But Nucai wasn’t listening. His teeth were clenched, and his fingers tightened around the core that he almost seemed to have forgotten he held. “Zhangwo,” he muttered. “That vile, putrescent mole. How dare he? How dare he?”
Nucai began to pace, his long hair and beard tangling in his robes, draping over his hunched back. But that back was twitching beneath the fabric, rippling in an entirely unnatural fashion, and Kaz finally realized that it wasn’t that Nucai was hunched over from his centuries of writing, but that there was something on his back. Something that didn’t belong on a human, but was entirely right for a dragon. Wings.
At last, just as Kaz thought he detected the faintest of beats beneath his palm, and dared to give Li a little more ki, Nucai stopped, tugging fitfully at his beard, which dripped dirty fluid onto the spotless white floor. “No, no, it doesn’t matter now. The tentacled buffoon is far more dead than he was ever alive. His death will be remembered while his life is utterly forgotten.” His eyes lifted, boring into Kaz. “Did you take anything else? Some jewelry perhaps?”
Kaz was suddenly glad that the all-but-forgotten ring was on the hand Nucai couldn’t see. “Zhangwo was killed by his own ki-cannon. There wasn’t really much left of him, and there was no jewelry in his rooms,” he said, careful not to lie. He had a terrible suspicion that Nucai would be able to tell.
Nucai dismissed this with a wave. “That cannon was one of Xion’s early creations. It was terribly inefficient. Honestly, I’m not sure how you’re not dead, if you are indeed the one who fired it.” His eyes drifted to Li. “Though perhaps the dragon is bound to you? I haven’t seen a ki-linked beast in…well, centuries, obviously, but it would explain both its intelligence and your strength, as well as how it can remain inside the mountain. It would count as you, as far as the runes were concerned. Interesting.”
Holding up the black core, Nucai said, “None of that really matters, however, now that I have this.” He walked past Kaz and Li and the table where a young Kaz had died for the very first time. Kaz shifted so his body remained between Nucai and Li, but the other male didn’t even bother glancing at them. It was as if he’d completely dismissed Kaz as a threat, and while that might be for the best in the long run, it nipped at Kaz’s pride ever so slightly.
“You were partially right,” Nucai said as he set the core gently on another table. This one held only three of the white orbs, ranging in size from an inch or so across to nearly half a foot in diameter. Each one was separated from the others by a low, white partition, ensuring that even if they shifted in their shallow bowls, they would never touch.
“Qiangde did trap me here, but only because I didn’t give him enough credit. I believed that he truly trusted me. That he thought I was his utterly loyal puppet, while all the time he was actually mine. But then he used me - Me! - as his final experiment. ” Nucai lifted a small hammer with a head that shimmered like mithril. Stepping to his left, he carefully tapped the white orb there, causing what Kaz now realized was another coating of wei to shatter, showering the table in brittle flakes. Beneath lay more white, but this was opalescent, shifting, made of moonstone and agate and diamond.
“The Rat,” Nucai said, before moving to the next silent sphere. “I believe it might have begun as a type of ground-squirrel found in the Northern Wastes. It’s quite fascinating to see how much these creatures change after taking on their aspect. The Rooster probably began as a phoenix, you know. Quite the descent, from majestic, nigh-mythical creature to a common barnyard fowl. I suppose it was worth it to become one of the Twelve, however.”
Kaz definitely felt a tiny flutter beneath his hand this time, and his own heart gave an answering thud. Trying to keep Nucai distracted, he said, “So they don’t have to be, say, a normal rat in order to become the Rat?” Yes, there it was again. So slow, but not just his imagination.
Nucai rapped the top of the next sphere, which was the largest one. “Oh, not at all. This, for instance, was from the Ox, but from looking at the beast, there was no doubt it was actually a spiny-backed gaur. Idiotic animals, but extremely large and vicious.” The coating crumbled, revealing a deep yellow core whose ki was strong but steady in a way the first one wasn’t.
“And, of course,” Nucai struck the final core, and white fell away from the most glorious crimson sphere Kaz could possibly have imagined. “Fire, in the form of the Dog. And I must admit that I found it terribly amusing that in a world filled with Howling Moon Wolves and Soulclaw Coyotes, the Dog was nothing more than a common golden retriever. It never strayed far from humans, which made it one of the easiest to keep track of while we were preparing.”
Kaz couldn’t tear his eyes from the red core. He hadn’t felt a real urge to consume a core since the one he’d taken from a salamander, but now he had to swallow hard, his fingers trembling against Li’s chest. It was as if he’d never eaten anything before in his entire life, and now here was a perfectly cooked jiyun grub, just waiting to be his. He could practically feel the way it would burst in his mouth, filling his channels with-
Nucai had been watching him as the core was revealed, and now he smirked, cold amusement in his eyes. “I thought so,” he said conversationally. “The world will try to replace its guardians, you know. Covering these cores in wei and placing them in this room kept them from releasing their power back into the ambient yen, but even then, the world finds a way. Honestly, it took longer than I thought it would, but here you are. A kobold, of all things.”
He began to laugh again, stroking his long beard as he rocked back with the force of it. When he managed to gather himself, he sighed softly and said, “I’m almost tempted to allow you to eat it, just so I can watch what happens. Would you actually transform? How amusing if you went from this mockery of a man to the dog your people started out as. An improvement, I think.”
He turned, crossing to another, smaller table. This time, he lifted the white surface off, and Kaz’s attention was finally drawn away from the red core, though he still felt it tugging at him. But Kaz knew what he was looking at. Knew it as well as he knew the table on which Li lay, now that the memory had been dredged from some deep and horror-filled corner of his mind. This was where his core had been merged with those others, before being placed into…what?
Kaz’s gaze drifted behind him, catching the tiniest twitch of Li’s tail. She wasn’t back yet. There was no sweet and growling voice in his mind. But she was close. Closer. And that fact gave him the first small hint of hope he’d felt since realizing that he himself had been made into a shiyan. If Nucai could freeze a body in time, could he also stop it from dying? Could he rip a core from its place, merge it with others, and then put it back into the same body? Was it possible that Kaz was Kaz after all?
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“But no,” Nucai said, crossing over to pick up the Rat and the Ox’s cores. He placed them on the flat rim above the concave bowl that Kaz remembered so vividly. It was spotless now, but there was a small metal box nearby, and Kaz recognized it from the mosui storage level. He had broken one just like it, spilling out the red fulan spores waiting inside.
“The tree is nearly dead, and now I have a Divine core of every color, or will once I retrieve the Wood core.” Nucai looked back at Kaz as he placed the Dog’s core across from the black one. “The time is now, and the runes my Master placed in me won’t matter to an ascendant.”
Kaz’s hands trembled as Li moved, then stilled, and a tiny voice whispered his name so quietly he could only hear it because he wanted to so very, very badly. Li was all right, and if she was all right, then he didn’t need Nucai anymore. More, as he’d said, Nucai still needed a Wood core, and Kaz had a terrible feeling he knew where he planned to get it from.
Affirmation, then questioning. Li sent an image of herself, creeping between two shelves, when something clamped onto the back of her neck with so much ferocity that she couldn’t breathe. Then she couldn’t do anything, her helplessness absolute, and the next thing she knew she was here, beneath Kaz’s hand. Her fear and uncertainty were such that Kaz longed to embrace her, but he couldn’t move because Nucai was still alive.
Nucai was still alive, and he tipped the small box, making a stream of red powder fall into the bowl. The pale, finely scaled face was frozen in concentration, pouring spores in some pattern that Kaz couldn’t see from where he stood.
Kaz told Li silently.
Kaz’s fingers closed around Li’s paw. His chest felt too full and too tight, but he had no choice now. He had come this far, and Nucai had to be stopped. Unfortunately, it seemed that altering Kaz’s body and his core wasn’t all the evil being had done while he had Kaz under his control. There was only one reason Kaz would be forced to obey this ancient horror, and Kaz turned his internal gaze to his upper dantian, examining it in a way he should have before, but never had.
And there it was. A single rune, clinging to the inside of his dantian like lopo poison in a vein. It was little more than a shadow, but it was a shadow that would have to be excised before Kaz could do anything, and he didn’t have time to find the shape of it so it could be cancelled out. So Kaz closed his eyes, whispered an apology to his dragon, and tore the rune free.
Pain. Pain, and something beyond pain that Kaz had no words for. A howl tore from his throat and he doubled over, hacking and coughing as blood and foul blackness oozed from his mouth and nose in equal measures. The world went dark, but this wasn’t the first time Kaz had gone blind, and the darkness held no terror for him any longer.
He gagged, a thick black mass sliding from his muzzle to splatter against the floor. He could feel the hot foulness of it on his paws, smell the reek of something that had gone far past putrefaction. His head burned with agony, and his dantian bled ki like a torn artery. But Kaz had had leaking channels before, and though this was far worse, he reinforced the wounded dantian with still more ki, zhiwu web over a bleeding wound.
And then Li was there. He saw through her eyes, and her touch held the patch in place, though her grip on his ki was shakier than it had ever been before. Li the healer, while Kaz was the killer, and Kaz’s claws dug into the white floor, propelling him toward the not-a-man who could no longer control him.
Nucai’s eyes went wide, and he stumbled back. A shield rose between them, and Kaz’s claws tore across it, sending a shower of something that wasn’t quite sparks flying through the air. “Nucai!” Kaz howled, capable of nothing else.
“Stop!” Nucai shouted, throwing out his hand, but Kaz just kept howling, snapping his teeth as he pushed on the shield, forcing the other male to take a single step away from the table containing the cores. Something slipped from around Kaz’s waist, a weight he’d barely been aware he still bore, and he pushed again, with ki more than muscle, making Nucai’s foot slide against the smooth floor.
The mask of humanity slipped again, then fell away entirely. Nucai’s pupils narrowed, his nose lengthened, and tiny silver horns protruded from disheveled white hair. He reached for Kaz, fingers curled into claws, and the shield broke, allowing them to come together, with Nucai striking down at Kaz, while Kaz ducked beneath an arm he could only see through Li’s eyes.
He didn’t quite make it, and Nucai’s blow rocked Kaz’s head back, bringing fresh blood from his nose and mouth. Bone cracked, and it was suddenly difficult to breathe without panting. Still, he turned his head, burying his teeth in Nucai’s wrist, and blood flowed down his throat, his and Nucai’s mingled, hot and coppery.
In Li’s eyes, the white that covered them cracked and shattered, revealing cores of every color and strength. Some cracked against the floor, sending chips flying, and Kaz could almost hear them screaming as they faded, their power attempting to disperse, only to find that there was nowhere for it to go. Other than the hole Kaz had made, which only led into another sealed room, the space was impenetrable.
Nucai gave a hissing, utterly inhuman laugh. “Why would I leave when I’m finally so close? You’re only a momentary, albeit quite annoying, diversion. I’m looking forward to tearing out your cores and seeing how you managed to free yourself. You’re not even truly the Dog yet, but here you are, barking at me just like one. You’re nothing, little puppy.”
Something inside Kaz snapped, and he threw open his ki at last. Ignoring his uncertainty about the strange core he could see inside Nucai’s abdomen, he reached for the other male’s power, pulling it into his own cycle. For a brief, heady moment, power filled him as his core pulsed, but then he remembered he had to release it. Had to let it go before it became part of him and he was bound to Nucai.
And then Nucai started pulling back. Kaz’s ki flooded out of him, much as it had when he first touched the runes within the mountain, but this time the thing taking it was bitter, and cold, and also very much not of Kaz’s world. This was other, and if it grew only a tiny bit stronger, it would diverge completely, and the world would reject it, and send Kaz with it.
Li grabbed hold of what was left of Kaz and pulled on it. He was hers first. Her kobold, and her friend, and perhaps something more, something that hadn’t yet been defined, but he was most certainly not part of Nucai. Something inside Kaz tore, with part snapping into Nucai, and the rest returning to his poor, abused body.
Kaz gasped, feeling a heat inside his body that shouldn’t be there. That tearing had been more than just in his ki, and he was broken. Again. And how was he supposed to destroy this body and build a new one when he had forgotten how to be just Kaz, because he also remembered being a man, one of towering ambition who would do anything to surpass those he viewed as less, but couldn’t, because his foundation was built on-
Kaz couldn’t speak. Couldn’t ask what the alternative was, because his mind was playing a hundred scenes from two different lives. A puppy, chasing a ball of fur. A boy, being beaten by another, higher-ranking boy, all while swearing to himself that he would never be in such a position again. Listening to a howl, curled up against Rega, with his sister’s sleepy warmth on his other side, but also at a desk, reading a book, learning and learning, everything he could, feeling the rush as his image strengthened.
There was something in that. Something. A detail he was missing. The way she said it, a warning, but also a gift, and then the core was resting on his tongue, and Kaz closed his jaws on it. He swallowed.