Chapter 507 – So Much Shit To Do, So Little Time (Patreon)

Whoof, I really am burning the candle at all ends here. Thinking I might call for a break soon. Haven't actually had more than 5 days off of writing in almost 3 years now, and those 5 days where when I was in the midst of my move almost five months back. Could probably use some time to breath. Maybe after some stuff.

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In spite of the chaos, the Empire holds stalwart! 

While the Breach remains an ongoing headache in the lives of our brave troops of the Division of War, the well-being of the Empire as a whole has remained untouched and unchanged by the conflict. What further evidence is needed for the grandeur of our homeland, or the strength of our defenses? As we approach Founding Day, we must all remember the grace by which we live our lives, and remember that only together can we stand against the vicious outsiders that seek to sow distrust and discord amongst us!

Always remember, Imperial citizens; we live in a world provided to us by our great leader and supported by the belief and labor we sustain each other with. Together, we can endure anything, and it is in this same spirit that preparations for Founding Day continue all across the metropoli of the rings! Only a few months remain, so make sure to buy your gifts early and decorate accordingly, lest your neighbors outperform you in their jubilations!

––Weekly pamphlet delivered to every Imperial Post station throughout the Empire as a prelude to Founding Day

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It’s easy to forget how fast time flies. 

Raika experiences every day as a thousand. Literally. Every single brain experiences time cumulatively, after all, and every single brain experiences it together, in synchronicity. It averages out somewhere in the thousand-to-one range of distortions. In that sort of mentality, five years is a lifetime. It’s a lot of lifetimes. And yet, in the last few months before the war, everything feels rushed. Desperate. Entirely last-minute. 

And in the week between the day the Monarch Realm Feng arrived and today, it’s felt like minutes.

There’s always so much to do. Always, always, always, so much to do, so much to keep track of, so much to manage. A thousand farms to re-till and crops to re-check, water and seed stores that need replacing or revitalizing, kids and adults and the elderly who need someone to talk to or to be reassured or to be taken care of. Revelations to be contextualized, fish populations to repair, soil levels to manage. Yes, she fixed the big issues that same day, and yes, nature has a way of healing itself, but there’s always some little thing that can be touched on, some minor change that might cascade into something worse. 

And all the while, she’s watching her kids. 

To the towns of the Lake, the farmers and villagers and crafters and builders, this was a blip. A one-time thing. It opened the sky for them, showed them the heights of the world beyond, but it’s not seen as something that will inevitably happen again. It might, and that’s scary, but only as scary as possibility can be. 

Her disciples know that the war is coming. So they know, deep down, that things are going to get worse. That what they experienced, already enough to smother their very existences like coals in the snow, was only a prelude for what’s to come. 

Only a few months left until Founding Day. 

Only a little while more until the war kicks off. 

And she has to make sure it doesn’t break them.

Chen Tai is the least affected in some ways. She’s from the overgrowth, feeling crushed beneath the presence of greater and scarier beings is normal to a spirit beast out in those wilds. Simultaneously, she’s still rattled, clearly distressed by the shape of that pressure. The conceptual shape of the Fengs was shown to her for the first time, and it’s not something compatible with any worldview but its own. Someone brand new to the experience of philosophizing having to suddenly confront another’s philosophy so thoroughly clearly has her confused and struggling to cement her own identity in the face of it. 

Wei Zin and Geng He worry her the most, though for almost opposite reasons. Wei Zin, in spite of or perhaps because of his time in Singheart, recovered faster than most. He’s used to dealing with big scary guys that want to wipe the floor with him, and the masks he learned to compensate with are impressive. But now? After practicing to remove that mask? 

The sheer loathing in him. Like bitterness spreading through tea, like acid bile splattered over a field of grass. 

And Geng He has surprised her by retreating. 

Not entirely, not literally, but in his mind. Just a touch. Staring at the wall before him seemed to burn, but his ambition burns up all of him for fuel, it always has, and now, it seems, there’s pieces he would rather keep un-charred. The man he was may be more violent, stronger, and that man is still very, very close by, chronologically and spiritually both, but that man didn’t know how to fish, and he wouldn’t want to learn. 

And Jin…

Jin seems unbothered. 

That worries her very badly. Not as badly as his brothers, but badly. Him being alright, firm but unchanged, shaken but not disrupted, after that? An Emperor Realm Domain coming down on him, explicitly to wipe him and every one of his siblings out?

If that didn’t affect him, then he’s already more changed than she even knew after all his brushes with high-level beings. Which is theoretically fine. Probably. 

Or. Or. 

He’s learned how to lie to her. 

And she can literally taste people’s thoughts.

So either her son is already used to this kind of trauma (heartbreaking, fucked up), or he’s gotten so good at hiding it from her that she can’t even tell. 

They’re all busy. She keeps them busy, helping the towns, keeping the environment safe and balanced, meeting with and discouraging any spirit beasts attracted to the area by the smell of a high-concept manifestation like the one that came by. 

She keeps herself busy, too. 

Her being the “mortal” Raika doesn’t make her powerless, and even if it did, she prefers to keep busy. So, in the interests of distracting herself from what’s going on just “outside” of everything and what’s going on with her kids, she’s been asking questions of herself.

“Flame’s made it nearly to the southern border,” Rai Ka informs herself. “It’s still operating pretty high-conceptual-style, but we’re fairly close in that regard, so I’ve taken over for most of the interpreting from Pillar. In exchange, it now has to deal with all the bloodlines and political bullshit I was drowning in. It’s not great at it, but it’s mostly got the formulas down.”

“How about you? How’re things on your end? How’re the kids?” Raika asks.

Raika groans. “Literally came here to get away from that. They’re all a bit frazzled, but I think they’ll be alright. No Qi deviations or heart demons. If I had to describe it, their changes are sort of getting challenged, I guess. Except Jin. He seems fine.”

That draws some concern her way. 

“Well he has been through some pretty scary big-picture shit before. He spent like a month in a coma from communing with the Cold Sun. Not hard to imagine he’d be used to this level of pressure.”

“Sure, but beyond whether or not that’s a good thing, he hasn’t faced a presence like that in years, especially not one turned against him. He’s really not showing any signs of panic? No flashbacks, no anxiety-flushes through his endocrine system?”

“No, none. He’s almost too calm about it, if anything. I’m worried he’s found a way to hide things from me somehow. Which…”

“Yeah, that is technically a good thing. And as a responsible parent we should trust his privacy, and trust the relationship we’ve built, and that if he thinks we need to know or when it’s time, he’ll just tell me.”

“But also…”

“But also he’s a really young really powerful young man who just started seeing a girl for the first time, then she almost died, and he’s strong enough to really hurt himself or make bad decisions on accident.”

“And we trust him not to do that.”

“We do.”

“But it’s stressful.”

“Yes! It is!”

A collective sigh from a very very large amount of Raikas all travels through the world at once. 

“How about the projects?” she asks herself. “Everything still on track?”

“Yep. How about on your end?”

“Mostly. Activating the array for Chen Tai’s protection set us back a bit, but I think it was worth it in the end. Studying the null-zone it created and how it got broken through has me doing some minor modifications to improve it. We should be able to use it for the other pieces soon.”

“Ok. And what about the trip?”

“I’m still not sure it’s a good idea. Literally no one goes there. Not the Fengs, not the Empire as a whole, not any spirit beast or Craft wielder, not even Many-Mouths. It’s a big risk.”

“All the more reason we need to go. The less we know, the more room there is for something to jump out at us and fuck everything up.”

“I agree! It just seems rushed.”

“Everything’s fucking rushed. We’re doing last-minute work everywhere. If we had another century, we’d still be behind on the planning and resources front, no matter how fast we grow. I’ve felt the space in the first ring, and it’s a lot heavier than it should be. There’s a lot in there that we have no way to see as of yet, so how would forgetting a whole chunk of the map be a good idea when there’s already so much we can’t prepare for?”

“I don’t disagree, I just…”

“Yeah. I know. We worry. The big three are almost done, though?”

“Yeah. Many-Grasping-Hands has project two basically locked down at this point. One and two are a bit further behind, but we should have everything ready to go at or right after we kick things off.”

She pauses then, as all of her brains and selves experience a moment of anxious worry. 

“Do you ever think about how crazy it is that it’s all on us?”

“Everyone else is too stubborn to do it right, and the ones who aren’t are too slow. Also, we’re convenient. It’s not like there aren’t people who’ve wanted this war before us. They’re letting us go front and center because they’re selfish assholes, and if they can benefit from being on our side and benefit from me getting brutalized before they do, they will.”

“Mmh.”

“...yeah.”

“Do you ever wonder why no one tries to save the world because it’s just the right thing to do?”

“I… want to say that some people do, and just do it wrong. Maybe that’s true, but it would be hypocritical of me to say that I’m the only one doing it right.”

“And also, most people don’t. Most people don’t try at all. Not when it’s tomorrow’s problem and there’s power and comfort and violence to be gained today. “

“...Yeah. Alright. Well. Good talk.”

“Good talk.”

“We do what we can as best we can for as much good as we can manage.”

“Convoluted ass way of saying it, but yeah. That.”

She blinks, and the conversation has ended, and she’s standing in a village that she has sworn to protect with the disciples she is responsible for raising, and lets out a long exhale. 

It’s been a long day. It’s also been barely any sort of time at all.

A lot of the plans have to stay a secret, for now. She’s in Imperial territory, with a seemingly higher-dimensional being in the form of the Emperor that can simply know what she’s thinking and feeling and doing. Informational security is crucial, and she’s gotten much better at some healthy self-lobotomies lately. It’s not a guarantee that everything will be kept safe, but the less she thinks about the things she’s doing, the less chance there is of those thoughts getting gleaned from her. 

It doesn’t mean that she’s being inactive. Nor does it mean she’s not thinking about anything. She’s part that particular phase of her life. Improvisation is fine and good, but there’s an upper limit to what it can bring about without having added preparations. So while the “big three” have to stay under wraps, entrusted to the other parts of her.

She is here. She is now. She can do what she can, as best she can, for as much good as she can manage. 

So it is that, for the first time in over a day, she slowly limps her way back up the far hill of West Laketown to her cabin, and to the strange thing that sits there. 

She opens the door and Tao Zudong is there, still smiling pleasantly, still holding the same cup of tea, which is still full and still steaming and still fragrant, somehow. 

“Ah! A return! I suppose you’re ready to resume questions, then?”

“Yeah, yeah, in a minute.”

Studiously ignoring the eldritch superbeing sitting across her table, she makes her way over to one of the cabinets around the cabin, taking from it a piece of simple parchment, a bottle of ink, and a small ink brush to write with. 

“I would ask if you mind me using the table,” she says as she limps back over, “but it’s my table in my house, so I’ll use it as I damn well please.”

Tao Zudong smiles in neither approval nor disapproval, and she ignores them entirely to start writing. 

The letter is short, simple, and to the point. By now, everyone she wants to reach will already have heard of the deployment of the Feng Oracle, and of the brief manifestation of his power. She’s not sending out an update, nor would it be particularly safe to do so. For all their protections, there’s a shitload of dangers in the world when it comes to safeguarding information. 

Eleven words.

“Meeting time. Call up the mammals and the root. Two days.”

She dries off the ink, wraps the paper tightly, and puts it to one side, ready to be taken to the drop point that’ll lead it to where it’s meant to go.

Then, and only then, does she stop, take a breath, and look at Tao Zudong.

“So. Where were we?”

The philosopher smiles.

“You were preparing to properly engage in conversation. And I was waiting to explain just how fucked everything is. It’ll be lovely.”