Chapter 499 – Well First Of All, How Fucking Dare You (Patreon)

Wow, it was actually way easier than I expected to get back into the high-concept shit. This slice-of-life break has really enriched this particular broth, methinks. Also, we gotta celebrate on the next one! Five hundred chapters??? Crazytown shit

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Errath, Errath, it’s fine. Tell your mistress whatever you like, but she already knows. Seriously, this is a bit too much panic for the circumstances. Yes, I know this is a breach, I know that it hasn’t happened in some time, but these things happen. They’ll be re-contained shortly. I wouldn’t be surprised if they come to us of their own volition, actually. Besides, this buys us a moment. If we’re not repressing that one, we can redirect some focus otherwise. There are monarchs aplenty in our vaults that could use a refresher on their containment. Turn your focus to that. Leave the big mess to the adults, hmm?

–Words scrawled by Grandmaster Errath in a moment of fitful vision, translating the higher message delivered unto him from his superior.

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Raika’s minds race, all of them joining on the same track. There are a few major projects that need constant supervision, but even they are put on pause as she turns the entirety of her being towards a singular purpose, staring down at Chen Tai. 

Beasts tend to change faster than humanoids. Most of them don’t have the advantages and flaws of the humanoid frame, able to walk within moments of being born or months at most, and their periods of puberty are often considerably faster. In a world where immortal entities are the most notable beasts around, having lived for hundreds or thousands of years, it’s easy to forget that the average animalistic entity usually lives a faster, shorter life than most human-centric people. 

All of this is to say that Chen Tai is seven years old.

She’s maturing fast, as all beasts do, but slowing down that exponential maturation is a big chunk of why Raika invited her to West Laketown. Helping her manage her biology, grow her mind while she still has childlike adaptability, and protecting her from harsh realities and dangerous creatures: these and more are Raika’s purpose with Chen Tai. 

Chen Tai is at the biological equivalent of early adolescence. She is also, in so many ways, still a child. Little. Soft and joyful and unaware of so much. Her breakthrough should be a moment of profound joy and exploration, of transformative benefit to her. 

And someone is taking that away.

All seven identities within the identity of Raika turn and act as one for the first time in a very long time. Raika, Pillar, Rai Ka, Ariak, Kai Ra, Effigy and Flame, joined in purpose. 

Both of Raika’s eyes burst. The blood in her veins boils instantly, then turns to steam exuding from her pores. Her skin catches fire and her bones break as twitching violence moves through her muscles. Everything is healed almost instantaneously, but all of her is here, in this mortal shell not designed for demigodhood, and it shows. 

Chen Tai’s eyes widen, fear in them, but Raika watches it all in slow motion. Operating at almost a thousand times normal speed, she expands, the steam of her blood acting as a conduit for her power and allowing her to manifest hundreds of different eyes, looking at Chen Tai from every angle at once. Some of the eyes glow with impossible starlight, multiple Souls staring out from them at once and seeing things on a level above base conceptual magics. Some of them are black cuts in the fabric of the world, oozing necrotic rot that is not of Death, tracking the End of every moment and particle at once. Crystalline analytics and mechanical organization calculate patterns and track datasets, comparing millions of memories to each other at once through multifaceted, lens-like organs. 

Behind it all is the furnace of Plasma, of Flame, of ENeRgY, multiplied exponentially through different forms, powering all of it right alongside a beating Heart and a roiling [STAR]. 

Beneath it all, the inverted mirror of herself absorbs every useless, dead-end thought, inverting them into a reverse-world and comparing them to what might be in a nonsensical paradox, giggling all the while. 

Raika’s heart beats, and the force and meaning of that act threatens to burst her mortal body like a balloon. She holds together anyways, even as her blood jets out in pressurized, vaporizing steam that ignites the forest around her in strange hues. Her mind is literally melting out of where her eyes used to be, overheated to the point of liquefaction, but she has too many more minds to care, not when she has this to worry about.

She reaches forward with hands that do not exist and magics that do, carefully keeping track of every single missing protein and concept being pulled from Chen Tai’s transformation. 

NO

Intent roars through her, denial so complete that the world around her briefly stutters, frozen by her refusal. 

Something (I) turns its attention to her. 

It was willing to overlook a lot. Live and let live, when nothing major was happening, let everything build to the real fun later. But if she’s going to be flexing this hard, well, how can it not respond?

The world begins to change as the closest thing to a god in this world reaches for her and her kid. In the chemistry of the air, the meaning of all the Qi around them, in the very definitions of what is and is not, things begin to turn against her.

She doesn’t care. She’ll deal with it later, parts of her already spinning up prepared countermeasures and her more dangerous tools. She has to do this right now instead.

Her all-self connects to the array beneath the lake one one-millionth of a second after everything began happening and activates it. 

For a moment, a bubble forms. No thicker than one made of soap or water, powerfully and precisely tailored to one singular purpose.

Isolation.

A vacuum forms inside the Emperor’s Domain, manifesting for approximately twenty feet around Raika’s body and Chen Tai. 

Friction

Two forms of reality, two definitions of existence, suddenly rub up against each other. There is a scream that is a musical note that is reality itself being burned along the lines of the sudden conceptual vacuum. Some of the nearby plant-life shudders and transforms, becoming things that make no sense and gaining traits that don’t normally exist. 

Raika doesn’t care. She lets sub-minds deal with minimizing the consequences, controlling the ripples of her actions, and focuses on her disciple, the child she’s responsible for. 

Carefully, she reaches inside Chen Tai. 

The sudden void of the Emperor’s presence has briefly stopped the process of stealing Chen Tai’s advancement, but the effects persist. There are pieces missing now, things moved out of order, parts of her that have been non-consensually worsened. 

In a layer beneath reality, Akiar reaches out of Raika and starts pulling away the spaces between the things that have been moved and where they’re supposed to be.

Rai Ka pulls on [PERFECTED ARTISTRY OF FUNCTION] to shape the perfect tools and acts to work on the problem. [JUDGEMENT IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS] sees the change and judges it unworthy, weakening its hold on Chen Tai, biting at metaphor and tearing at definition. [PLASMIC STAR] empowers every aspect of her at once as the Heart guides her with instinct to understand what needs to be done. 

As Pillar and Effigy both calculate and design the changes necessary, Raika, crying tears of pinkish grey matter, reaches out to touch Chen Tai, gently running her hands through her fur. 

“It’ll be ok,” she says, a thousand-thousand times slower than the rest of her so that Chen Tai can hear her. 

In the time it takes her to speak, she’s grabbed hold of some of the billions of changes that the Emperor caused in Chen Tai’s body. 

Even with all of her working like this, even with every part in sync, it’s still almost impossible. The complexity of a living body is so complex as to be nearly incomprehensible, especially all at once and this fast. And Chen Tai was mid-transformation, so returning her to what she was before is unforgivable. Raika has had a lot of practice, and she can do it, but it would take time, and have mistakes. 

An iridescent halo, shaped like monstrous jaws and sharpened fangs, starts biting at seemingly nothing. Half a world away, Kai Ra uses her Halo on FATE, biting through and devouring the pathways of the future that promise failure. Even as the Halo starts rapidly shrinking, she continues devouring, ripping away the future itself. 

The future, shaped white and gold and starting to get annoyed, pushes back, ever so gently. 

Kai Ra, ENDless but not Deathless, briefly gets vaporised. 

It’ll take a few milliseconds to rebuild herself, but she’s done her part. 

Every protein is put back where it’s supposed to be. Cells are shaped properly, the alterations to their organelles pushed back into place. The catalysts for incredibly complex cause-and-effect chains are unmade. One by one, thousands at a time, Raika CHANGEs back what was being done to her disciple.

And in the void of the array’s effect, she finds the parts of reality that obey that bitch on a throne and cuts them out. Conceptual surgery goes right alongside the cellular manipulation, and Akiar in particular grabs hold of the Law that the Emperor used.

It’s an impossibly complex thing, but it manifests to her as a sort of sculpture, its angles impossible and ever-shifting. It’s not made of anything so simple as language or physiks, nevermind just Intent, but by devouring it away, she gains and shares some understanding of it.

[Empower And Enlighten The Beasts Of All]

Inverted back into reality, it would be [Weaken and Suppress The Beasts Of This Land]. 

It’s not something she can use. It feels almost too big for Akiar to even digest, forcing Raika to feed that part of her more of herself to ensure her Daemon doesn’t get too unbalanced. But by feeling it, she understands it. 

In the Empire, there is a rule that all beasts are made less than they should be. Less than what they build themselves into or would become. And it is not the only one– there are other rules, other things that are true in the Emperor’s Domain that are so subtle and so profound that she can barely see them, even with something to compare them to. 

It doesn’t matter yet. That can be for three seconds from now. For now, she has work to do. 

She doesn’t just have to understand how Chen Tai is, but how she would be had her breakthrough not been interfered with. It’s an incredibly complex operation, going from cell to cell, fiber to fiber, throughout her disciple’s entire body. On another layer, she’s rebuilding the ways that Chen Tai’s concepts have been messed with, her definitions, arguing against / into reality with Intent and Souls who her disciple actually is, not what her existence was just defined as by another.

It’s the single most complex, intricate and complete act of magic Raika has ever performed. It almost destroys her mortal form, which has started to melt entirely, muscles and organs and all. Things are bursting out of her, mortal-tier biology, no matter how enhanced, not equipped for the level of power suddenly moving through it. She is a pinhole through which a flood roars, pressurized and squeezing past the distant concept of the Wall which separates the Empire from everything else, and a significant part of the work is just keeping herself together. 

But she does it. Because of course she does. 

She is Raika. Blessed, broken, burning, dead and undying, alien and human, and fuck the Emperor for touching her daughter, for trying to distort her future. 

She checks once. Then again. Then a third time. 

Every change reverted. A single operation on a single body that’s cost her oceans of Qi and stored resources, and which she’d do again in a heartbeat. 

Chen Tai’s expression is still only partway into fear and surprise. The words coming out of Raika’s mouth have only just begun.

The next few seconds are taken up by slowing herself back down, purging or repairing the brains and biology she’s melted with the heat of her efforts, moving the parts of herself that are here now back out past the Wall. All in all, by the time she’s done, the words are only halfway out, and she comes back to “realtime” at the same moment that they end.

“It’ll be ok”, she hears herself say, her flesh restored, the air flooded with blood turned to steam nearly turned to plasma. 

There are still tracks of brain matter flowing down her face like tears. 

Chen Tai starts to breathe faster, starts to panic, and Raika holds up her hand, running it over her disciple’s head and through her fur. 

“It’s Ok,” she says, Intent filling the words. Truth. No lies. 

The array flickers around them, and existence floods back in, the formation collapsing without active empowerment. 

Raika instantly feels the gaze of that bitch on its throne. Annoyed, but amused. Present, as it always is, but moreso now, here. As if saying “oh, we’re doing it like this?”.

Yeah, she thinks to herself and the bitch that’s listening. Fuck with her kids, and we’re doing it like this. 

“Master, are you–”

“I’m alright, Tai,” Raika says, little bits of Intent coloring the words. “I had to fix something really quick. Everything’s going to be ok. You’re alright.”

“Was it something I did?”

Raika’s heart aches at the question, warm and sad at the same time.

“No, kiddo. You didn’t do anything wrong. Not one thing. You did even better than I thought you would, you did so well. Something else happened, and I dealt with it. No problem.”

It’s a strange and heartwarming sight, seeing the big lizard-cat-puppy start to tear up. Raika can see Chen Tai’s claws flexing, her entire body on alert, but the animal instinct for fight-or-flight is tempered by her trust in her master and the overwhelming new emotions she’s still figuring out. 

Raika opens her arms for a hug. 

Slowly, gently, Chen Tai nuzzles into her, so terribly warm. 

Raika knows every cell of her kid. Every aspect of her definition. The insight is terrifying, overwhelming, down to the very concepts of Chen Tai’s ontology. But right now, this is a scared kid that Raika is responsible for, and someone who needs a moment of care. So that’s what she’s getting. 

There’s a thunderclap sound of pure force, and Geng He appears at the edge of the strange flora surrounding Raika and Chen Tai. Not much slower, Wei Zin appears, seeming to melt from out of the grasses, with Jin literally a second behind. 

Because of course he went to go get his brothers instead of staying away after she told him to run. Obviously.

“Master, what happened?” Geng He asks, already with a sword out, completely ready to get back into the violence he’s been so good at avoiding. “What can we do? Where’s–”

Jin crosses the boundary of where the array activated, stepping on grass that has nonsense colors and strange shapes, that turns to ash and cracks like glass when touched, and kneels down beside her and his junior sister. One hand goes on her shoulder, giving space and support at once. 

Geng He lets out a growl, but it’s not directed at them. He points it outward, already starting to create a perimeter as Wei Zin is crouching, staring at the transformed nature in front of him.

“This…”

“All of you should go back home now,” Raika says, her voice calm and gentle. 

“But what just–”

“Geng He, I swear to you, when I get home, I will tell you what you can do to help. Until then, please take your sister and go back to the manse. Get some rest. She needs it, and I’m sure she’ll feel safer with someone helping to keep watch.”

His first instinct, as always, is to deny the order, to refuse and turn to face the conflict directly, but for now, there’s nothing. Nothing he can attack, no enemy to pursue or challenge. His breathing gets a bit uneven, going from the perfectly disciplined sound of a machine inhaling and exhaling to something more human. 

“Yes, master,” he says.

“What is this?” Wei Zin asks, still staring at the grass, the soil beneath it, cautiously sniffing the air. “I’ve never seen anything like this happen. I don’t even know what… it’s not your Qi, not anyone’s, why has it changed so much?”

“I promise I’ll explain everything later, just make sure to–”

She pauses. Then sighs, deep and slow. 

“Alright. Sure. We’re doing it like this now.”

Her disciples all emit similar confusions, though Geng He’s is still filtered through that instinct for violence he has. Still, it’s Jin who notices the newcomer first. 

He hovers there, almost directly above them all, standing on the air over the canopy. A short white beard. Long hair tied perfectly into a top-knot. Tall, but not inhumanly so. Well-muscled, but in the way of a warrior, someone who exercises for fitness and not vanity. Long robes flow, ornately decorated, designed artistically, clearly very expensive, and colored a mix of black and a deep, deep green. 

They match his evergreen eyes.

There are two characters tattooed onto his face, one beneath each eye. The one on the left is the symbol for “Oracle”. The one on the right says a familiar name.

“You here to cause trouble?” Raika asks.

The Feng’s response is wordless. 

There is no sky. There is only the canopy of a forest so far beyond the filth below that it replaces that sky with oppressive dark. A pressure from above, starving out the unworthy beneath it. Deprivation. 

Jin, Geng He, Wei Zin and Chen Tai all stumble, as if losing their footing or about to collapse, but Raika has already shaped the world above them. Using less than Qi and more than Concept, something stands between that hateful canopy and those below, something that is hers by right and in her grasp. 

Not a real barrier, just a lesser rule. In front of her, her children shall not be harmed. 

She sighs, bearing the burden of the pressure as the Feng stares down at her, wordlessly waiting for her to introduce herself as he has introduced himself. 

Damnit. She wanted more time. And it’s going to be such a waste, and–

A hand claps onto the Feng’s shoulder, eliciting a microsecond movement that suddenly has a sword at the throat of the androgynous figure who wasn’t there a moment ago.

A face that seems to shift definition and features constantly wears a soft smile, eerily calm. Wearing a tan shift and long, flowing pants, barefoot, they don’t move, though the sword never actually touches them, no matter how close it seems to get.

“Enlightenment is a rare thing to experience,” says the stranger, unbothered by the sword at their throat. “It is best found in the moments just before or just during conflict, especially amongst such talents. Why not take a moment to explore it?”

“Who are you?” Raika asks, much more on edge than she was a moment ago. A Feng, she can deal with. Could even tell he was coming, though he was fast enough that she didn’t have time to stop him. But whoever this is, she doesn’t recognize. She didn’t feel them appear.

“Tao Zudong is the name ascribed to me most often,” says the stranger, eyes glowing with iridescent madness. “Perhaps you may have heard of my writings?”