NOVEL NEXT Chapter Two hundred fifty-four
The fuergar lay half-in, half-out of a hole she’d chewed into the side of a crate. Her tail was limp, but she was still squeaking as they ran toward her. There was something very strange going on with her core. It flickered wildly between its usual white with red and gold sparks, and something like a very dark orange. In Kaz’s experience, ki didn’t act like that unless it was drifting away, mingling and in the process of becoming mana. But Mei’s ki was still as dense as ever, just far too dark.
Before Kaz could stop her, Kyla scooped Mei up, cradling her close as she looked down at her pet. Her golden eyes were enormous as she looked back at Kaz. “What’s wrong with her?” Kaz shook his head, crouching beside the box. He didn’t see either ki or mana inside it, but obviously something had caused Mei’s core to go wild.
Li landed beside him, her head snaking in through the hole. There was a soft thunk, and then she dragged something back out of the box. It was no larger than the tip of Kaz’s finger, but when she dropped it, it thunked to the floor, not bouncing or rocking at all. The clear grooves of rodent teeth were visible on one side.
Kaz glanced at Li, but she seemed fine, in spite of having put this thing in her mouth. They would have to have a talk about that later, but right now it probably meant that touching the object was safe, so he nudged it with a finger. In spite of his strength, it didn’t even move.
Metal, but not one Kaz was familiar with. Kyla, however, came from a tribe of kobolds who worked with the rarest and most difficult metals. He sat back, holding out his arms. “Let me hold her,” he told his cousin. “Look at this. Li says it’s metal, but I don’t recognize it.”
Reluctantly, Kyla handed Mei to Kaz. To his relief, the fuergar’s heart was beating steadily, if a bit faster than he thought was normal, and she didn’t feel too warm or too cold. In his experience, unless they were sick, those who were about to die became cool to the touch.
Kyla tried to pick up the metal, but once again it resisted, seeming to eat the light cast by Li’s ki-orb, which still hung in the middle of the space. “Sky iron,” she said wonderingly. “It can’t be found in the mountain, but sometimes humans would bring a piece to be used in an alloy. Incredibly hard and heavy. Only we Magmablades can heat the great forges to a high enough temperature to melt it.”
Kaz’s hands spasmed on Mei’s body, and it was all he could do not to leap backwards at the serpent’s sudden appearance. Li mantled, hissing, and Kyla yelped as she jerked away from the small chunk of metal.
“What are you doing here?” Kaz asked, staring as Heishe’s tongue flickered out, brushing Mei’s fur. The Divine Beast was in her smallest form, barely eighteen inches long, and she would have seemed entirely innocent if Kaz didn’t know what she really was.
the snake said.
Kaz felt a strange sense of relief at her words. Once, he’d had the horrifying thought that his mountain might be entirely filled with Qiangde and his servants’ failed experiments, but if fuergar were natural beasts, then surely most or all of the others were as well. He didn’t know if it was better or worse to have evidence that his people, xiyi, and mosui were probably the only ‘kobolds’, but it certainly felt better.
Mei twitched in his hands, and Kaz looked down, reminded that he had something else to worry about at the moment. The fuergar’s core was throbbing in time with her heart, not simply spinning as it normally would. In fact, it looked something like what Kaz would expect to see if he actually watched someone else trying to compress their core. There were also distinct swirls of grayish orange in the white, gold, and ruby of its depths.
Kaz felt helpless. If he tried to manipulate Mei’s ki, perhaps trying to separate the ki back into its respective colors, he would have to touch Mei’s core. If his ki mingled with hers, it might form a bond like the one he shared with Li. And as much as he loved his dragon, he didn’t want to be tied to the fuergar as well. But the rest of the rodent’s ki and body seemed fine, so there was nothing else he could do.
His fingers hovered over Mei’s abdomen, his own ki waiting, surging just beneath his skin. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking at the serpent. “What’s wrong with her ki?”
Heishe gave her hissing laugh.
Kaz stared, uncomprehending, while Kyla edged closer and closer, whimpering as she stared at the unconscious fuergar. “Her ki is orange,” he said, wishing anyone else besides Li understood what he meant. Unfortunately, the dragon, too, was baffled, her head swaying on her long neck as she tried to see every aspect of Mei’s core.
Hissing, Heishe slithered off into the shadows.
Struggling to his paws, Kaz held Mei out after the vanishing serpent. “I’ve never seen orange before!”
There was no sign of the Divine Beast, other than the thick, black coalescence of her ki. Still, her voice was as clear as ever in his mind.
What had Heishe told him? Which time? But he knew. Kaz exchanged a look with Li.
Kaz nodded, but looked at the lump of sky iron near his paw. It lay there, black and inert, a mass of absolute darkness. “But she doesn’t have water.”
“Water? What does water have to do with anything?” Kyla asked. She had finally had enough of Kaz apparently doing nothing but make cryptic comments, so she snatched at her pet. Kaz gave over the fuergar without resistance, and Kyla pressed her muzzle into the wiry gold and copper fur, sniffing Mei like a mother checking her puppy for wounds.
Kaz shook his head. “I…don’t know,” he admitted. “There’s so much I don’t know. But Mei has metal, fire, and earth ki. Metal is white, but more like moonstone or agate. Fire is red, all ruby and garnet. Earth’s gold is like veins of ore nestled between the other colors.”
One ear flopped as he shook his head, gently stroking the longer fur between Kyla’s ears. “You’re ruby and gold, with just a hint of sapphire for wood. You and Mei share two of your three types of ki. I think that’s part of why you get along so well. That,” he pointed at the sky iron, “has no ki in it at all, not that I can see, but there’s something, and it’s the cause of this. I’m certain of it.”
Kaz leaned down, held out his arms for Li, and the dragon climbed up, wrapping herself around his upper body. Remembering Heishe’s words when Li gained fire, Kaz said, “I think that what happens now is up to Mei. She can fight, she can surrender, or she can choose not to do battle at all.”
He stopped, watching the way the ki in Mei’s core was slowing, the colors seeming to grow more distinct with every moment. White. Gold. Red. And deepest orange. “I think-,” he said slowly, stepping back, careful to avoid the sky iron. “I think you should summon your power as well, Kyla.”
Kyla jerked her head up, staring at him, then at the darkness around them. Her core began to spin faster, ki cycling rapidly through her body. Her arms tightened protectively around Mei as she whispered, “Are enemies coming?”
Kaz shook his head. “No. But I think having pure ki near her would help.” That wasn’t exactly it, but he couldn’t explain what he was feeling. Was it instinct, or something else?
Kyla’s power surged, a haze of ki falling around her and the fuergar she embraced. Unlike her usual concealment, this held all three of her colors, not just red, but it wasn’t a shield, either. Mei’s core responded, the red becoming clear and bright, while the gold gleamed pure again. Red and yellow made orange. Take them away, or teach them to be themselves again, and that left…gray. Gray, but with only two, the colors separated easily, black and white.
Mei opened her eyes.
Kyla gasped, lifting the fuergar until she could stare into the rodent’s confused eyes. Mei squeaked, and Kaz could hear the question in it. Kyla’s legs gave out, and she plopped onto the ground, tail twisting beneath her as she did so.
“Mei? Are you all right?” Kyla rubbed her cheek against Mei’s fur, and the fuergar wiggled, but didn’t actually try to get away. Her nose twitched, whiskers tangling in Kyla’s fur.
Kaz and Li watched as Mei’s ki smoothed out, a trickle of water ki joining her other colors, almost gleeful as it curled around motes of yellow, spiraled together with white, and teased sparks of red fire ki. It wasn’t effortless, not yet, but it was natural, and beautiful in its own way. It made his fingers itch suddenly, longing to take out his chalks and draw the change that was happening within that small, unassuming body.
The door creaked open, and they all spun to stare as Chi Yincang slipped inside, followed by everyone except for Doran. Even Adara was there, though she was clutching her injured arm and looked distinctly unhappy.
Lianhua looked around, face lighting up as she saw Kaz, Li, Kyla, and Mei. It clouded again as she saw Mei cradled in Kyla’s arms. “Is everything all right?” she asked in a whisper that seemed to be carried on a breath of ki.
As if in response, Mei gave her, ‘I want down now’ wriggle, and Kyla reluctantly allowed her to jump down. The fuergar looked at the hole in the box and the lump of sky iron, but made no move to eat any more of the metal. Did she feel the way Kaz had after eating the salamander core? Enough was enough, even of something good.
Deciding not to attempt an explanation, Kaz shook his head. “Everything’s fine. Just be careful what you touch. We think they were making medicine in here, and some of these things may be dangerous.”
He pointed at the sky iron, then toward the stacked boxes of cores. “There’s rare metal here, and beast cores over there.”
Everyone except for Chi Yincang looked surprised, with Lianhua, Yingtao, and Adara all looking intrigued as well. Lianhua immediately headed for the cores, while Yingtao walked along the tables, examining all the plants. Every now and then she would pick one up, or touch it to her tongue, but she moved with such certainty that Kaz didn’t try to warn her again about the possible danger.
Adara, on the other hand, walked straight for Kaz and his cousin. “Metals?” she asked. “Like gold?”
Gold again. Kaz sighed. “We found sky iron. I don’t know what else is here.”
Adara frowned, looking down at the chunk of sky iron. She attempted to nudge it with the toe of her boot, but it didn’t budge. She pushed harder, and it rolled over onto its side, then stopped, dark and still.
“Oh,” she said. “Star iron. It falls from the sky when there are meteor showers. Stuff is incredibly heavy and brittle. Only a master smith can work it, and few bother. I wonder why it’s here.”
Lianhua had opened one of the crates of cores, and now she looked up. “These are all low-grade cores. Certainly nothing better than a B grade.”
Yingtao picked up a dried leaf that looked almost as fuzzy as Mei. “Most of these are of mediocre quality as well. There are a few that I would use, but most were picked at the wrong time, or dried in the wrong way. Cultivation pills made with these would be Elementary-grade. Maybe Profound-grade if a master alchemist made them, but no master I know would work with anything of such low quality.”
Kaz’s tail drooped. He had assumed that the xiyi were making something to trade with humans, but what were they going to achieve with these?
Li hissed unhappily.
Kaz echoed the question, and Yingtao shook her head. “I didn’t say they wouldn’t work. They just won’t work well. In fact, if someone took too many of these, they might stall their cultivation by flooding their meridians with so many impurities that even a breakthrough can’t clean it all out. A few are fine, and a lot of people, especially independent cultivators, will use one or two just to push themselves into the next cultivation level, accepting the added contaminants for a chance to become strong enough to join a sect.”
This was by far the most Kaz had ever heard the female speak, and for the first time he understood why she and Lianhua were such good friends. Yingtao might not be excited by the Diushi in the same way Lianhua was, but she was clearly both very knowledgeable and very enthusiastic about medicine.
Li reacted to an entirely different aspect of Yingtao’s words, however, and he heard that odd maturity creep into her voice again as she said,
Kaz’s ears perked up. The dragon was absolutely right. “Is it possible that the xiyi plan to produce so many of these bad pills that many human cultivators will ‘stall’?”
Yingtao halted, staring around at the huge space filled with ingredients. Slowly, she said, “There’s enough here to make tens of thousands of pills. Each of those jars Raff was carrying yesterday could hold a hundred or more. Yes, if they sold enough of these, especially all at once, so no one had time to realize how bad they were, and at a low enough price, they could ruin the cultivation of an entire generation.”