The light-threads rose in spirals. Though they moved slowly, they were clearly swaying and thriving upon Old Gold-Tooth's body. From a distance, the old kobold lying on the ground looked like a massive, overgrown patch of luminescent bean sprouts.

  Tars watched Old Gold-Tooth, his eyes fixed on those shimmering filaments. If only I were a powerful wizard, he thought. No... perhaps even a high-level apprentice, or one who had researched this field, could solve the mystery of these threads.

  Aiskin looked on with frantic eyes, but behind her tears was a deep sense of resignation; she seemed to have already accepted the inevitable. The kobold girl hadn't even noticed that Tars's strength had become unnaturally immense—great enough to hold her back and haul two heavy, muscular kobolds around as if they were nothing. In any other situation, she would have been peppering him with curious questions.

  Noticing Aiskin's desperate glances shifting between him and the others, Tars turned his attention to Humph. The girl wouldn't have begged him to lug this stinking, heavy oaf all this way for no reason.

  Humph had been dropped onto the floor and was now sitting slumped against the wall in a state of exhaustion. When he saw Tars looking at him, he began to tremble. If his fur hadn't been matted into clumps by blood and grit—and mostly rubbed off his back from being dragged—it certainly would have stood on end from pure terror. Without waiting for Aiskin to speak, Humph tremblingly reached out his hand, still not daring to lift his head to meet the gaze of the shortest figure among them.

  Aiskin pulled out a crude dagger made of beast tooth. Under Tars's curious watch, she began trying to draw blood from Humph's finger. To her frustration, after three attempts, the small nicks healed almost instantly before any significant amount of blood could flow.

  "Let me," Tars said, feeling a slight surge of excitement, like discovering a rare book waiting to be read. "Hang in there, big guy..."

  He took the tooth dagger. With the effects of the Bull's Strength spell still coursing through him, he could easily carve a deep gash. Humph's shoulders shook at his words, his head buried so low his expression was invisible. Is this extraordinary healing power also an effect of that magical fruit? Tars wondered, his interest in the mysterious black fruit deepening.

  "Are we feeding this blood to Old Gold-Tooth?" he asked.

  Aiskin nodded vigorously.

  Tars stepped closer and produced his long staff. He pressed one end against Old Gold-Tooth's mouth and pulled Humph's sliced palm over the other. The blood trickled down the slanted staff and dripped steadily into the old kobold's mouth. Though a wizard apprentice was unlikely to be infected by something that required long-term exposure for even a normal kobold, Tars still preferred to maintain a safe distance.

  The old kobold simply grinned, seemingly finding the whole situation amusing. In a race as indifferent as the kobolds—creatures who were neither human nor as emotionally sincere as beasts—Old Gold-Tooth was both surprised and touched to have three of his kin by his side at the end.

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  As the blood dripped in, the old man's complexion improved visibly. This was exactly what Tars wanted to see: partly to test the blood's efficacy, and partly because he desperately wanted to talk to the old man. Hearing the word "Sun" from a kobold was staggering, and the old man’s articulate—if somewhat rambling—speech was not something a common cave-dwelling kobold should possess.

  Looking back, Tars realized that many things Aiskin knew—like the existence of the Chrysalis-folk—must have come from Old Gold-Tooth. Tars also noticed that the old man really did have a single gold tooth in his grinning mouth, another anomaly that shouldn't exist here.

  While the old man's injuries seemed to heal, the light-threads on his body showed no signs of weakening.

  "Oh ho! Good, very good. This will let me last a while longer," Old Gold-Tooth chuckled. He reached up, plucked a light-thread from his chin, and popped it into his mouth, chewing on it like a blade of grass.

  The threads remained unchanged, but Humph's wound had already begun to close. Tars was no monster; he did not cut him again. It was enough. He pulled the staff away and sat cross-legged on the ground facing Old Gold-Tooth.

  "A kobold who sprouts light-threads shouldn't live until his next hunger pang, should he?" Tars asked, his eyes piercing.

  "Heh heh! A rare kobold sage. You must be the friend Aiskin talks about. Tell me then, how long do you think I've lived? Look at my beard, look at my ears, look at my toes. Even your clever little head hasn't seen what I've seen, and without experience, being clever is useless. I am not like those kobolds who die quickly. I once served a dragon; I was steeped in the dragon's aura..."

  Old Gold-Tooth shifted the light-thread "straw" in his mouth, drifting into distant memories.

  "Mmm-hmm... but it failed in the end. I didn't turn into a Dragon-kin kobold. I stayed small. But my mind grew sharp. I was the smartest in the clan—no, the smartest in the tribe. They sent me to deal with those long-eared Dark Elves. Strong tribes aren't enslaved by elves; the ore we dig must be traded for good things. Dealing with those black-skinned point-ears taught me a lot."

  Old Gold-Tooth looked smug, the "straw" tracing circles in the air. "Things you lot have never seen. Even if I'm not a true Dragon-kin, it'll take more than these glowing bits to knock me down..."

  The terms the old man used made Tars's heart skip a beat. Aiskin sat nearby listening, while Humph, weakened by the bloodletting, leaned against the wall and rested his eyes.

  The old kobold looked into Tars's eyes, as if searching for something. "Did you know? Even the weakest Dragon-kin lives a long, long time. They live through countless hungers. They aren't even weaker than those dusky point-ears."

  The old man used his straw to point at the curled-up Humph. "This big oaf has the scent of a Dragon-kin, but it's weak... very, very weak. I could only sense it by drinking his blood. He must have eaten something touched by a dragon. But true Dragon-kin blood doesn't have this magical healing... A pity the portion was too small. He missed his chance. He failed, just like me. If I had been that strong when I was young, I surely would have succeeded."

  Seeing the hunger in Tars's eyes, Old Gold-Tooth added, "Not you, though. Definitely not you. You're too scrawny. A scrawny kobold means your latent dragon blood is too thin. Even if I stuffed you behind a dragon's backside and buried you in dragon dung, you wouldn't succeed."

  Tars opened his mouth but wisely chose not to argue. Instead, he asked the question that had been bugging him: "Why won't you eat the bug meat?"

  To refuse easily obtained food was a direct violation of kobold instinct. To starve oneself was more than just a matter of taste.