Book 2, Chapter 6 - Raika Vs Wild (Patreon)

Another modified chapter title! Some pretty deep edits in this one, had a hell of a time reworking some of this!

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To no one’s surprise, the wilds are dangerous.

Yeah, things are better around the big highways and the big cities. Empire makes sure of that. Everywhere else, though? Yeah, there’s still beasts out there. There’s still woods that’ll turn you inside out if you don’t honor them properly. There’s still groves where the old dead don’t rest, or a hidden cave with a cultivator’s poisoned old corpse still lies bubbling, or natural illusions that hide chasms and don’t let anyone hear your screams. The wilds aren’t safe. They’ve never been safe. Killing off most of it didn’t change that.

That’s right, most of it. You think it’s bad now? We have records. I’ve got stories passed down six generations. Used to be that you could farm where you could farm, and everywhere else, you died, and sometimes you died on the farms too. What we now call the third ring used to mostly be wildlands and sects and the occasional safe patch where cities and towns popped up. Nowadays we’ve got highways connecting everything, we’ve got Imperial Guards on patrol now and then, we’ve got post offices, and yeah, sure, Empire’s probably better for us than not. But the wilds are dangerous. They’ll kill a little kid like you as easy as look at you.

-Member of the local Hunter’s Union speaking to a child bearing the mark of claws and fangs

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(jumping to the woods, but make sure there’s a portal to the palace later, Raika’s new familiarity with her enhanced senses letting her see the servants in the Palace)

It’s an agonizing breath of fresh air, to be out in the woods after all this time. Weeks in a windowless room, a little over two months in a Palace with the natural world stuck on the wrong side of windows and balconies, and two years living on a campus and in filthy streets before that. For the first time in what feels like an eternity, the air tastes free and moving and wholly its own.

And oh is it full of scents. Raika hadn’t realized just how enhanced her senses have become, exceeding what she had assumed was the norm by a full degree. Where before it seemed natural that she’d basically know what food was prepared long before she left her room to search for it, now she knows just how ridiculous that is, especially with her newfound knowledge that the air in the palace, for whatever reason, was always so still. Compared to the wilds, it’s basically a dead zone of mild perfumes and milder breezes.

Here, she can sense all of it. The smell of something furred and its droppings more than a hundred feet away, the scent of a dozen trails where animals have traveled, the smell of beasts she recognizes and many, many more she doesn’t. She can smell the birds flying overhead, where they’ve placed their nests, where the nearest source of water is, where the nearest big deposit of stone might be… frankly, it should be overwhelming, but without counting the tingling in her nose and right behind her eyes, she feels perfectly fine, tracking more scents and more nuances than anyone she’s heard of. 

She hears a fresh twig break, and turns to look back the way she came.

Glimpsed between the trees, about two miles behind, Maen steps on another twig.

Raika holds herself very still, putting her entire attention towards her distant companion. Slowly, other sounds start to fade away, the rustling of leaves and branches and bushes and moving mice and worms and birds all fading, bit by bit. And then… ba-bump. Ba-bump.

It takes focus, and it takes time to clear away all the other noises, and it’s hard to pick out precisely.

From almost two miles away, she can hear the blood in the felinid woman’s veins.

She exhales, letting go of the focus and breathing again. Then, she waits. Slowing her pace down as much as she can is agony, but at least until they make camp, she can’t leave Maen entirely behind, and the other woman is only beginning her journey into transformation. There’s a tension of freshly forged muscles and altered physiology that begs to be used, and she can feel her hand clenching and unclenching as she wears the impossible flesh she has crafted as a suit of armor.

All this in just a few months. Imagine what she can do with a year. Two. Ten.

And that’s just if she keeps working on her own. In truth, part of the excitement she’s feeling is the possibility of finding a spirit beast out in the proper wilds that she can take inspiration from. Other animals help too, and she’s made a note of where some scents intersect to try hunting there later, but finding another creature whose power flows from their bodies and Qi-altered anatomy is high on her list of priorities.

The sun writhes overhead, halfway to its zenith, and she squints at the distant shadow to the southwest. They’re only a day’s travel by flight from Paleblossom City, still almost a week away from the next closest city but probably another day or two away from the deep wilds that hold the real dangers. And all of that, just in a corner of the third ring, which is itself only the outermost edge of the Empire.

Through the trees, she glimpses that distant peak that’s always visible in the day, no matter where one is in the Empire.

The first ring. 

The Spear of the Emperor. The Imperial Plateau. The Golden Heartland.

You could fit a hundred hundred cities the size of Paleblossom atop it and still have room to do another hundred of that. It’s months away, even by flight using artifacts, and even still its shadow can sometimes be glimpsed, its shape standing taller than any cloud. The sun, on its daily trail across the sky, rests directly above it, and the plateau is so high that it is only a few scant miles between it and that ball of ever-shifting shapes, leaving the land right around the plateau in shadow at highest noon.

And where its shadow lies is the second ring. In an ovoid shape from the high north to the high south, it takes up a few hundred thousand kilometers on its own. Where the shadow of the Empire’s throne touches, the greatness of the Empire prospers. Cities that could take up whole provinces, magics and artifacts that are the envy of any third-ring sect, more people than Raika can count. Only out beyond that does the third ring even begin, ending only at the far-off Wall of the Empire, blocking out the madness and horrors of the fourth ring and the barbarians and beasts that attempt to invade from it. Still, even there, the Empire extends, finding conquest and safety within the Emperor’s most recently conquered lands, still squirming and unruly beneath its boot.

The third ring is tame in comparison to the fourth, sure, but that’s like saying a fire is more tame than a volcano- both can burn flesh just fine. Deeper in, where the second ring lies, there are carefully bred and selectively hunted treasured animals and bloodlines to be found, curated with its divine stags and majestic, but they’re… if not safe, then at least predictable. Here, in Raika’s homeland (if quite a ways further north than she’s ever gone before), there are still monsters aplenty.

The thought reminds her of another monster she is trying hard to forget.

How much of what Taurus said is a lie is yet to be determined. How much he can be trusted to keep his word, equally nebulous.

But one does not condense and then discard an entire droplet of liquid Qi, while right on the edge of an advancement into a new realm, for a simple lie. And one tends not to discuss treason against the Empire for the sake of tricking some lowly semi-prisoner. All signs, in this case, point to either Raika being as important as he says she is, or his plan being just as true as he claims, or, more terrifyingly, both. If it’s a lie, it’s a masterful one made at the cost of a suicidal risk and waste of resources. If what he said is true, then… she’s not sure.

But it’s enough for now. And if it means that he trusts her just the tiniest bit more, and that she can stay close enough to rip his throat out when the time comes, all the better.

He made clear that she could slip the leash if she chose. If he’s telling the truth. And even if he is, he’s right– it won’t end him, and it’ll leave her on the run from far greater powers.

Whether or not it can be escaped, the chain chafes, and she can feel her Truth straining.

I Am Me, I Am Mine, she had said. A proclamation unto existence, one that resonates deep inside her core and has allowed her to transform herself and survive.

She is herself, but herself is in flux, its foundations unsteady, and she is as much her own as she is his, if only barely. She doesn’t know what will happen if her Truth continues to be worn down, and she hasn’t asked yet, but soon she’ll have to, if only to understand the risks being taken.

In the meantime, she plans to strengthen it, and herself, as much as she can on this little “outing”.

The moment they landed in town, she was off. The journey wasn’t all that bad; turns out, Imperial soldiers get the short end of the stick way more often than one would assume with all the fancy propaganda and golden armor. Whatever artifact they use to fly, it highlights their armor in strains of neon yellow and even more gold, until they glow like they’ve been traced out with miniature suns, and, clad in that impossible power from whatever runic arrangement or arcane tool they’re given, they got to act as glorified oxen. Turns out, a couple Imperial soldiers can fly a carriage just as easily as four horses can pull one. 

Flight is infinitely faster than walking, but even with the added speed it didn’t feel worth it. Raika couldn’t help but feel like some kind of caged animal, sitting in a closed, reinforced traveling box with most of the others. It had been bigger on the inside, which had been fun for the first few hours, but then a lot more hours went by, and it got a lot less fun.

The town seemed quiet. The sect, whatever they call themselves (she didn’t bother to find out) seemed to keep to itself, though they did provide a welcoming ceremony to those who stayed when Raika dashed off. They’d landed in the dead center of town, drawing plenty of attention to themselves, but with Kaena in charge no one looked anywhere but where they wanted them to look. Taran had wandered off nearly immediately, strolling out into the nearby streets while grumbling to himself under his breath. Every now and then he’d sigh and correct his posture as he walked, which she’s pretty sure was Hao Kai’s doing. She’s still not sure what the deal with that is, but… maybe someday she’ll be interested enough to ask. 

In a few moments, he’d been gone into the town, drawing plenty of attention his own way as well. She followed his example, and, carrying a bag of basic camping supplies (a waterskin, bedroll, flint, jerky, and a knife) she’d set out, Maen right behind her, her own bag overstuffed to nearly triple Raika’s.

And now… here they are. And here she is.

Ah. And there Maen is.

Staggering around a tree, the felinid bends double, her arms braced on her knees. “If I’d known,” she mutters darkly, “that escaping with you… would entail this much running in the woods, I might have stayed with the damn sect.”

“You used to be ever so polite, Maen,” Raika chuckles, “even when you thought you were being insulting. Whatever happened to that genteel tongue?”

“It’s stuck in a body that’s been walking for six hours through this damned wilderness! I don’t know if you heard some racist bullshit about beast-bloods, but I personally am nine in ten parts human at least, and humans in the Qi-Gathering Realm can’t just sprint over the treetops!”

“More’s the pity,” Raika smiles. “I hear it’s good for your heart. And your ass.”

“My ass is plenty fine,” Maen grumbles, cheeks heating as she realizes what she said. “I mean, it’s- ugh. Are we stopping here?”

Raika shrugs. “Yeah,” she says. “You are, anyways. We’re decently far from the base of the mountain and the village, and there’s a stream not too far away. We can start searching from here, probably.”

“What about you?” Maen asks. “Not going to help me set up camp?”

“Is it not the honored junior’s task to perform the more trivial duties?” Raika asks with a slight smile, pretending it’s real. “Besides, you’re the one who brought triple supplies.”

“Only because you didn’t even bring a tent!”

“You’re a cultivator now, aren’t you?” Raika asks. “Camping under the stars is one of the great joys of life. You get used to it.”

“Doesn’t answer what you’re going to be doing,” Maen mumbles.

Raika looks at her, not needing her control over her flesh to give her a toothy grin. It’s smaller than it used to be, all her smiles are, but it’s close to genuine nonetheless.

“I haven’t fought anything properly in almost two years,” Raika tells her. “I intend to find the nearest beast and see what it is I can do with all this new strangeness of mine.”

“Oh,” Maen mumbles. “You… really are still a cultivator, aren’t you?”

“In some of the ways that matter, I think.”

Maen nods. “Fair enough. Well… you should probably head towards the river, right? Upstream? You can probably find something there.”

Raika cocks her head. “Why do you think so?”

Maen shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. “It just… feels like the kind of place a predator might go? Especially with the wind the way it is, heading upriver?”

Raika blinks. She hadn’t even noticed, but it’s true, and it makes sense. But… she looks again at Maen, the younger woman starting to unpack her supplies and sit down on an exposed root to rest.

“Maen,” she asks, “if you had to guess where the nearest large creature is, right now, where would you point to?”

Maen hesitates, looking up at Raika in confusion. When she sees that her would-be mentor is serious, she frowns, and starts to concentrate. At first, Raika can smell only something herbal and citrusy, but then, slowly, a growing hint of that sharpened, wild smell from before starts to peek through.

“Maybe… maybe that way?” Maen says, pointing a bit off to the right from the stream. “I’m not sure, though.”

Raika gives her a soft smile and shrugs. “As good a direction as any,” she says, and starts running that way.

And then, about fifty feet from where she started and barely over the stream proper, she’s tackled to the ground.

She doesn’t sense its presence. She doesn’t smell it, or hear its heartbeat, or see it shifting. Her enhanced senses, through lack of training or some unknown factor, simply did not tell her there was something there.

But it stands above her, and it roars.

That’s when she smells it. Raw meat and delicious, dripping blood and glorious freshly grown steel, the smell of a predator, the smell of Qi. The beast had smelled like the forest, wrapped in Qi so tightly that it almost reminds her of a technique. It had hidden itself upwind, blending into its surroundings, natural camouflage disguising its shape. It’s only now, as its teeth bear down towards her and its claws begin to tear into her stomach that she sees the green and black coloration, the bright, brilliant white teeth, the twelve glistening, bulbous black eyes. It stands over her, close to a ten times her weight, and she can feel the intensity of its Qi on her skin, rippling like a heatwave along her flesh as its claws start to break through into her organs.

Maen screams. The beast snarls and the sounds of wet tearing and biting fill the clearing.

And then Raika punches its ribs so hard that the crack of breaking bones echoes.

The beast yowls and stumbles backwards, limping back and wheezing at a collapsed lung as Raika, bloodied and clawed and barely wounded by her standards, gets to her feet, crouching animalistically, teeth bared in ecstatic joy at the suffering so deserved, the adrenaline so desired, at the sight of the worthy thing she gets to kill.

“My turn,” she snarls, and launches herself forward.