Kaz turned his back on the core. Even if he could afford to continue giving it ki - and that thought made him shudder in revulsion - he had no time for anything unnecessary. Instead, he looked around, his eyes seeking out something he had seen last time he was here but hadn’t had time to investigate.

  At the edge of the open area where Qiangde’s skeleton rested stood two huge crystals. Qiangde’s claws had once encircled them, but now those bones had fallen or lay scattered, exposing the cracked grayish-blue of the nearest crystal, as well as the much brighter color of the golden crystal on the other side of the Tree’s top.

  Each crystal vanished down into the wood of the Tree, and up into the stone some fifty feet above Kaz’s head. They were too large for him to wrap his arms around, if he had tried to do something so foolish, but Qiangde’s claws had closed perfectly around them, caging them in bone.

  According to the memory Kaz had first seen, Qiangde used these crystals to watch over and control the mountain. He had been focused on the changes he was making at the time, which exiled the xiyi from the mountain by forcing any creature with a significant portion of dragon blood to leave or go mad. He had excluded the Tree, Nucai’s den, and the cave at the peak where he himself had hatched, but from that moment, no being descended from dragons could remain inside any other part of the mountain.

  In that memory, Qiangde had been in pain and uncertain how many xiyi remained nearby. He meant for the changes to be temporary, allowing him time to heal and figure out who had betrayed him. But one xiyi was already close, and managed to overcome the command long enough to kill Qiangde. The dragon’s death left those supposedly short-term changes in place for nearly a thousand years.

  And after meeting Zhangwo and then Dongwu, Kaz had finally realized that Nucai was probably as much of a dragon as his creations, if not more. That meant that if he left the Tree, he would also be forced from the mountain. If he truly had the same runes in his dantian as Dongwu, then if he left the mountain, he would die. So he had only two choices: either destroy the Tree, which would also break the crystals in which the commands were carved, or remain inside the Tree, where the compulsion couldn’t affect him, and try to find a way to cancel or alter either the command or the runes.

  The first option had one major drawback, as far as Kaz could see, but it was one that someone like Nucai would hate. Somehow, the Tree was central to the functioning of the mountain: the stairs, the cities, the platforms, perhaps even the fact that the kobolds remained intelligent, instead of becoming like the Fallen. If the Tree died, everything would stop working, leaving Nucai trapped in an environment that a human would probably see as primitive and hostile, without even kobolds for company.

  That left Nucai with only one feasible option, and from there, everything else began to make sense. Nucai had been trying to create a key, someone with the same balance of ki as Qiangde, who could change the commands and allow those with dragon blood to remain in the mountain. It would require many, many attempts, but after all, time was one thing Nucai seemed to have in plenty.

  Then Vega killed the Woodblades, which would, in turn, inevitably result in the death of the Tree, unless a new Woodblade tribe could be created. Unfortunately, the only remaining kobold with a pure Woodblade core had fled the Deep, together with the subject of Nucai’s most recent experiments, and without the necklace Rega had destroyed, he had no way of finding them, other than his spies, the Irondiggers. That forced Nucai to alter plans that he had patiently been working on for centuries.

  But none of that explained how the Rabbit was involved, or where it was now. Nor did it help Kaz reach Nucai in order to rescue Elder Long - and what a strange idea it was that that monster of an old human needed Kaz’s help. It also wouldn’t stop the Goldblades and the Irondiggers, and Kaz really would prefer not to have to kill them all, especially when he knew they were being driven by some combination of loyalty and the qiu.

  Kaz stepped in front of the sad remnant of the crystal that he now believed was linked to the Rabbit. It was cloudy, with only the faintest hint of blue remaining beneath the gray, and a zhiwu web of cracks lay beneath the surface, ready to shatter it into shards at the first opportunity. Not a single mark showed on that surface, however, except for the gouges created by Qiangde’s claws just before he died, and even those were softened, as if the crystal had grown up around them.

  Which they had.

  Kaz spun, staring at the way the Tree had started to grow around the bones. He was thinking of crystals as dead things, fixed and unchanging. But Qiangde had called the crystal he drove into the Rabbit’s core a ‘seed crystal’.

   Li said, moving toward the golden crystal. She circled it, looking for the marks made by Qiangde’s claws. They knew where they should be, given what Kaz had seen in the memories, but the surface of this crystal was as smooth and shiny as any Kaz had ever seen.

  Kaz shook his head. How was he even supposed to read runes buried in the heart of a crystal over a thousand years old? He had thought to do as Baihe suggested and simply let Nucai out, then either kill him or negotiate for Elder Long’s release. After all, what could Nucai possibly want with the human now? Surely he’d been taken in an attempt to force the others to destroy the Tree, along with the command crystals.

  No, Kaz was still missing something, and he had a feeling that the only way he was going to figure it out was by entering the Tree. Which meant he needed to do that, preferably without Nucai knowing he had done so. Drawing in a deep breath, he reached out and touched the crystal in front of him.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Nothing. Yes, there was a faint feeling of connection there, but nothing more. Kaz tried pushing some blue ki into the crystal, but it was like pouring a single drop of water into a waste crevice. The ki vanished, leaving Kaz slightly weaker, and no closer to an answer. The Rabbit - if the entity connected to the crystal was the Rabbit - was too far gone to speak.

   Li asked, looking at the golden crystal that still shimmered with power.

  Kaz joined her beside it, but when he touched it, he didn’t get the same sense that he was reaching something familiar. This power was not his, nor was it related to him in any way. When he offered it some Earth ki, the ki simply slid off, rejected by or incompatible with the power already inside the crystal. Kaz turned away. There was nothing else for him here. He would simply have to hope that this was enough.

   Li said, already aware of what he meant to do. She pressed her head into his chest, vapor leaking up from the space between them.

  “I have to face him eventually,” Kaz told her, leaning forward until his nose pressed against the top of her head.

   She shook her head, her horns tangling in his fur.

   he said softly, in the quiet of their bond,

  She had no answer to that, but it took long seconds before she pulled away, tugging out strands of his blue fur that glinted, wrapped around the smaller horns that were beginning to form along each side of her muzzle. Kaz reached out to pluck one off, and she jerked away. she told him, and he changed the motion to a gentle caress.

   he said.

  Li’s eyes were filled with color as she said,

  He could only nod, and she turned, folding her wings as she bent her leg so he could climb up onto her back. He did so, and if he held on a little tighter than necessary, well, who could blame him? They stood like that for a moment, with howls rising up from below, before Li took the few steps necessary to carry them off the side of the Tree. Her wings spread, and she began to spiral downwards.

  As they approached, Lianhua looked up, probably feeling their approaching ki, and called out to the others. Yingtao was nearby, wielding her mithril knives with graceful efficiency, though there weren’t many kobolds remaining. Kaz was glad to see that most of the bodies scattered around still seemed to have most of their blood inside, so there was a possibility that they were simply unconscious.

  Chi Yincang and Baihe returned before Li’s claws touched the stone, with Chi Yincang appearing from the far side of the Tree, while Baihe rose from within the cleft of a root. She held a glass bottle, which she shook as she approached.

  “I may be able to repair at least some of the damage,” she said. “But this tree is likely beyond saving in the long term. I think there’s something wrong in the heartwood. Even the roots are beginning to rot.”

  Kaz’s ears folded flat, but he had suspected as much. Whatever happened today, the Tree would no longer be the heart of the mountain. That reminded him of something else, though, and as he slid from Li’s back, he was already opening the pouch at his waist.

  “Here,” he said, holding a small, wrinkled, brown object out to Lianhua. “This is a seed from the Tree’s fruit. Please, give it to Kyla. It needs Earth ki to sprout, and then Wood ki to grow. It might take a long time, but I believe it may be able to replace the Tree.” Not in all ways, perhaps, since at least some of this Tree’s power came from the Rabbit, but if nothing else, it would mean a great deal to his people, especially if things went…badly.

  Lianhua took it, and as it passed from Kaz’s hand to hers, he pushed more of his own golden ki into the fine thread that bound him to it. That thread seemed smaller after its time in the pouch, but as his ki poured down it, falling into the once-empty space inside the seed, it brightened again, and he felt a corresponding shift in his core. After all, for good or ill, this seed still lay at the center of his image, and he thought it would until one or the other of them died.

  Lianhua’s eyes were searching as her fingers curled around the seed. “Kaz? Why can’t you give it to Kyla yourself? What did you find up there?”

  Kaz’s ear twitched. “The missing piece, I hope.” Turning away, he jumped to the top of the largest root he could see, then lifted his muzzle and began to howl. It was a howl all kobolds would recognize - a challenge, calling another kobold or another tribe to fight. As he did, he began to throw ki-bolts at the Tree, but these were made entirely of blue ki.

  After a few of these burst harmlessly against the Tree’s trunk, some of the remaining Irondiggers emerged from wherever they’d been hiding, staring up at him. One of them began to set a sort of short arrow into a loop made from a strip of leather, probably in preparation for throwing it, but another laid his hand over it, shaking his head. Kaz ignored them, knowing that Li and the others would make sure no one attacked him.

  There was no response, so Kaz began the howl and the ‘attack’ again. This time Li joined in, and then, somewhat to Kaz’s amusement, Lianhua added her small, high-pitched voice. Baihe was next, and even Yingtao tried, though she stopped almost as soon as she had begun when the trunk of the Tree split open.

  In Kaz’s memory, the opening had been created with little effort and left no mark on the Tree. This time, the whole trunk shuddered, and chunks of bark the size of a kobold fell down, making the Irondiggers scatter. There was a loud crack as dry, exposed wood split apart, and Kaz could feel another pang through his link to the Rabbit. This was a known pain, though, one that had come and gone a thousand times before, and nothing in comparison to recent injuries.

  The greatest difference between the past and the present, however, was that the space within the Tree was no longer empty. Instead, a kobold stood there, and it took Kaz far too long to recognize Idla. The Goldblade chief was too thin, and her once-bright fur was a pale gray, but her topaz eyes held the same avaricious gleam as she stared at Kaz.

  “What do you want, Kaz of the Broken Knives?” she called, and at the sound of her voice, several of the Irondiggers flinched, while others raised their hackles.

  “Give us back the human male,” he answered, refusing to react to her choice of tribe for him.

  Idla’s lip lifted, revealing a broken tooth. “He belongs to Nucai, as you all will, soon enough. Now stop your howling and wait like a good pup.”

  “And what if I offer you a trade?” Kaz asked.

  Idla twitched, and Kaz saw the briefest flicker of ki at the back of her neck. “Offer what?” she asked.

  Kaz held out his arms. “Me. Not later, but now.”