Book 2, Chapter 9 – Hungry Like The Wolves (Patreon)

It is often a privilege to explore the natural world and to enjoy its many intricate features. While I cannot speak to the most profound depths of its being, the most minute details which allow its possibilities, their consequences, I can say, are well within my purview. As a student and passionate enjoyer of nature in its myriad forms, I have tracked dozens of manifestations, patterns, and unique, distinctive rhythms. There is nothing to nature that cannot be divined by observation, and in this I find one of its highest qualities– nature is always honest.

And perhaps the most honest of nature’s qualities in turn is hunger. 

Spirit Beasts are rare, even amongst the broader wilds of the third ring, but there are none who have not heard of the age-old tale of the Beast Tide. A roving, mindless swarm, a horde of disparate entities all traveling as one with minimal infighting, traveling to destinations often unknown, save that civilization often stands in its way. To those who have not lived through the centuries, the idea of a Beast Tide is a rarity, a distant concept that barely approaches plausibility, but to those with the proper educational background, it’s easy to find records and information on the subject. While the styles of Beast Tide manifestation vary, they universally revolve around the central idea that there is a hunger unsated, which overwhelms even the most fundamental aspects of the relationships of predator and prey, of pack and herd, of swarm and flock. Whether pushed by a Divine Beast into a frenzy, or brought to a near-civilized level of brutality by a Beast Monarch, often referred to as an Apex, or driven mad by the flowing tides of Qi in the world, or brought to blind rage by the presence of nearby cities, a Beast Tide is a formless, near-infinite sea of bodies, all possessing levels of cultivation rarely seen outside of sects. They exist to satisfy that hunger that drives them, be it starvation, rage, or fear, and in this, anything that finds itself in their way may learn firsthand the definition and experience of what experts have sometimes termed a “feeding frenzy”. 

-Academic paper on the nature of anomalous natural patterns relating to spiritual beasts, by Researcher Tal’ Oran of the Division of Research

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Raika is finding it very challenging to have a bad time.

As much as she knows she shouldn’t be enjoying this. As much as she knows that this really isn’t the appropriate reaction or behavior for the situation she’s in, or for the demands she’s made of herself. No, even as much as she knows there’s a very real risk of death, here… she’s just having too much fun.

The part of her that thinks this might be a really, really big problem has learned to properly shut the fuck up. Or, at the very least, has gone quiet enough not to bother her right now.

She spins into a leaping crescent kick, shattering the bones of some feline-ape with incredibly baggy skin which makes every other blow simply slide off of it. She uses it as a platform, jumping off loose folds into the face of something that looks like a deer, if its skin was all antlers, her knee rocketing up into its snout hard enough she hears something crack. She grabs one said antler as a handlebar to swing herself off of, landing right in front of something like a turtle but with far too many legs and pieces that chitter, grabbing it by one such limb and feeling flesh and tendon inside her begin to tear as she uses all available force to fling the thing and ragdoll it violently against the ground, and exposed, chitinous underbelly much more vulnerable and now accessible for her to thrust her hand into like a spear.

In the time she wastes eliminating (or at least wounding) the shelled creature, something kicks her, hard and hooved, and she feels ribs break and start to shift. They don’t disintegrate, though, they don’t shatter like they might have before, and she forces the muscles in her body to react, binding the loose bones in place at the cost of a bit of flexibility on her right side. She lands almost right below something ursine, a towering, violent thing built like a gods-damned house and viciously overmuscled, its skin and needle-like fur barely holding together over a musculature so advanced and full that it looks like it’ll burst apart as the creature moves. It proves that impression untrue as it slams a paw down towards her, a slab of meat pushing forward a seabed of needles.

She rolls out of the way, barely, ignoring the bear for now until she can figure out someplace she can hurt it and launching herself at the next creature, a distinctly humanoid looking goat-thing with six eyes and limbs that split at the elbows for additional hooved hands.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been fighting. She’s torn half to shreds, but she refuses to let the blood leave her body, using her control of her flesh to forcibly stretch her skin and patch over cuts and open wounds, to shift muscles and blood vessels around the damage to keep fighting in spite of it. She looks a mess, her skin jagged with stretch marks and quickly forming new scars, but she doesn’t care, because to stop moving, even for a second, is to die, so anything she has to do to make sure she doesn’t stop moving is worth it.

And it’s such a relief.

The pain is secondary, the wounds are secondary, all she can feel is the thrill of razor blades in her soul, the song of broken bones and torn-open wounds, the fun of the ongoing puzzle that is properly controlling her body to keep the system intact enough to move, to strike at the next target. All she is, in this moment, is a thing of endless abandon and wild, desperate need to survive. 

She doesn’t hate. She doesn’t fear. She doesn’t spend every breath understanding that she deserves to suffer and to die for her failure, for the one she abandoned, for her sin of stupidity. She just goes, as wild as all the other beasts before her. Hunger versus survival. Desperation versus animalistic rage. Joy against predation.

She laughs at the half-dozen Spirit Beasts that have emerged from their hiding, and they roar and groan and bleat and chirp at her in turn.

And on the very edge of it, where she’s pushing towards, she can feel something. Like an approaching signal, like the sound of far away swords clashing, like the scent of something on the wind. She’s getting closer to it.

Every moment she forces her heart to beat, she’s forcing her mangled, malformed Qi into every part of her body it can reach, smashing it against itself, running steel across steel, and in the process feeling it grow. Pushing herself like this, forcing her system to do this or die, forces the production of more energy, her damaged body giving more routes for it to clash against itself. All Qi, when interacting with itself, forms more Qi, albeit in different patterns and flavored with different concepts. Now, with the violence of how she’s forcing her body to move, all of the tingling patches of energy inside of her are being shoved into each other, moved forcefully and dramatically without a care for her well being.

 Cycling Qi, moving it, interacting with it, all increase its value by minute amounts, all allow a cultivator even in isolation to slowly, ever so slowly grow their own Qi and advance. But she is not in isolation, and cannot absorb any of it into storage or shunt it someplace else, and she does not have the luxury of moving slowly. Every bit of Qi she grinds into being has nowhere to go but her flesh, and every moment she continues to overstuff said flesh with more and more of it, the more and more chaotic and damaging it becomes, the more it produces, unable to burst out of her for the ritual scars on her skin or detonate in a nonexistent Dantian.

No, all it does is slowly tear her apart.

Her muscles are being shredded, even without the constant sprinting and striking and dodging, her bones feel like they’re creaking, she’s fairly certain she’s bleeding from eyes, nose and ears, and she doesn’t bother to wonder about what it’s doing to her organs.

She is alive. She is in pain. She is killing things that have come to kill her.

She’s smiling.

All is right in the world.

And then, inevitably, she gets hit.

She has the goat by the horns, arms yanking to forcefully turn its head as she squeezes her thighs around its throat and breaks its neck, and then something strikes her. She thought she was properly tracking the half-dozen Beasts around her, but this one is smaller than the others, and kept its heartbeat stealthy, kept itself hidden as the others moved began their fight. She doesn’t hear it or feel it coming until the rodent-like thing which glows vaguely blue and exudes an aura of cold slices violently across her shoulder and back.

She loses some of the movement in her arm, the violence too severe until she fixes it which takes time that she doesn’t have. Even still, its path takes it across her other shoulder, where she can still reach, and she manages to grab the creature and wring its neck and bite out part of its stomach as it keeps struggling, and goes to move–

And then the bear hits her with a paw like a meat tenderizer, and she feels the entire right side of her stomach turn to fire.

She lands somewhere at the edge of the clearing, the wind knocked out of her lungs and a splatter of crimson marking her landing. Already there are hoofbeats and thudding steps walking towards her, but the distance buys her a second.

Looking down, she can see that her right side has turned to a bloody mess, so many small punctures slammed into her with such force that everything below her ribs to her waist is just a mess of red. It feels hard to breathe, and she can’t help but feel that something is wrong, even as she shifts muscle and skin and forces them both to work together and bind as much shut as they can. If she’s unlucky enough, the thing got deep enough to hit her liver, increased muscle resistance or not. It’ll be very relevant in a few moments; as it is, she directs a cluster of more Qi, a slightly more concentrated ball of the everywhere-agony in her, to sit in the area and forces her heart to keep beating at the same pace as before.

The bear roars, and it doesn’t even sound like an animal. Its roar sounds like a horn, like something mechanized and which reverberates and echoes metallically. The other creatures back off, briefly, the display of what must be its Qi (which she still can’t fucking sense, can’t smell past all the blood and adrenaline and animal-stink) cowing the small army of abominations around them. With a thunderous impact, the creature lands, its needles punching four inches into the dirt with every step and seemingly no discomfort, and it starts to walk over to Raika, ready for a meal.

Raika grabs the nearest tree trunk. She grips it so hard that bark and core-wood both crackle as they shatter into a handhold. She puppeteers her legs back beneath her, forces her spine to stay straight and the strained, failing muscles in her to push her to her feet.

The ursine Spirit Beast looks at her, tilting its head, but it doesn’t stop advancing. The others behind it (the turtle-crab, the many-antlered deer, the fluttering thing in the trees, the half-liquid wolf, the feline-ape with the loose skin) all wait, letting the higher predator take the initiative against wounded prey. She looks at it, her smile blood red and wide.

“Come on then, you gorgeous, piss-ugly fuck,” she hisses, the air leaving her lungs weirdly. “Let’s do this.”

Thunder. Loud enough to make the air in her lungs shudder, to make the leaves tremble, to make the blood on the ground ripple.

In a mad dash of scrambling paws and clicking hooves, the clearing empties. Barely a second after the sound, she’s nearly alone on the battlefield, the animalistic panic driving the Beasts making them scamper like rats, sprinting away faster than she thought most of them could move. In a single heartbeat, they’re gone, their forms hidden once again, the sound and smells of them vanishing back into the woods.

Only nearly alone, though. Two of the Beasts don’t move at all.

She blinks, and is surprised to find that she can see through them. There’s a few neat little tunnels, coming in one side and out the other, like in a line between them, emptying the space of their organs and leaving messy holes through what’s left.

And then the thunder strikes again, and again, and both of the Beasts fall, collapsing limp and leaking crimson and purple blood.

She tries to find the threat, tries to identify the danger. The closest she gets to it is the smell of smoke and a perfumed corpse, and a glimpse of something in the woods. Not where the smell originates, though. 

Two dead, empty little eyes, so recessed into its flesh she’s not sure she’s not just looking at empty pits. A glint of needles in the leaves, far enough away that her enhanced sight is the only reason she catches a glimpse.

For a moment, she smells it. Its Qi. Whatever control it had, whatever instinct it used to keep it completely scent-less, she smells it now, in this moment. Pine-wood and minced meat, the sound of a boulder rolling downhill and the crying of something weak. 

It’s the first time she’s smelled a sound.

She… doesn’t know if she has Qi in the same way that this beast has. Doesn’t know if hers smells like anything other than “alive”, and knows she certainly can’t push it outside her body on purpose. But she flicks her semi-limp hand towards it, letting some droplets of blood get sprinkled in its direction. 

The thunder-sound comes again, three, four more times, and the spirit beasts huffs, turning to run into the woods.

She’ll be seeing that one again.

“What in the ten fucking Hells did you do?” Taran asks as he steps into the clearing.

In his hands are two of the many pistols usually strapped and holstered about his body, each one distinct and dynamically strange. One seems to be a thing of powder and shot, carved from rich, dark wood and inlaid with pieces of opal and obsidian. In his other hand, he holds something like a revolving mechanism, its chamber holding maybe four shots, the whole thing a glistening tool of steel and brass. He looks at Raika at first in what seems to be revulsion, and then immediately fades to worry.

“What the fuck happened here?” he asks, looking around at the pile of corpses on the ground.

Raika laughs, and it sounds a bit too wet to be healthy. She tries to talk, and finds her throat too full of blood to articulate, her tongue partially torn apart from her own gritting teeth. 

For the first time in a while, she looks around herself.

The ground is coated in blood. The corpses of three torn-apart Spirit Beasts lie on the ground, added to by the two Taran just killed. The sun, even at its furthest tendril, is pretty far into the horizon by now. She’s been at this for hours.

She wants to laugh. 

A sob breaks the silence, and Raika immediately turns to the set of roots she left Maen under. The spiked Beast is still draped over the base of the tree, but there’s another corpse stabbed onto it, most of its head mashed to a pulp by repeated blows when it refused to go down by disembowelment. Raika tries to run over to it, but something in her left leg fails, and Taran gets there first.

He tosses the corpse aside, showing startling strength for how little of his Qi leaks out and taints the air with something alchemical. Maen looks up at the two of them, sobbing openly.

“Is it over?” she asks, with barely the slightest hint of yuzu in the air. 

“Yeah, it’s over, I got you,” Taran whispers, putting one of his guns into a holster and kneeling down next to her as Raika collapses next to them both, letting herself simply fall and lay prone on the ground. “What happened?” he asks. “This… Spirit Beasts this weak shouldn’t be anywhere near the town, much less a sect. Taurus alone should be enough to keep them away. And this many at once?”

Raika, whole body shuddering as she lets it free from direct control, tries and fails to shrug. “Don’t know,” she gasps, breath wet and heavy. “Weren’t- weren’t for Maen. Came at me. Wouldn’t stop. One. Then two. Then more.”

Taran turns to Maen, who has been reduced to shuddering rather than sobbing. “Are you hurt?” he asks. She just shakes her head, silent.

Taran lets out a long, deep sigh, pale skin, jangling machine-weapons and all-black clothing marking him as a distinctly alien presence here in the wilds. He looks between the two of them, thinking.

“I can only carry one of you,” he says. “Strength isn’t my forte. But we need to get back to town and away from the wilds, especially if this is going to keep happening.”

“Take Maen,” Raika says immediately. “Take her to safety. Others will be drawn to the meat and death here, she can’t stay.”

Maen goes to say something, eyes wide, maybe to try and affirm that it’s ok, she can walk, but Raika doesn’t let her, reasserting control over flesh and forcing herself to start getting up. Limb by agonizing limb, she starts shifting and forcing new muscle tissues to adapt and reconnect severed links wherever she can, the absolute sea of Qi inside her making her entire body feel numb and sharp at the same time. She can feel every part of her tingling, from the top of her head to the balls of her feet, and everything feels horribly, painfully alive.

“I-” she pauses, forces her breathing under control, rearranges some ribs that fell out of place. “I can’t go back if they are going to attack in numbers like this,” she hisses, getting to her feet. She leans against a tree, leaving a nice bloody stain on it as she does. “I can make my own way. She’s weak. She’s slow. They’ll catch her. I’ll live.”

“But if they’re after you, you’ll get torn apart.”

She smiles, bloody and horrible. 

“There’ll be less, closer to town, right? Runemaster Boriah’s cultivation should at least affect them there, right? I’ll start heading there, and then you all can track their movements better. Study them, or whatever you do. You get her out of here, keep her safe.”

“I–” Maen tries, her breaths ragged. She tries again. “I can be quiet. I can be quiet, and be sneaky, and-”

“You’re slow,” Raika tells her, cutting her off. “Taran. Take her, or I’ll kill myself right here.”

That shuts everything up.

Maen stares at her, her eyes so wide. She smells sour, like panic and fear and horror and worry, and it makes Raika want to vomit.

“I’ll be back for you as soon as I have her back,” Taran rasps. 

“Don’t bother. If I don’t make it back to town in a day, assume I’m dead. Go.”

She can feel herself getting more solid with every word. Reassurance. She is in control. She’s her own, and no one else’s. She decides. 

Some of the blood drowning her leaks out as she opens a lung, holding it closed manually afterwards. Her breathing evens out and her flesh keeps moving, squirming into whatever pattern keeps it most functional the longest.

“I’m not going to leave you to die,” Taran says, his voice smoky and quiet. “You aren’t–”

“Keep. Her. Safe.” Raika snarls. “I’ll be fine.”

There’s silence in the woods for a moment. And then, eventually, Taran nods. 

“No, wait-” Maen tries to protest, still wide-eyed and panicked and barely coherent, but then he has her over his shoulder, leaving the bags where they are. He gives Raika one last look, and then is off into the woods, gun at his side.

She waits until he’s gone. Waits until she can no longer hear or smell him, until he’s far, far away.

The sounds of the forest gradually resume. Without an active cultivator, powerful enough to beat down low level Spirit Beasts (and Heavens damnit, they were weak, she can’t even tell anymore), the woods start to come back to life. Leaves rustle. Birds flutter by. 

Once she’s done putting herself back together enough to walk, she takes a step. Then another. 

She arrives at the nearest corpse. A six-limbed goat-man thing stares blankly at her, its eyes wide and empty.

She kneels down. 

She looks at its nonsensical musculature, its alien flesh and impossible biology so truly and well optimized for violence and survival. So malformed, so well designed, capable and barely functional at once, the mark of an unhealthy or weaker Spirit Beasts.

She leans forward, opening her mouth wide.

And begins to eat.

She’ll need fuel to survive this, and they say spirit beasts have all sorts of properties.

A little part of her says she’s jumping to conclusions. This might poison her worse than Qi ever did, it tells her. Acids and organs and things that shouldn’t be eaten raw all present their own issues, it reminds her. She’s acting borderline mad, it pleads. It’s trying its best to be helpful.

She does not listen to it, and like an animal, like a shifting, terrifying thing of the woods, begins to eat.

And the vague feeling of something drawing closer inside her gets closer still.