Chapter 426 - Ideological, Factional Hate, Obviously (Patreon)

Woooow, what's this? Consistency? Joy? Productivity? My new meds have been absolutely devastating me, but we're still in the first two weeks so let's fucking hang in there. But also- continuing to survive and create is a joy and a success in and of itself! Wahahahahaha! Muahahahaha! Onwards!

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Several of the local sites have attempted to defend themselves. Almost universally, spatially warped corridors, flesh-magics, and unconventional combat doctrines can be found in each individual “node”. The few nodes which have not acted directly against our deployments have consistently been incapable of engaging in dialogue, and have possessed a lower overall quality of resources in comparison to more active locations. Preliminary reports have determined that, while very little core identity or inter-node communication have been confirmed, there are consistent behavioral patterns in every location that have resisted or engaged in hostile action against Clan action.

The current hypothesis based on these engagements is that the primary asset was, in fact, successful, albeit to a lesser extent than was ordered. Primary identity of the target has been shattered, but subdivided, lesser forms have remained active. The target appears to have achieved a higher degree of Replicator-Threat class capabilities than originally anticipated, but not to the point of true or full replication, only enough to sustain malformed, semi-lucid variations of the original target. These lesser variants do not possess the full capabilities of the original, while also providing considerable resources to the group of interest designated “Five Peaks”. These resources have caused considerable political upheaval and economic disruption, but hold the possibility of allowing for a considerable cultural deviation and increase in baseline potency of the Five Peaks. The current mission statement of absolute elimination remains viable and within reach. Resource samples will be redirected to the local forward base and delivered unto the Clan’s researchers for further consideration.

For the glory of the Family.

-Operational report from forward assets of the Clan’s military operation in the Republic of Morae to higher command.

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It is dark in the woods. 

The woods are everywhere. They extend from one part of the world to the next. They whisper into the world that the world is, and should be, nothing but woods. Everywhere and forever, as it should be, the world is overtaken by the woods. 

And it is dark in the woods.

So many shadows. Every trunk, branch, leaf, seems darker than it should be, whatever light makes it through the canopy only increasing the depth of that dark all around. The existence of illumination only exists to heighten the pitch and color of the shades of black that the woods are painted in.

And some of those shadows are alive.

In this forest, there is a fold in space. From that impossibly bent part of what is, blood leaks out in a steady river, and where it lands, the forest’s green becomes tinged ever so slightly with a darker, muscle-like tone. From that shifting coloration, flora and fauna intermingle, blending biologies spawn, piecemeal, and some of them attempt to open eyes with which to see.

The shadow is there. Everywhere. Wherever it wishes to be within the canopy, it exists. 

There is an impulse, a moment, where an eye catches sight of the dark, and feels a memory trigger. A safeguard stutters, only barely avoiding its assigned task, as the memory of strange light from the sky and the attention of hateful infinity slips past it. 

And then the shadow has arrived, and that memory of Tribulation has vanished in the cutting pain of severance and the drowning sensation of the dark.

The fold in space tries to pour its life out into the forest. It warps what is, using what’s grown outside itself to pull at the world to try and open up more space. Spikes of bone and shields of keratin crystal build fortifications around it, and the tower-that-was turns itself into castle and moat to better prepare itself.  

But it’s still under the canopy. So there are shadows. And there’s something in the shadows.

Iridescent shades of shadow carve through her, over and over, bit by bit. No amount of her can truly escape it so long as it’s in the canopy.

But not all of her is in the canopy. Some of her is inside the fold, which is technically very, very far away, even if it’s all right here. The Domain that’s expanded all around it, the world born of a Warrior Realm cultivators madness and weight, can only reach what it can reach. 

It is the whole world inside itself, but there is an outside of itself. 

There are specks of light on the forest floor, but the swaying of the canopy covers them, ever-shifting like sunlight beneath the sea. Flecks of flesh splatter from the annihilation of all that tries to grow beneath the shadows of the great trees above, and they anchor and start to grow- and then the shadows move over them, and they are unmade again. 

Iridescence of Tribulation fills the shadows. Red and Black and Green all intermingle, colors of profound comprehension filling each movement above any others. Violence and Death in Harmony with reality, all turned inward, all a part of a forest that allows nothing to grow beneath its shadow.

She hates it.

Raika suffers beneath the forest’s shadows, and she hates it.

It tickles too many of her safeguards. Even as she’s constantly building work-arounds and forcing herself through different pathways, the old memories keep trying to resurface, triggered by the fear and the pain and the hate. She might not remember the details, but it is not hard to understand that she has been hurt by a Feng before. She-Who-Was has been beneath evergreen shadows before, even if the context was different, and it left such an impression that a hundred overlapping lobotomies aren’t enough to keep the impression of it away, the feeling of it.

She hates it. 

The opening part of the fight is over, though. No more harvested organs she can blindly throw at things, without depth or any sort of complexity. No more excess amounts of Qi to empower everything with, not without destabilizing her interior.

But there is such Pain in her. Flesh and Space, half-conjoined, alongside the agony born from each. And not having excess Qi, for her, doesn’t mean nearly as much. 

Slowly, as the fold in space is worn down and pulled at shadow-by-shadow, the forest begins to ache. 

It’s slow at first, but it gradually gets more noticeable. As Red, Black, Green and iridescent comprehension batter at the ever-reforming shell, the creaking of branches shifting starts to feel a bit more pronounced. The wear and tear of bark-on-trunks starts to bruise. The pumping of sap through fibers starts to sting. 

Pain.

And trees aren’t that far off from Flesh, if you really think about it. 

A “breeze” pushes through the canopy, the moving leaves causing a cascade of light and shadow- and then the forest goes still.

She can taste it. Taste the surprise, yes, but also the physicality of the reaction.

The act of casting shadows hurts. 

A heartbeat has passed since the forest became the world. In that time, a sea of flesh and fortification has grown and been eroded, a thousand attacks flashing from every moving leaf and branch- and now, at the second beat, everything stops. 

The stillness, antithetical to the way the Domain is meant to be used, hurts. 

Both fighters take a moment to judge each other, and come to a very similar conclusion.

In a war of attrition, she’ll win. 

In a war of firepower, she’ll lose. 

Oh she’s got plenty of weapons. Lots of pieces to unleash. But nothing that can take out a Warrior Realm cultivator, not in one hit, not in three. In five, maybe, but by then she’ll have sacrificed major chunks of herself and they’ll have been able to respond at least the one time, while she’s unable to properly move. 

The forest, and the hateful things within it, can’t kill her without wasting too much time.

She, and the lovely things within her, can’t kill it without wasting too much material.

Both are vulnerable.

The third heartbeat arrives.

A flood of musculature spirals out of the fold, building a shell of fibrous flesh, turning it into a bleeding pearl beneath the trees.

In the sky beyond the canopy, a light enters her awareness. 

The shadows all clear away from her, the forest shrieking in pain at the movement, leaving a clear line of fire centered on her and a ring of pitch black surrounding her.

Simultaneously, the ring begins to shrink closed, [Blessed Shadow Dances Beneath Leaves] approaching as the light from above coalesces and descends.

Divine Sky Technique: Droplets From Canopies Beyond

It feels / tastes / smells like a raindrop falling from the branches of a tree so high it might as well be the Heavens.

It looks like a bomb. 

An orb of aquamarine Qi falls from the sky as the divine thing in the shadows carves through the earth. 

It hurts. It hurts the sky to birth this orb, hurts the ground to be carved, hurts the shadows to be moved, but pain is to be endured, even if it slows the horrific harm that’s incoming.

It slows it enough that Raika finishes arranging the shell of muscles.

She clenches.

Space is Space is Flesh is Pain is Flesh is Space. And all the things in between. All the branches of the trees.

The space she is in, quite suddenly, is not the space that the technique or the Soul are attacking. 

She lets go of reality, and it snaps back into place just in time to receive both attacks. 

The trees creak and sway in agony from the backlash, energies that would normally fuse perfectly with the soil of the Domain briefly unbalancing from the agony they’re imbued with. The destructive might of both attacks hit its creator, because she’s somewhere else.

The shadow is also where she is. She’s still beneath the canopy. It’s nearly impossible, moving so much mass and energy through space, and even doing it the other way around isn’t much better- but it is better. 

If she just understands that all things are one, then it makes sense that two things can be the same thing. If Flesh is Space, then Space is Flesh, and making muscle of it allows her to move it. She doesn’t need to move through space when she can just move it around her instead.

The shadow is already carving her apart, taking pieces of the shell- there is nowhere beneath the trees that it will not know where she is. There is nowhere she can hide. 

But she can run. That turns the battle back into one of attrition, which she can win. 

A flood of life-aspected Qi crashes out of her. The grasses and trees scream and writhe as the agony of growth deforms them, altering their forms against their will, and she lets loose a few hundred gallons of blood to make sure that the effect sticks. 

And then she clenches again, and she’s somewhere else.

Divine Sky Technique: Shaking Boughs Rain Waters Down

The aquamarine orbs are different this time, more condensed, flying even faster than before but less powerful. They fire like one of the machine rifles on the Wall, a rattling apocalypse of falling “rain” making the trees tremble. 

But all she has to do is clench, and she’ll be somewhere else. 

The shadow keeps carving through her, bleeding her constantly, but that’s to her benefit. Sure, it breaks through every piece of armor she makes and forces her to burn through a massive amount of Qi to sustain herself, but it can’t kill her. She’s not in it enough for that, no matter how it apes the memory of Heaven’s judgement- and she’s survived that before, too.

Her heads hurt. Her brains keeps trying to kill themselves.

She purges the ones that die and keeps the ones that survive, and she keeps going. 

“This does nothing but drag out your execution, beast!” roars a worthless bastard piece-of-shit floating up in the sky. “You cannot escape me, and even if you could, my companions would unmake you just as surely as I will.”

She doesn’t bother responding.

She clenches, and this time, she’s right next to him.

The sky and the ground are not separated by distance. Not only by distance, anyways- the properties of the Domain establish that in this place, the sky and the ground below are two alien concepts, entirely distinct.

But she’s not really traveling from one place to the other. One place becomes another place. Earth becomes sky.

The rainfall of Qi-artillery immediately turns to her location, thousands of detonations coming from between the screaming trees as their aim shifts. 

She clenches again, and the Feng audibly gasps from the weight of the blood that splashes on him.

It’s enough to knock him back, its ontological weight meaning more in this space. It’s not enough to knock him out of the sky, but that doesn’t matter- it splashed him.

He roars. 

“Beast! Disrespectful abomination! You dare-”

Clench. Flex. Clench. Flex.

One place, then another, then another, then another. 

All the world is this forest while within its bounds, but she bleeds enough to drown it all.

Flesh is Space is Pain is Flesh. 

The fight hasn’t lasted more than a few moments. Less than a minute, and in that time, the shadow has never stopped unmaking her, and thousands of attacks have landed in the forests. It is starting to fray, the edges of it getting blurry- Pain makes even the existence of this place hard to maintain, and she’s filling it with blood and Flesh, and it keeps bombing itself, because she’s within it and above it and below it. 

War of attrition. If the fold gets undone, if she’s forced into the forest properly, it’ll be the end of her, but in the meantime, the constant attacks are the best it and its wielder can do. 

And the attacks are getting closer. They get more accurate, sharper, as the Feng gets better at predicting her movements. 

Finally one of the raindrops clips the edge of her, liquifying and melting the flesh around the spatial fold on contact. It slows her just enough that when she next pulls space, a second one hits, carving out another chunk even as she regenerates.

She can almost taste the confidence.

The Feng’s Qi moves, the shape of an invisible, greater tree above and the ever-shifting canopy below conjoining. 

Divine Sky Technique: Endless Rainfall

Every droplet of “rain” coalesces back together, all of it falling inward at her.

The Domain explodes into a flurry, branches shrieking as they throw every bit of themselves in the air. A billion leaves cast a billion shadows in every direction, and [Blessed Shadow Dances Beneath Leaves] is where she is and everywhere she can be.

That’s fine. All within expectations, and-

The Feng coughs up a bit of blood. She can feel his Flesh rebel, convulsing as he pulls at something beyond his capacity with every ounce of himself. 

Feng Clan Hidden Technique: I Beseech Of You A Branch

The Heavens above shift as the impossible tree, infinitely beyond them, stretches a single, languid branch down towards the earth.

Well. 

That adds a layer of difficulty.

She’ll have to trust that she’s done enough.

And if she fails, then she’ll just have to turn every life inside of her and every piece of Flesh and Space and Pain into the biggest explosion she can manage. Which should be pretty fucking big. 

She flexes a very different set of muscles in a very different part of herself. 

She has drenched this forest in her blood, and her blood is more than just vital fluids. Sometimes her blood has things inside of it. 

Amidst all of the agony she’s inflicted with her Dao of Pain, the forest and the thing it hides inside couldn’t even tell when she made other changes to it. 

The Feng’s body convulses for a very different reason this time, as the infection in him starts to take hold.

A swarm of billions of tiny, biting mouths all bite down at once. Having eaten up a considerable amount of the forest while it was busy screaming in agony, they’ve been reproducing, multiplying, getting heavier. [Blessed Shadow Dances Beneath Leaves] unmade a good amount of it, but beneath leaves is not inside trunks, is not inside branches and bark and sap. 

The forest floods with multiplying crimson, the leaves thrown up into the sky and leaving the trunks bare and the soil lit, even if only faintly. 

Infinite blood begins to consume the world in a frenzy of Flesh, and the Feng, at last, breaks composure and screams. 

And then the branch comes down, and Raika puts everything she has and everything she’s eating into trying to survive.