The Broken Knife

Li was staring at him. Her wings were pinned tight against her sides, and her ribs protruded beneath dull scales. She had always been slender, but now she seemed emaciated. Her eyes were deep pools of pure black, watching him as if he was a deadly predator, but also the only chance she had of survival.

Kaz’s eyes burned as he choked out, “Sorry. So sorry. I won’t…” He trailed off, still not sure exactly what he’d nearly done. He hadn’t physically attacked the dragon. But somehow, he knew that if he had eaten that mental representation of the little creature’s core, he would have killed her as certainly as he would have died without her.

Li continued to watch him, silent and wary, until Kaz finally dared to lift his hand from where it lay on his chest. It moved, not easily, but predictably, though some internal shift made him wince. Tenderly, he cupped the dragon against his body, then used his other arm to lever himself up from the ground.

Once he was sitting, he gently stroked Li’s long body, ignoring the twinges as his bruises complained about the motion. The dragonling remained tense beneath his touch, so he met her eyes again and said, “I’ll never hurt you. I swear.”

His voice was low, and he pushed the sense of his appreciation and sincerity through their bond with everything he had. The link between them was now as much a part of him as his own channels, and he could feel the moment when she decided to believe him. Her head bobbed, then sank to rest against her feet, eyes closing, and he could tell she was immediately lost to sleep.

Carefully, Kaz lifted the too-thin body, draping her around his neck until he thought she was secure enough that he could move without her sliding off. As he did, he realized that he’d lost his pack at some point, but his clear sense of the seed nestled within it told him it was close by.

It took far too long, but he finally managed to struggle to his paws, though they tried to slip out from under him a half a dozen times. A strange, glowing trail hung in the air behind him, and he reached out to prod at it before realizing it was the intangible thread leading back to the seed in his pack. He hadn’t even been aware that he was pushing power into his eyes, and when he blinked, he realized why that was.

His eyes - in fact every part of him - were now filled with more ki than they ever had been before. In his own vision, he all but glowed, and when he looked around, he realized that he could see as clearly as if Gaoda stood beside him with his overly bright ball of ki, even though the only illumination was the faint luminescence of the glow-worms overhead.

Kaz rubbed his eyes, hoping that the effect might subside, but it was still as clear as ever when he blinked them open again. Which would have to be a problem for another time, because right now he needed to go, and quickly. It was amazing that one or more of the adult woshi hadn’t already returned.

His bag lay on the ground near the slimy crevice through which the beast had dragged him. Its straps were ragged and broken, and there was a hole in one side, but when he opened it, he saw that the seed, knives, and fire striker had formed a crusted mass in the bottom and still clung tenaciously to the grubby leather. Kaz pulled out the good knife before rolling the rest of the pack into an awkward bundle that he tied around his waist like a belt, using what remained of the straps.

It felt good to hold a proper weapon, though without a sheath, it left Kaz with only one usable hand. Still, if the woshi returned, it would find him a much sharper sort of prey. He would have to find a way to keep the blade from slicing him when he needed to put it back into the pathetic remains of his pack, though.

First, he had to escape. A single attempt told him there was no way he could crawl back out the way he’d come in. A dense layer of mucus coated the walls of the narrow passage, and he quickly slipped and slithered back down when he tried, leaving him sitting in a fresh pool of goo. He would have to walk.

The breeding pool lay along the back wall of the cave, and Kaz circled around it warily. His desperate attack had killed all of the woshi spawn near him, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be more in the further reaches. He didn’t know at what point young woshi became capable of leaving their pools, either, so if there were adolescents, they might be able to come out after him.

It wasn’t worth the risk to try to see if there might be an opening on the far side of the pool, so Kaz clung to the wall as he walked. The cave grew narrower and deeper the further he traveled, though, so soon he was much closer to the placid water’s edge than he was comfortable with.

It was with great relief that he finally saw not one, but two tunnels branching off from the area containing the pool. Still, he knew better than to move too quickly in an unexplored area, so he only went a short distance down each one before pausing to decide which way he should go.

The first tunnel was fairly wide, and though he smelled fuergar, the scent wasn’t fresh. He suspected the woshi and its offspring kept the population down nearly as well as a resident tribe of kobolds. He threw a handful of small stones ahead of him, and they rolled back, so his sense that the passage sloped upwards was probably correct. If he was lucky, it might even lead back up to the level he’d been on before.

The second tunnel was nearly as wide as the first, but the ceiling was lower, and the floor more uneven. When he threw stones ahead of him, most of them became lodged in cracks and between stony protrusions, but a few skittered around the obstacles, rolling further along the passage. It went down, and at a good angle, but in his experience, this sort of tunnel was very likely to narrow to impassibility, which would mean turning around and coming back to take the first path or search for a third.

But he didn’t want to go up. For one thing, he already knew the Stoneborns controlled the stairs, and because the stairs were so close together, the Broken Knives had only passed through quickly, so he didn’t know where another way between levels might be. That meant he would have to find a tribe and ask, since simply wandering was a nearly guaranteed way to die. Technically, they should help him as a lost pup, but they would know he hadn’t come from a nearby tribe, so it was also possible that they, like the Stoneborns, would claim him, correctly assuming that no one would come after him.

If he went down, however, he might reach the level where his tribe had stopped for nearly a year after leaving the mid-levels. He certainly didn’t know all of it, but if he wasn’t too far from the area with the stairs, there was a good chance he would find something to help him orient himself. Plus, the further he got from anyone who might have heard about the new blue pup the Stoneborn tribe had acquired, the better.

Nodding to himself, Kaz clutched his knife and took the second tunnel.

=+=+=+=

Time was a thing created by variations in light, and the natural cycles of the body. When you grew hungry, you ate. When you grew tired, you slept. When you lived in a community, you did these things together with others of your kind, in unspoken agreement that this was ‘time.’

Kaz pulled handfuls of moss or fungus from the walls with the hand that didn’t hold his knife, and ate them raw. He found that he didn’t even need the ki orb of which he’d been so proud any longer. His own strange luminescence and the life-glow of the plants themselves was enough to define his path. He could even see the fuergar skittering around nearby, and after he spitted a few with laughable ease, they no longer approached close enough for him to reach them. One of these joined the moss in his belly, though he disliked the taste and sensation of its raw flesh, so he dressed the other one quickly and tied it to his belt for later.

The tunnel continued to narrow, though Kaz was able to walk mostly upright. He knew that if it became so tight he had to crawl, he would have to go back, since he wouldn’t be able to wield his blade or turn quickly enough to defend against an attack. It also grew steeper, forcing him to slow and be more cautious about where he placed his paws, but he continued ever downward.

He thought that he must have gone far enough to have passed through at least one level, if not two. He found no openings or side passages wide enough to take, however, so he simply went on, passing through darkness filled with distant echoes and the ever-present fuergar.

He gathered some firemoss, which he could use to create a slow-burning barrier that would keep most beasts away while he closed his eyes, but he knew he was already too tired to do so safely. When pups were taught how to survive alone during their spirit hunt, they learned to take many brief, shallow naps, rather than allowing themselves to sink into a deep enough sleep that a nearby sound or motion wouldn’t wake them.

Li stirred against his throat as exhaustion once again warred against sense, and Kaz froze, his hand on the stalagmite he was maneuvering around. The dragon moved again, emitting a hissing yawn, and Kaz’s knees nearly gave out in relief. He had sensed the calm and steady flow of her ki, had known she was worn down but physically well, but he had still been worried, his free hand creeping up to feel her fragile ribs rise and fall each time the ground smoothed enough that his footing was briefly stable.

Wings lifted and stretched in his peripheral vision, and then one of them buffeted his ear hard enough to make him yip. He clapped his hand to the injured appendage, nearly cutting it off before realizing he’d used the hand holding his knife. Li lifted from his shoulder, hovering momentarily, then fell back against him with a frustrated hiss. She trembled, and Kaz decided that whether or not he could afford to rest, it was time to stop.

Looking around, he saw that there was a flowstone formation protruding from the wall not far ahead. He would have to scrape past it, so anything coming from the other direction should have to do the same. Turning, he nestled his tail into the crevice between the rippled formation and the rough wall, then put his blade down on the ground within easy reach before stretching his arms flat out in front of him.

It took Li a moment to recognize the invitation, but then she climbed over his shoulder and down his arm, wrapping her long tail around his forearm as she came to sit in his cupped hands. Her body nearly hummed with tension, like a cord pulled her muscles taut, and her eyes were still more dark than golden as she turned her head one way and then the other, examining him.

Kaz smiled at her, keeping his teeth hidden as he sent warm feelings of safety and reassurance through their bond.

She bit him.

It was a good, hard chomp, drawing blood that oozed from four small indentations in the pad of his thumb. Kaz flinched, but managed not to pull away from her as her tiny forked tongue flicked out, taking in each drop of his ki-drenched blood. He sensed her satisfaction, and didn’t think it was just because she was getting some form of nourishment from this small retribution. If that was, in fact, what she was doing.

He stopped bleeding quickly, more quickly than he would expect, actually, and it was Kaz who finally broke the silence as he met her slowly-whirling gaze. Specks of gold drifted in the field of black, and he thought she almost felt amused.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked.

The scaled head bobbed, and he snorted a laugh before saying, “I really am sorry. I don’t even know…”

What? What happened? What could have compelled him to even think about ingesting her core? Why he foolishly took a chance that nearly killed him, and possibly her as well?

A wing flicked, smacking him in the nose, and the last of the black finally drained from her eyes. She whistled a sharp note, then twisted lithely, scampering back down his arm before dropping to the ground, tongue flickering. She locked in on the fuergar that had been dangling from his belt and now half-hung, half-lay on the ground beside him.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, and immediately received a fierce wave of famished greed through their bond.

He smiled again, pulling a grubby bundle of firemoss from the remains of his pack. “Should I cook it?”

The dragon hesitated, and he sensed the churning hunger again. Quickly, he laid out the moss, using his fire-striker to start it. A wave of acrid smoke rose up from the unprocessed moss, but it only stung his nose, without bringing the usual wave of mild dizziness.

Laying out the fuergar, he made short work of it, stripping the skin and slicing the meat into long, thin pieces that he laid on the hot stone beside the burning moss. By the time he wrapped one final strip around his knife and held the blade over the low flames, Li was already dragging the first one away, mumbling and hissing in disgruntlement even as she tore it into chunks and swallowed them whole.

They ate every scrap of meat from the carcass, and Kaz laid the copper-coated bones in the moss until they cracked and he could pick them up and snap them in half. Hot marrow oozed out, and he passed the small bones to Li while he cleaned the larger ones.

When they were done, he leaned back against the wall, realizing that between the food and the company, he felt much better. Wandering in the timeless passage, he had had far too much time to think about just how unlikely it really was that they were going to make it back to Lianhua and the others in time. It wasn’t impossible - or even unlikely - that he was stuck in one of the levels between levels, where natural caverns and passages existed, but there were no safe or easily accessible tunnels leading in and out, so they remained lost and uninhabited. Worse, he could keep wandering until he reached the mid-levels, and without the warnings on the stairs, he would never know until it was too late.

Looking down at Li, whose belly was once again plump and round, though the luster hadn’t yet returned to her scales, he sighed. “We’re well and truly lost, my friend.”

Li’s wings flicked, and she hissed, but he didn’t sense any real concern coming from her.

Kaz shook his head. “You may not care, but I do. If we manage to find someone, they may or may not help us. If we don’t find anyone, I may or may not be able to figure out where we are.” He snorted. “More likely not, if I’m honest.”

Li lifted her head on her serpentine neck and trilled softly. A shaky image formed in his mind. Fierce golden dragon, fuzzy blue kobold, climbing up and up until they emerged into blue. Dragon and kobold launched themselves into the sky, though the little Kaz-figure couldn’t seem to decide whether to sprout wings or flap his arms in order to achieve flight.

Kaz laughed so hard the bruises on his ribs woke into burning aches again. “I wish!” he told her. “If we could just fly away, wouldn’t that be easy?”

Reaching out, he gently pinched the tips of her wings, stretching them out briefly before she snatched them away with a hiss. At their greatest reach, they were barely the length of his forearm, and though her body was longer, it was also thin, and her head was the size of his thumb.

“Though you have the heart of a dragon,” he told her, “you’re no stronger than the fuergar you’re supposed to be.”

She glared at him, and he shrugged, sighing again.

“And I’m less than that. A kobold. Barely better than a beast, the moment I step foot out of the mountain. Even if we could somehow make it, I have no idea how to survive, and,” he pressed his hand against his belly, almost feeling the jagged remains of his core concealed inside, “I doubt I’d have the strength, anyway.”

Li stared at him, black and white swirls spinning in the depths of her eyes, until he looked away, scratching his ear in embarrassment. Finally, he reached down and picked her up, settling her on his shoulder again. That done, he bent over and picked up the knife, feeling the way it settled perfectly into his palm. The light cast by the flickering flames played along the layered metal of its blade, and glimmered against the blue stone tip.

Huffing out a breath, Kaz stepped over the firemoss. “I guess I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself though,” he said as he edged his way down the tunnel. “After all, at least I have you.”

The little dragon bit him again.