The Broken Knife

Everything shook when Li swallowed the crystal that had been resting at the heart of a wall full of complex runes. Not literally, but in Kaz’s vision, the whole world blurred, then seemed to jump sideways while simultaneously remaining in exactly the same place. The mana that surrounded them, dense enough that he could see it even though no one was cultivating, began to disperse. As it did, the terrible feeling of being surrounded by something sick and unhealthy faded with it.

Kaz watched Li as her throat bobbed. She seemed to choke, straining to force down a stone that looked like it was larger than her head. He had seen bigger ki crystals in the mine, but only in the hoyi nest, where no miners dared venture. Red ki descended from the stone, rose from her core, cycled through her body, and finally subsumed all other colors.

Everything tilted, including the dragon. Kaz was still holding his poor little cousin, and he barely managed to lay the pup down in time to catch Li as she tumbled from the alcove. A metal tray that once held the crystal slid out as she did so, revealing another rune etched into its lower surface. Ki began to drain from the runes like water down a crevice.

Behind him, something crashed loudly, and a body flew past him to impact against the wall. The mage who had been defending the crystal slid down to slump against the base of the wall, then slowly tipped over.

“What happened?” Chi Yincang asked, looking unperturbed as he came to stand next to Kaz.

Kaz shook his head. Kyla seemed to be unconscious, and Li was… focused. The dragon was utterly absorbed in her own core and ki cycle. It was so, so red, flowing between him and her in a ribbon of flame. Only the other colors she took from him offered any balance to the process, keeping the red from burning away everything else.

Both males looked up as they heard screams. They were muffled, but the words were understandable. Someone was calling for help, over and over again.

Kaz looked around. They had entered through the door that now stood open behind them, following the trail leading to Li. Lianhua was somewhere above them, but not too far, according to Chi Yincang. They had yet to find any stairs, up or down.

Here, they found the first sign of life in the cool, dark halls, other than Li’s scent. A single mage stood there, looking bored, though that quickly changed when he saw them. His response had been admirable, really, given that he’d had no warning. He threw up a mana shield, which Kaz had great difficulty manipulating, since the mana just seemed to slip through his fingers.

This led to a stand-off, which Li and Kyla neatly ended by falling on the mage. The wall behind the male opened, the young kobold stumbled in, and once the mage was distracted, Kaz was finally able to make a hole through the shield.

Now, two doors stood open in opposite walls, and the third wall was taken up by the extraordinarily elaborate system of runes, which had once fed off the ki crystal. Which his dragon had eaten. The screams were coming from the only remaining empty wall.

Chi Yincang crossed the room in three long strides, pressing his hand to the unnaturally cold metal of the wall. Kaz hadn’t yet figured out which walls would open, or how, since there was neither ki nor mana in them, but Chi Yincang had no such difficulty. The wall parted, a rectangle sliding away to vanish inside a hollow space within the wall.

Cold steam roiled in, engulfing the dark male as the screams became abruptly clear.

“Help!” someone yelled. A female? “He-!” This time it cut off with a gurgle.

The mists swirled again, revealing Chi Yincang, who held a knife to the throat of another human. This human held another in her arms, clutched tightly against her chest, and at her feet sat a fuergar. Mei.

Kaz looked from his unconscious cousin, to Li, to the two females, to the rodent, who seemed more curious about what was happening than anything else. She scampered across the room to sniff at Kyla, her whiskers tickling the puppy’s muzzle until Kyla finally sneezed and opened her eyes.

The first thing she saw was Kaz, and he could tell the moment when she realized who he was, in spite of his strange appearance. She whimpered and tried to roll to her side. As she did, she saw the two females, and Chi Yincang’s blade at the conscious one’s throat.

“No!” she croaked, then grimaced at the discomfort in her throat. Kaz reached out and laid a hand on her arm, giving her as much blue ki as he dared, without allowing his power to be pulled into her core.

Kyla’s shoulders, which had been braced against the pain, relaxed slightly, and she closed her eyes. The skin around them already looked less angry, and the blisters on her face weren’t as large and angry.

Lifting a hand, Kyla pointed to the upright female. “That’s Raff’s sister, Jinn,” she said, and Chi Yincang’s mask of neutrality slipped enough to reveal a twitch at the corner of his mouth. Pointing to the female whose wet pink hair was plastered against Jinn’s arm and shoulder, Kyla said, “That’s Princess Reina.”

For the first time in Kaz’s experience, Chi Yincang looked utterly taken aback. His blade lowered, and he stepped away from the two females so quickly that he almost stumbled.

For her part, Jinn looked just as lost, but also absolutely desperate. She clutched at the princess, eyes locked on Kaz. “Are you a healer?” she asked, nodding to Kyla, who looked noticeably better.

Kaz started to say no, then hesitated, looking at the unconscious female. She had mana, more than he had seen in any other human, and he was almost certain her middle and lower dantians were both open. The mana inside her was sluggish though, tainted and putrid. Had she been cultivating in this mess?

Without responding, Kaz stood and crossed to her. The darkness was all through her body, but it centered on her lower left ribs, where a dirty cloth covered something that smelled like… Jejing? He leaned in, sniffing deeply, then chuffed at the smell. It was jejing, but there was a foulness to it that told him it was too late to prevent infection.

“Put her down,” he told the female Kyla claimed was Raff’s sister.

Briefly, it seemed she might not obey, but she glanced over Kaz’s shoulder at Kyla, who nodded. That was interesting, but he couldn’t think about it too much at the moment. Kaz stripped away the dirty cloth, removing the lump of sodden moss that had been shoved into the wound.

Hesitating, he looked over at Li. “Kyla, would you bring Li?” he asked. No matter how badly injured this female was, Li was his priority. If there was anything he could do to help her, he would do that first.

Kyla managed to sit up, then picked up both Li and Mei. The fuergar seemed uninjured, especially compared to the rest of the females, and Li actually managed to open one eye and hiss softly. Kyla brought the dragon to Kaz, laying her in his lap and then backing away. Worried golden eyes flicked from the dragon to the wounded female.

“Li?” Kaz murmured, and his friend’s eyes caught his. She squirmed, but she didn’t seem to be in pain. Rather, he thought that was the motion she used when she had an itchy spot that she couldn’t reach. And was her skin beginning to split along her sides?

The dragon belched flame. It was only a very small flame, and she seemed noticeably relieved after letting it out, but Kaz absently patted out a burning spot on his new clothing. The important thing was that Li seemed well enough, certainly not in any immediate danger, while the human female was slipping away with every beat of her failing heart.

Kaz laid his hand over the wound and closed his eyes, focusing on the mana. It was difficult, because the gray fog tended to vanish if he looked at it directly, or fade away when he tried to touch it. But he could handle ki, and ki was mana, so why was it also different?

First, he tried simply filling the wound with blue ki. Blue could heal, and this female desperately needed healing. He pictured perfect, unblemished skin stretching over an unbroken ribcage, and gently pushed image and ki into the injury.

Almost instantly, the color faded as blue became gray, then dissipated. Kaz clenched his teeth in frustration. The contaminated mana had overwhelmed the small amount of ki he’d offered. He would have to give more, no matter how much he wanted to keep it for Li and Kyla.

He prodded the wound, and it gaped open beneath the pressure of his fingers, but only oozed a little. The vileness was inside, and he needed to get it out. Gritting his teeth, Kaz did as he had once before. Fortunately, he had more ki to work with now, and though his control could still be shaky, he thought that in this case, speed and power were as important as precision.

Forming a kind of pocket of ki inside the wound, Kaz surrounded the worst part of the unclean mana. Before the ki could be overwhelmed, he pulled. A gush of blood, black with filth, poured out of the wound. He used his sleeve to wipe it away, then grimaced and shrugged the dirty robe off his shoulders, so it hung from the belt around his waist.

The injury was still bleeding slowly, and Kaz continued to wipe it clean, examining it. Fortunately for the female, the flesh was angry but not rotten, in spite of what it had contained. He suspected that was a result of the moss, and he looked back over at Kyla.

“Do you have more jejing?” he asked.

Kyla reached around and pulled what remained of her pack off her back. It was made of beautifully woven and beaded niu fur cloth, not plain leather, but it hadn’t fared well since he’d last seen her. The edges of the straps crumbled beneath her fingers, but there was still a hint of her usual tufted pink fur left in strips over her shoulders and down her back, protected by the pack and its contents.

The first few items she removed drifted into ash and debris, but as she dug her way down, Kaz could see neatly wrapped packages that had somehow survived whatever she had been through. Most of them were soaked with a stinking fluid, which had probably helped keep them from burning up. She plucked out a particular one of these, wrapped in an oiled cloth, and opened it.

The scent of jejing rose up, and Raff’s sister wrinkled her nose as both kobolds drew in deep breaths. The outer fronds of the moss were damp, and Kaz reluctantly discarded them. He sniffed at the rest, then packed it into the wound, pressing until the bleeding stopped. That done, he leaned back and assessed the situation.

Li was still beside him, and though he still couldn’t hear her thoughts, there was a sense of satisfaction coming through their bond. Now that the crystal was gone and the runes were no longer working, the mana around them was drifting away, allowing their connection to deepen again.

The human female - Princess Reina, if Kyla was correct - already seemed a bit better. The mana remaining inside her body wasn’t clean, but it no longer looked like it was getting worse, either. Carefully, Kaz pushed more of his blue ki into the female’s body, and this time it worked. Her color deepened, and the dirty mana was pushed out by the pressure of his blue ki, rising above her skin in a murky cloud that slowly faded away.

Eventually, Kaz pulled back. He was worried that she would wake soon, and if she did, she would probably start cultivating. That seemed to be the automatic response of any human who was trained in the use of mana or ki, and he doubted a female with so much power, even mana, was untrained.

Kaz didn’t want to be too close to her when that happened, so he slid her limp body over to her friend, who clutched at her gratefully, eyes leaking. Standing, he picked up Li and returned to his cousin. He was low on blue ki, but not so low that he couldn’t continue giving them both a small amount of power as it cycled out of his core.

When he looked up from them, he saw that Chi Yincang was doing something unexpected. Rather than holding up the talisman that was meant to guide him toward Lianhua, he was prodding something on the ground with the tip of a knife. The thing gleamed dully in the light of Kaz’s ki orb, and Chi Yincang grunted softly as it finally rolled free of whatever it was stuck in.

Kaz squinted at it, noting the dark liquid coating it. Chi Yincang produced a water bladder from his pouch and poured clear fluid over it. The dark stuff was reluctant to come off, but eventually, it did. The object was a small sphere, no larger than the tip of Kaz’s thumb.

Chi Yincang crouched, pulling on a fabric glove that gleamed like fuulong silk, then picked up the little ball. He turned it, and the light caught something etched into the surface. “A rune,” he said softly, holding it up so everyone could see. Turning to the two human females, he said, “This was in the girl’s wound. Where did it come from?”

Jinn stared. “I… I don’t know.” She grimaced, shaking her head. “I mean, I do. We’ve been trying to get home for a month now. Every time we do, these strange people appear and try to take Reina. This last time, one of them stabbed her, rather than just trying to carry her away. I didn’t think it was that bad at first, but then-”

Her eyes filled and overflowed. She sobbed, just once, and struck the tears away with the back of her hand, leaving streaks in the filth across her face. “She just kept getting worse. And we tried everybody. Friends, family, we even tried just turning ourselves in to the guard! These masked people appeared from nowhere, no matter what. If we tried to tell someone who we were, have them go get help, they just vanished. We had no money for a healer, but I stole some clean clothes off a washline. We kept it clean, I swear. Raff taught me about some plants that could be used for medicine, and I even tried to sneak out of the city to find some. But they were there, and Reina just… got weaker and weaker.”

The flood of words cut off as she pressed her lips together, hugging Reina against her. The princess groaned softly, eyes flickering open, then closed again. Jinn looked at Kaz, worried, but he gave her a reassuring smile, wishing he still had a tail to wag. The jejing would keep the wound clean, and the female had enough mana to recover on her own, now that her body wasn’t under assault. He needed to use his own ki wisely, and his priorities were his cousin and his dragon.

Chi Yincang rolled the little ball between his fingers, then offered it to Kaz. Kaz stared at him like he was crazy. It was bad enough that he’d had to use his ki to remove the thing. He wasn’t touching it with his skin. It may have taken a few times, but he did learn.

“Lianhua said I’m not allowed to use ki in new ways,” he said. It was a poor excuse, especially given what he’d just done, but Chi Yincang nodded, closing his fingers around the sphere. Turning his glove inside out, he turned it into a bag, tucking the ball into one finger, then wrapped the rest of the glove around it. Tucking this into his pouch, he said, “Then let’s find the lady. And Yingtao.”