Book One, Chapter 42 - Consequences

Wow. Who'd have thought that fundamentally altering many of the core events surrounding what comes later in the story would create such exceptional flavor?

I did. Been real eager to move on to writing fresh chapters again, but this one really helped with that fidgety energy. What a payoff. Anyways- enjoy!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The current disruption is displeasing. You have taken responsibility for the preceding events- take responsibility for the consequences.”

-Missive delivered via teleportation array to the hands of the local Researcher for the Division of Altered Cultivation 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Her legs are milling in the air for a moment before her feet make contact with the wall. She has to contract and balance violently to avoid getting flipped about by the impact, the traction of cliff-versus-person, and her feet, carved up and bloody and slick, hits the surface and are dug into and-

The moment passes, her body further strained, and her next step hits, and again, until her legs are an agonizing blur sprinting alone the wall, and then her knees bend and her spine has to fight not to let her slam face first into the floor or start tumbling, and for a moment she thinks she’s failed, and wraps her arm around Maen to try and shield her.

And then the added padding feels a moment of give, and locks into place, pinching nerves and flesh between bone and forcing the impact and sheer kinetic energy in her body to rocket up and behind her as she moves.

She hits the sharp curve where incline finally becomes a flat plane again and, almost bent over from the strain but still on her feet.

Raika hits the ground going faster than she has ever gone before- and keeps running.

There’s a strained whimper as the whiplash and gravity hit Maen, and she almost slips off Raika, her grip not quite strong enough to deal with the force of the abrupt gravitational turn, but she holds the small woman gripping her so tight, forcing them to stay together as she keeps running. Any attempt to stop now would see them wind up smeared into a streak of blood along cobbled streets rather than smeared into a puddle at the base of the plateau of the Purple Searchlight Blooming Idiots sect, so she just keeps going, pushing her system, keeping her heart pumping and forcibly manipulating the constantly damaged tissues of her legs to keep them from falling apart completely.

Behind her, snow and steel and flame turn the sky to roiling chaos. Flames and lava both start to burn the world ahead of her, cast off from the cliff face above, and she can hear screams and panic beginning to spread as the sect’s conflict reflects on the mortals below.

And then there’s the wall.

Each sect plateau is surrounded by a wall. The same one she leapt over soundlessly on her initial arrival. 

The wall she’s heading at faster than she’s ever moved before.

No time for thought. No way to process. 

She leaps- and grabs her passenger by the shoulder, putting as much force as she can into yanking Maen off her back and throwing her.

There’s a loud yelp of panic, half-lost to the sheer velocity, and then Maen is launched over the top of the wall, too fast, going too fast for someone in just Qi-Gathering-

Raika hits the wall.

She couldn’t quite get enough vertical energy to her forward momentum. She clears the first half of it, makes it so she has a view over the top of it, and then her thighs slam against the top of the ramparts.

She feels bones shatter. She feels a sense of total vertigo as she’s violently spun from the impact, feels a burning and tingling as the wall’s wards activate at such an impact, as chips of stone are launched from where she hit. She feels the smell of alchemical and formulaic Qi wash over her, try to grab her, and then-

She flies past, just like the rest of the tumbling debris, free from Qi and falling away from what the wall is designed to protect.

Everything is motion and chaos and pain as her shredded legs hold themselves together by the barely-intact modifications that remain. She vomits, or tries to, as she flips over and over from the force of the crash. 

And then, very abruptly, she stops.

There is a crunching sound that might be bone or might be snapping wood as she hits against a wall, and finds herself inside a very comfortable crater. 

Good wall. Solid. Didn’t even let her go straight through it this time. 

Everything hurts. 

But she’s not out of danger.

The adrenaline remains, dulling the pain, screaming at her. Maen got thrown. She swore that she wouldn’t get her killed, and there’s still cultivators, and someone’s going to investigate the impact and mess even with the debris still falling all around, and-

She makes it out of the wall. She falls onto the cobbled ground, ignoring the screams of panic and people beginning to emerge. She has to-

A hand lands on her shoulder. Soft. Smelling of yuzu and claws. 

Then, and only then, does Raika allow herself to fall over.

For a while, she and Maen lay there, collapsed on the ground, neither one willing or able to be the first one to move. One of Maen’s arms is limp, dislocated, and there’s scratches and bruising from the fall, but she’s intact, whole. 

Raika, splayed out, bleeding, almost entirely shredded, is more… running up against the limits of biological possibility, even with her recent enhancement.. She is breathing shallow, her focus pointed towards her heart, slowly draining away its constant heartbeat from the agony of the constant high-pace she’d taken it to as they both lay there, recovering.

The crackling of flames and of distant battle and of panicking people are all secondary. Just a moment to rest. 

And then another wave of light flickers behind them, brilliant and violet, with the smell of just a hint of berries and flame. It is matched by a blade of light the size of a castle, swinging down hard enough to create wind miles below, but the original scent remains, bursts of indigo and crimson and violet tainting the sky.

Time to go.

Raising a trembling hand, she reaches into her shirt, grasping the small bundle of cloth there and rooting through it until she finds what she’s looking for. With a concentrated effort, she lifts her hand out of the bundle and Dinks what she’s holding against Maen’s forehead.

The sound almost makes her cry.

“Come on,” she says in a voice so shaky she’s not sure she even said it out loud. “Time to get up. You’re gonna have to help me to my feet, kitty.”

It’s the mix of getting Dinked in the forehead and the last word Raika said that seems to pull the younger woman together. She blinks, then scowls, then spasms and rolls over away from Raika to vomit on the street.

“There there,” Raika mumbles, “let it out. You’ll be fine.”

Maen turns like she’s about to respond, eyes incandescent with rage- but the act of turning skews with her balance and mushed up guts again, and she has to stop herself and turn back around before she pukes all over both of them.

While she’s busy, Raika decides to do properly what she hasn’t been able to do yet.

She Dinks herself in the forehead.

It’s not magic. She can feel the vibration hit, feel how the minute force of it vibrates through her, no more or less magical than her own heartbeat. Whatever she and Dink share, it’s not overtly supernatural or superhuman.

It is a fucked up tuning fork.

She is a fucked up human meatbag.

And yet, she does it again.

It Dinks into her mind that it missed her. It’s not like it could do anything without her, so obviously it needed her around, but she was missed.

Yeah. Same ol Dink.

She lets the tears of exertion and non-existent tears that definitely have nothing to do with recovering her most major coping tool for the worst period of her life mix together as she lays there.

A flash of gold from the sect above and behind them, then another, both of them moving towards the city below. Not quite right where they are, but close.

She laughs a bit at the smell of Shin Ren raging behind them, and the casual way that other scents rise up and simply squash him. Serves him right for thinking he’s hot shit. He is, but still, serves him right.

The chaos continues raging- but already, moments after arriving, the golden glow of Imperial artifacts has started to overshadow the conflict, forcing quiet onto the sky above with a false dawn.

“Come on, Maen,” Raika whispers, finally getting an arm underneath herself to try and get up. “You’ve got two arms and didn’t even do any of the running. Help me up, damnit.”

Maen spits off to the side, wipes her mouth, spits again, and nods.

“I already regret this choice so fucking much,” she mumbles, but she does start to get up. She grabs her pack and slings it over her functioning shoulder before grabbing Raika’s left stump near the armpit and hoisting her up a bit, helping her walk.

Which, apparently, she can’t really do. Stumble-stagger is what’s available. Whatever was left of her legs from when she tore them apart escaping Shin Ren, it was not enough to survive the things she did to it intact. Even trying to exert her will, reaching into her flesh and rearranging it or trying to fix it does almost nothing, the tissues so shredded they move sluggishly if at all. She does still stumble and stagger, though, and drags Maen under her good arm to use her as support as they walk.

“Ok,” Maen asks. “Where do we go now?”

Ah. In theory she’d had a plan. Her reaction at seeing Li Shu, and the fact that she’d been found out and nearly caught right after, kind of ruined that. Ideally, they can spend the night limping over to the Imperial Palace and just get themselves picked up by the soldiers there. Hope for the best. Originally the plan had been to try climbing back up, and if that didn’t work, go through the front doors anyways and just be taken back inside, so falling back onto the latter half of that plan (and, admittedly, its consequences) doesn’t sting quite as bad as it might.

But… then again. There’s a promise she hasn’t kept yet.

“The red light district,” she mumbles. “Past the eastern market square. I’ll guide you once we’re there.”

Maen goes to say something, probably out of frustration or to spit back at Raika for trying to go to such a place now, but… maybe there’s something on her face. She sees it, and just bows her head, either trusting her or realizing she’s not really in the mood to banter. Not at the thought of this.

The night is lit by flashes of gold, purple, white and silver, members of the sects and Imperial authorities both standing down only grudgingly, even as other figures dash through the night sky overhead, patrolling and repairing damage. Maen continues to do her weird shifting to disguise her signature, and Raika, to the best of her knowledge, doesn’t have a Qi signature to be sensed, at least not with any clarity. There’s a few close calls, and they have to duck through a lot of back-alleys that become more and more familiar to Raika as they move, but she doesn’t ever feel the fear of getting caught, not amidst all the mess of the night.

She smiles. A furious, angry, gloriously happy thing. She’s free.

Maybe she doesn’t even need to go back to the Imperial palace. There’s a whole wide world out there, and once she’s healed she can probably tough it out against the minor spirit beasts that the region contains, maybe even grow on her own and go beyond that. Fuck the Empire. She’s no one slave, no one’s servant. Fuck their cage, too. 

…the bacon-wrapped dates can go unfucked, but fuck the gilded cage overall!

And then, eventually, she sees it.

The alley where she always met the kid.

And he’s there.

Staring up at the sky like a half-dozen other people she’s avoided, awake at three in the morning so he can look at the stars and the gold of the greatest authority the world has ever seen flashing through the night.

She smiles as she sees him.

“Hey, idiot,” she gasps, stumbling in on Maen’s shoulder. “Good to see you’ve been wasting even more time.”

He looks at her and… takes a step back. His eyes dart between the two of them, a weak, tangerine-scented breeze reaching out as he pushes against them and tries to sense their strength.

Fuck. Less than a year, no master, alone in a whorehouse- and already he can push his Qi like that. The scent is stronger, too, fresh grasses mixing with the tangerine scent. 

Foundational Realm. In a year. He’s gone from having only enough cultivation to match people his own age to growing faster than most sect disciples.

The snowfall from the battle above is still falling, but she’s not excusing the tears this time. The kid saved her fucking life, and at her absolute worst, she somehow still managed to do something good for him.

Before he can panic or need to ask who they are, she raises her remaining right arm and Dinks against her forehead, to a confused look from Maen.

JiaJia, though, lights up like he’s seen a firework. “Master!” he yells, so startled he almost trips as he sprints forward towards them, all alight with nervous energy and enthusiasm and relief. “I thought you weren’t coming back, I worried you died! I tried to get into the sect but they wouldn’t let me, and I thought you needed help because it’s been weeks and you’re super weak, I mean you still look super weak did they beat you up? You look shredded, is that blood? I- Can you get younger? You look younger. Even the hole on your face looks better! Did the Purple Fire sect do that? I thought you said they were all losers and-”

She Dinks him on the forehead. “Yes, it’s me, idiot apprentice,” she growls. “It’s three in the morning, how are you able to ask this many questions?”

He looks at her, shocked, then gives her a cheeky grin, his eyes wet from more than snow. “Not my fault you can’t keep up,” he giggles. “Guess even turning back to my age wouldn’t be enough to let you match my new power. It seems the student is soon to be the master, huh?”

She laughs at that, though she notices JiaJia’s eyes flicking over to Maen.

“Maen, this is JiaJia,” Raika says. “JiaJia, this is a hot felinid girl I picked up at the sect who’s obsessed with me and helps carry me around.”

“Wha-” Maen splutters, but before she can properly defend herself JiaJia has broken into a giggle that Raika can’t help but laugh along to.

He’s alive. And he’s well. And she did good, even at her worst. She gave someone something. Still, there’s the issue of their promise. Oh, she’s surely further along in her journey, and he seems to be progressing well, but joke or not, she’s taken the role of his “master”. It wouldn’t do to come without gifts or advice. She pauses to think of what it is she can offer-

A hand, large enough to wrap completely around her throat, backhands JiaJia.

There is a red smear where his upper body was. A lot of it ended up on the wall, to her left.

One of his legs has splattered against the stones. The other is at the foot of the wall.

They are not connected anymore.

She cannot look up.

He is here. She can smell the wind, the mountain, the steel and the thing that consumes and is all of them, but she cannot look up.

She is looking at the stain.

“Forty eight people saw you after your escape,” rumbles a voice like a mountain breaking. “Forty eight people who will no longer live to see the morning. All because you didn’t follow orders. Didn’t stay where I could protect you.”

Maen is trying to say something, or whimper, or just trembling from the pressure of his Qi, and fails at all three. She has fallen over. Raika wonders if she’s ok. It’s a faint thought, and it flickers, and then she remembers what she is looking at, and it goes out.

She has fallen to her knees. Her legs are too broken to stand her up. She hears something like choking, maybe gasping, a hum of pressure that is bending the stones and wood around them. She’s not sure who’s making what noise. It might be coming from her.  

She is looking at the stain.

“Did you think you were untraceable? That there aren’t a million ways to track something without a ‘proper’ signature? That those with access to your flesh wouldn’t have methods to detect you? Look behind you. Look at the chaos. The lives lost. This is what happens when you break a pattern without a plan. One piece falls, taking another down with it. The Purple Flame sect postures, the others respond, people die.

“What was the plan?” Taurus rumbles. “Meet up with your friends? Go explore the woods, like a wandering cultivator of no notice? Did you even have a plan, or are you more animal than I’d hoped, wandering from instinct to instinct, one blind impulse to the next?”

One of the legs of- one of the legs is closer to her. What’s left of it. The shoe has fallen off. She reaches a trembling hand to pick it up, holding the cold wood of the sandal like a shield against the world and the proof of how little that shield can do all at once.

There’s a thud of weight in front of her, like some colossal monolith taking a step forward, and a hot breath comes down onto her, heavy enough to make her blink.

The thing reaches a hand down, picking up something from the stain. A single piece of jade, as thick as a finger and almost as long.

“All this violence. The delicacy of it all. Did you think about what would happen if someone ever tracked you to this night, to this place, so soon after the events you caused? Found the marks you left, remembered the tools they used to track you, heard tell of you from those who saw you? If they tracked you to him? You, a person of interest to the Empire and which has been directly taken in by one of its Divisions? On a night where inter-sect violence forced the Empire’s hand directly? Can you imagine what a revolt might look like, what a true conflict would entail, what would have to be done to contain it? 

His voice rumbles, less like stone now, more like thunder, coming closer, closer. “Did you think, Raika the Bloody, what that would mean?”

She does not say anything.

She is looking at the stain.

“There are no wilds here,” the thunder says, and it is quieter and that makes it hurt more somehow. “There is no freedom to be had in simple rebellion. Only a tighter leash, and the blood it gets soaked in.”

The alleyway is silent, save for the rumbling of breaths heavy enough to shake the air.

Maen is quiet, perhaps unconscious. The world is bending and breaking and hurts.

Raika has not moved. She cannot speak. She holds onto the shoe.

She is looking at the stain. 

It is the last thing she sees before the world goes dark.