Book 2, Chapter 2 - No Rest For The Wicked, No Peace For The Weary (Patreon)

Decided to bang out another edited chapter before today's fresh one! See y'all again sooooon.

___________________________________________________________________________

Many who have not traveled far in the breadth of the third ring or interacted with some more major Imperial cities may not have met some of the different ranks and roles of the Empire’s worthy. In one’s day to day life, most will never see a member of the Emperor’s Guard, much less a Researcher or Builder of the Divisions, but recognizing them is not a particularly challenging feat. Only those working directly for the Empire are permitted to wear white and gold, making this an easy way to identify them. Additionally, they are often equipped with golden artifacts that appear different than what can be produced in the third ring, possessing a sleekness and complexity to their construction that only the most talented artisans could ever hope to match. Finally, you may know them by their cultivation- to serve the Empire is to be empowered by the Empire, and all those who serve directly are granted a sliver of the golden splendor of the Emperor itself.

-Primer on travelling abroad in the Empire, freely available at all post offices and Imperial management centers

_____________________________________________________________________ 

“You are to keep all limbs attached at all times,” Maen tells her in as commanding of a voice as she can manage. “You are not to let yourself bleed out. You are absolutely not to remove all your skin, and I swear if I find an organ out of your body one more time I’m going to pour shampoo and vinegar on it, do you understand me?”

Raika smiles. “Yes, mother dear,” she says with a chuckle she doesn’t quite feel. “Still don’t understand why you’re making such a fuss about this.”

“If you’re going to be dragging me around, and no one here kills me, then I have a right to basic, common decency,” Maen hisses, “and I consider it basic common decency that if I can’t stop you from doing terrible things to yourself you at least don’t do anything so gross I have to puke.”

Raika looks down at her leg and the square chunk of skin she’s cut out from it. Then back up at Maen. Then back down at the perfectly natural and normal sight of exposed tendons and muscle and veins, reflecting off of the knife in her hand hovering over the wound. 

It’s only been a few weeks, but Raika thinks back to the meek yet adventurous servant girl she met in the purple something-or-other sect and reflects that she misses her. 

“Ok,” Raika says, “that’s entirely fair. But you haven’t puked, and I haven’t removed anywhere close to all my skin, so…”

Maen huffs, stomping her foot. “And you need to find a room for it! Or put up a sign! Or something, so I don’t walk into a room with you looking like a damn medical experiment! At least make some noises or something! I mean doesn’t that hurt?”

Raika shrugs. “Yeah, but not that much. If you pinch off the right… pieces? Like veins but not, they’re way smaller, anyways if you pinch them off you just get a really intense tingling sensation, and I’ve got tons of experience with weird tingling sensations.” She turns to look at Maen again, a cheeky smile placed on her face. “You know, junior sister, if you wanted to hear me making noises, all you had to do is ask.”

Maen just crosses her arm, giving Raika a glare. “You’re doing it again,” she grumbles.

Raika lets the expression come off. Her face, like it always is when she isn’t controlling it, falls to a sort of resting emptiness. “What was it this time?”

Maen sighs, sitting on the bed at the far end of the room. “Still the eyes. Even with how they look now, it’s still… I guess it’s not easy to tell, maybe it’s just that I saw it in the beginning.” She looks over at Raika. “I’d rather you not use it with me. Not when it’s just us. If that’s alright, honored cultivator.”

Raika scoffs, genuinely this time, letting her brain move her face the old-fashioned way. “From cripple to honored cultivator,” she mumbles. “We both know I’m anything but.”

“It’s an official title, I think,” Maen tells her. “At least it’s what they’ve been introducing you as whenever someone asks. The governor’s been sending people every other day now, and it’s what Yun Ka always calls you.”

“I suppose it does come out sounding better than “prisoner”,” she says. “But I wouldn’t exactly call this cultivation. It usually involves some organs I don’t have and a lot less knifework, if I remember correctly.”

Maen shudders at the mention of the knifework, looking at Raika’s leg.

“Sorry,” Raika says softly. She puts the knife down and moves the outer layer back over the muscle, holding it there for a while. In a moment, she’s upped her heart rate to the elevated levels she needs, and eddies of blood flow have begun to push sharp, chaotic fluxes of life energy against the wound.

“How fast has it gotten?” Maen asks, visibly trying to mask her discomfort and, it would seem, genuinely curious. “It used to take at least a day to heal something that big.”

“For something this small?” she asks. “Minutes, maybe, until it scabs over. An hour or two to be gone, if I focus on it and keep the flow there. Feels like it’s been getting faster as my body adjusts.”

“Do you think anyone can do that?” Maen asks. “I mean, force a body to adjust to Qi that way?”

Raika shrugs. “I don’t know. There’s plenty to still figure out, I guess. Good thing we’re in the Division of Altered Cultivation, eh?”

Maen doesn’t laugh at the joke. If it can be called that, which she isn’t so sure about.

It’s ok. Raika doesn’t blame her. It wasn’t really funny.

She still sees the stain in the corners when she’s not ready for it. 

She doesn’t sleep much. When she does, she dreams, only waking up at the moment she sees that massive hand blurring from out of nowhere. 

Then she sees the stain in every shadow.

She shakes her head, Dinking against it softly. She places the tuning fork back down against her chest, letting it hang from the steel chain she got for it.

In spite of everything, her jailor has been entirely willing to accommodate nearly every request. True, she hasn’t asked anything silly like Imperial technique manuals or Thousand-Heart Vitality pills or, say, “going outside”, but everything she’s asked for she’s been given. 

That last one is the most tempting. Even now, with all the riches of a Researcher of the Divisions, it’s all she thinks about. But then, even if she did know how they were tracking her, and could evade the senses of a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator, where would she go? Nothing in the city appeals to her, because why would it? 

And if she did leave, Senior Researcher Taurus “Boriah” made it more than clear that he knows who she’d go to.

Li Shu.

She’s still not sure what would happen if they saw each other now. During their last conversation, Li Shu had told her, with every ounce of confidence and clarity, that Raika did not deserve the pain she’d suffered.

It hurt to hear. She would accept that hurt a thousand times more.

But then she’d proven herself exactly as worthy and deserving of that pain, and more, by dint of her own bloody-minded stupidity and the whims of a world that couldn't care less about the lives of those beneath it.

She got Ji- 

She got him killed, and she deserves pain for that. All the better if she can use pain to become something more, something worthy of avenging him, of making it matter, so that at least it wouldn’t be for nothing.

Li Shu isn’t the only one she has to protect, though.

Whatever her current dynamic with Maen is, her newfound companion doesn’t deserve to be unmade like Ji- like he was, and it would be even easier to hurt her here, in the depths of an Imperial Palace, than it was for him. Li Shu deserves a better life than Raika can provide, one free of the threat of those chasing her or the influence of those who want to use her, but so does Maen, and she can only provide it for the former.

Despite herself, she can’t help but think of others, too. Qen Hou is top of the list; he may be an ass, and they may have never truly been on the same page, but… he’s a good person, and her actions carry weight against him now if she wields them wrong. Rui Ka, the ornery old healer Raika barely knew but who saved her life, who holds a name so ironically like her own. If they go far back enough, maybe even her old sect. Most of them she could do without, but some of them… well, they don’t really deserve to be used as pawns (or sacrifices) to hurt her.

If and when she moves, she’ll have to do it in a way that either separates her from them entirely or makes damn sure they’re safe. If and when they die, she would rather they die from their own choices and their own fates, rather than as a consequence of her stupidity. 

The thought swirl, pulling her in deeper as they always do. Around and around, always arriving at the same conclusion. It’s her fault. She needs to be stronger. She needs to be more. It’s her fault and it needs paying for and it needs consequences and it could happen to others unless she’s strong enough to stop it this time.

A hand touches her on the shoulder, and she snaps back to the present with a jolt and a flinch away from the physical contact.

“Sorry,” Maen says, pulling her hand away quickly but staying close, trying to be a comfort. “You were doing it again. Drifting off, I mean.”

“It’s fine,” Raika tells her for the upteenth time. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here.”

She’s always right here. In herself. Aware of what she is and why she’s here.

“How are you doing, though?” Raika asks, forcefully shifting the conversation. “I doubt you’re finding all that much time to cultivate wasting all your time checking on me and whining about some minor cuts.”

Maen rolls her eyes. “It’s going fine,” she sighs. “It’s easier than I thought, but I’m not really surprised. Maybe my family hasn’t ever had a powerful cultivator before, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my breaking that trend has a lot more to do with the quality of supplies here than anything. I ask for cultivation pills and a room to meditate, I get one.”

“More of the mysteriously appearing things?” Raika asks.

Maen nods. “Still not sure what that’s all about. Still, I haven’t asked for a cultivation method, like you asked. That’s… actually what I was coming to talk about. I was wondering if you could, you know… check in again?”

Raika hums. “Alright,” she says. “Lay down. Move your cultivation a bit. Make sure you push some Qi out whenever you complete a loop, it makes it easier to smell.”

Maen takes a deep breath, nodding before turning to walk over to the bed. There’s still a bit of a taste of adrenaline in the air from her panic at seeing the open chunk of Riaka’s thigh, but she moves steadily and quietly all the same. 

She lays on the bed, and a few seconds after closing her eyes and putting her hands in a meditative grip in front of her, Raika picks up the scent of her in the air, and walks over.

It hasn’t changed much, but it has changed. The scent of Yuzu is stronger now, with the scent of claws fading in only occasionally. Maen completes her first cycling and a small “puff” of Qi escapes, which Raika takes a moment to sniff carefully. The citrusy, tangy scent of the yuzu-fruit seems to be getting deeper, richer, while the other scents fade; added to the citrusy scent is a hint of something medicinal, and a touch of a smell like… grass. Freshly cut grass.

Raika leans in closer, sitting on the bed and leaning in close, eyes closed to let her focus. She can hear Maen’s heartbeat speed up a bit, the sound of it echoing through the ribcage out to her ears, but she does her best to focus past all of the biology, ignoring the gurgling and thumping and pulsing of flesh. 

She takes a deeper sniff, and the heart-rate picks up again, ever so slightly. And yet, as she tries to ignore it, she smells it- the scent of claws, grown and needle-sharp, fluttering up as the heart beats. She makes herself entirely still, letting the scent reach her rather than trying to grab it.

…There. Claws, lightly blooded. Dirt and stone and prey beneath them, proof of a journey, of a hunt. The slightest hint of heat, of sweat, of sharpened edges scraping against the world, of flesh and skin made to slash and coil and cut…

Maen’s heartbeat rises again, and Raika loses the scent. It’s not that it’s not there anymore, but she loses the ability to track its nuance as the yuzu-and-grass scent briefly overpowers it, and a new scent joins the group and makes it all the more difficult to shift her perception around.

She’s started to smell Maen sweating. The smell of her breath and her skin, of her hair from when she shifts ever so slightly. And there’s another scent, too.

She lets her eyes fall open, looking down at Maen as she leans over her and examines her, the felinid’s cheeks turning lightly flushed beneath her gaze.

Raika isn’t an idiot. She’s lost a lot of activities since the Feng-clan cultivator crippled her over two years ago now, but there are some things that are very hard to forget. The look that Maen gives her is one, and it’s one she’s seen in moments like this one before, when she draws close.

And there, in the scent of sweat and cultivation and adrenaline, is something else familiar. Raika can smell her arousal as easily as she can hear her heartbeat, the tiniest hint of it fluttering in the air, muddling the other scents and overwhelming her with information. Whether or not Maen intends to act on the impulse is irrelevant– biology betrays her thoughts loudly enough to make for a distraction.

Maen’s pretty. That is objective fact, though subjectively, Raika knows that she’s attracted to her companion. She’s lithe, soft, just short enough to be on the cuter side with the way she uses her features. Then there’s the way her ears flick when she’s annoyed (or the entirely different way they flick when she’s close to Raika, like this), how her lips move, how her hands are always so steady. 

And whether it’s the desire for connection in a strange place, a need for comfort, or just raw physical attraction, she is visibly, often awkwardly attracted to Raika.

For a moment, she lets herself indulge the thought. Indulge in the idea of reaching out, of touching. Of experiencing that moment of intimacy, that moment free of pain, whatever may come from it. She lets herself wonder what would happen if she let herself…

No.

A shudder runs through her. Revulsion at herself. Panic at the thought. A glimpse of a smiling face and then a stain, reminding her she doesn’t deserve it. 

She sits up, away from Maen.

“I think you shouldn’t use the cultivation aids,” she says, using her will to control her voice rather than trusting it not to betray her. “Your Qi has two scents, and one of them is a lot more… animalistic, maybe. If I had to guess, your family might have some bestial Qi from your bloodline, which may be part of why you haven’t had much luck cultivating. You need to find a way to express your Qi more naturally and all at once. If you really need them, try to get pills designed for someone with a beast-blood bloodline, I’m pretty sure the ones you’ve been taking were designed for purely human cultivators.”

Maen gulps, lets out a breath, nods quickly. “Ok,” she says, closing her eyes for a moment before she sits back up. “Any advice on how to… you know, express my Qi more naturally?” 

“Exercise, maybe,” Raika tells her, standing off the bed and sitting back at the chair next to the knife, slowly. “Physical activity. I sensed it more when your heartrate sped up.”

Maen blushes again, but nods.

“You should also probably ask Taurus,” Raika tells her, voice flat and emotionless.

Maen hesitates. “Are you…”

“Yeah,” Raika says, voice in that same tone. “He practices some kind of bestial cultivation. So long as we’re here, he’s a resource, and for now, neither one of us can be anywhere else. So ask him.”

The room goes quiet as neither one of them speaks for a moment.

“And I think I’d like a bit of space, Maen.”

Maen nods. They’ve had this exchange before. If she does take offense at it, if the dismissal does hurt her, she’s gotten good at hiding it, and Raika has gotten exceptional at making sure she doesn’t look to try and find out. She bows, thanks Raika, and walks back out the door. She’ll probably be back to check on her in a few hours.

Carefully, Raika reaches beneath a plate on the table next to her and pulls out a piece of glass.

The broken mirror stares back at her.

The first one she broke fixed itself when she wasn’t looking. She found a new one, and cracked it, and stayed awake in front of it until whatever strange effect the palace has to fix or remove broken things gave up and let her have it.

The shard is cracked too. It makes her reflection look more accurate.

She picks the knife back up and removes the piece of her leg that was healing.

Work to do.

Everything else can wait.