“Maen, you mind staying hidden?” Raika asks.
Maen frowns, turning to look at her. “What? Why?”
“I want to look around, but I don’t want anyone to wonder where I am. This way it’ll look like we’re off together in a corner somewhere.”
Maen snorts and shakes her head. “As much as that’s a fun image, I don’t see why I can’t help. You saw how fast I can move now! It’s… I mean it’s not like yours, I need to fuel it, but I’ve still got plenty of Qi left. I can help.”
“No, I- I’m going to be using my nose. I can’t keep an eye out for you here, not while I’m searching.”
“Well you don’t need to keep an eye out for me if I can move faster than anyone can catch me! Besides, it’s not like you’ve got so much experience sneaking around either. I can help. You know I can help.”
Raika struggles to articulate for a moment. Breathes hard, a rough sort of “huffing” noise that stirs up the air in the room. Ignores the man smiling behind Maen. “I can survive a fight if I get hurt. You can’t heal like I can. I can track my prey by scent, you can’t. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Maen goes to say something… and then doesn’t. She steps back a bit, shrinks back a little. Raika can almost smell the scent of Qi shifting, turning from a clean and confident flow to something quieter.
“I don’t- Maen, I don’t mean it badly. It’s just-”
“Just what, Raika?”
Raika hesitates. Then she sighs. The mask tells her, very clearly, that the best decision to be made here is to be honest with Maen. Working together, communicating, potentially using a new ally, all suit her primary objectives of finding traces of She Beneath Still Waters and keeping away from the arena’s security measures. But beneath that, holding firm, is the fact that Zhoulong is there, right there, smiling and idling behind Maen, making faces at the occasional word choice. She wants Maen safe.
“I still need to protect you.”
Maen says nothing for a while, but eventually nods. “Ok. I get it. I’m still a new cultivator, I’m sure I’ve got a lot of growing left to do. I don’t want to slow you down.”
She sits on a sack of some kind of potatoes, shrugging. “Go do what you have to do. I’ll hide out here for a while. Thirty minutes sound good?”
Raika sighs. She knows she handled this badly, but… “Yeah, thirty minutes should be plenty. Thank you. We can talk later about it?”
Maen nods politely. “Sure. Later.”
Raika goes to give a hug, a kiss, a touch, and she sees Maen react to the small shift in her posture- and gives her partner space instead. She steps out of the closet, her scent and sense of hearing letting her know there’s no one around, and starts running down the hallway to her left.
It doesn’t take much to modify for stealth. She’s still massive, so the modifications are limited, but padding on her feet, digitigrade joints, and tightening her muscles around her bones, leaving her slightly smaller, are enough that she can run fairly silently and with confidence that she’ll sense anyone coming before they sense her.
“Gotta say,” Zhoulong says, standing in a doorway she dashes past, “that was painful to watch. I mean, I’ve cut people apart before but that? That hurt. I was always more of an erudite cultivator but I’m no stranger to the fairer sex if you ever want some advice, my host.”
She snarls something sub-vocally and doesn’t bother to respond. Zhoulong shakes his head disappointingly, sitting on some furniture she runs past as she dashes through an empty lobby.
“I mean seriously, honored Raika, you really have to make sure a relationship has a solid foundation. Begin with an error of an inch and end by being a thousand miles off the mark. You have told her about me before, if I remember, so what’s the hesitation now? It’s hardly like I can reach her from in here, is it?”
“Wasn’t about you,” she huffs, nostrils wide and scenting the air.
“If you say so. I can see that, actually. Perhaps I simply stood in as a metaphor for potential threats you can’t touch, hovering over a loved one. Rather poignant, really. Completely unintentional I assure you. My only hope is to assist you here.”
She stops, takes two steps to be around the corner of a passing group of servants walking by, and whirls at the place she knows Zhoulong will now be.
“Why?” she growls, letting her voice slip so the sound thrums through the air around them. “And why the fuck should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t! Though I dearly hope you shall, of course. As to why, well, it’s that or get digested, isn’t it? Aiding you, I buy a reprieve for myself. And I will admit, it’s rare I get to be so intimate with a project without ever getting to properly analyze it. I don’t exactly have my tools or scrolls with me, but I’m sure that as an expert on biology I can offer tremendous assistance with your transformation. Take my advice as you please, of course. I have no hope of convincing you right away, but an unplanted garden never grows.”
Raika laughs softly, wincing inwardly at how the sound carries and leaves a few servants looking around nervously, casting their Qi senses out and forcing her a few steps deeper down the side-hallway and out of range. “You’re less than slime, and the fact you’ve gone from threatening to begging for your life doesn’t earn you goodwill from me. Any expertise I could get from you, I could get elsewhere.”
“Oh, sure, of course,” Zhoulong says, wandering idly in view of her hiding spot, strolling casually along the hallway up and down. “I completely understand that. I just mean that with me, there’s no recrimination, no judgment, just fascination, pure and simple. I’m in your head. I can see how much you hate yourself. I can see how much it strains you to see other people care. I don’t, my host. I am bored out of my mind, looking to stay “alive” as long as I can, and absolutely fascinated with what you call a functional biology.”
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He steps closer, right up to her face, and she growls down at him, making his form ripple. She pushes against him, and while her hand goes right through him, he does sort of shift, the sound of her voice and the touch together enough that she can see him wince.
“The more you talk, the more I want to kill you. You should probably factor that in.”
He shakes his head, recovers, smiles. “Reasonable enough. I’ve killed people for far less reason than ‘they’re literally haunting my mind’. But really, besides having to see more of me, it’s all advantage on your end. Worst case scenario, as long as I’m in sight, you’re not wondering about what I’m doing behind the scenes.”
She turns to him, eyes shifting pupil shape, her every movement still.
He shrugs. “Hard to look into your soul without a Dantian, hmm? It’s not easy, per se, but… well. I’m just trying to keep busy. Wouldn’t you prefer I did that for you, instead of against you?”
“Just something to consider. You should focus now, no? You just missed the scent.”
She blinks, turns to look back down the hallway, and by the time she turns back to look Zhoulong is gone again, vanished the moment he went out of view. He’s right, though. It’s faint, just a whiff, but without his prattling she smells it, the scent of water left still, deep underground. This one smells a bit stagnant, though. Not the witch, and not her followers, either- but connected.
She growls, the sound thrumming like a bass note against the air. Shakes her head, hard, as if trying to literally throw him out of her brainpan. Having indulged in the brief fantasy, she takes off after the smell.
It’s one of the servants, near the back of the group, their scent half-drowned by that of a half-dozen others with their own unique Qi signatures, but it’s enough to get a trail. It’s a new way of using her senses, one that’s obvious but that she’s never had cause to exploit before, and rather than trying to find understanding in the scent or keeping track of a person’s thoughts, she uses it to track where the servant has gone.
At her speeds, she’s crossed halfway around the arena, barely touching the ground, in about fifteen minutes. It takes a hell of a lot of focus to keep track of the scent, especially as other fights go on in the arena, the stone transmitting the sound of stomping feet, screaming fans, fluttering heartbeats, impacts, gasps, music, Jin Nara’s announcements-
She breathes, refocuses. Tunes out the sound. Follows the scent.
Darkness and water. Caves. Deep beneath.
Eventually, she runs into a new problem.
Unsurprisingly, the Unearthly Depths sect, based on a sea, smells like water, and like depth. The trail she’s following starts to get washed away as she approaches their section of the stands, taking pains more and more often to avoid servants who are starting to wear more and more sect robes. Some even seem to be outer disciples occasionally, acting as managers for servants bringing food, drink, resources and other comforts to the inner sect disciples and elders up above them in the stands. It takes a good five more minutes to find an opening in the controlled chaos to slip past.
Trying to keep focused, she taps Dink lightly under her robes, her nail making a very slight sound against the metal that sends a little shiver into her. It’s not much in terms of cultivation aid, but the sound of it helps center her, just enough.
She’s low on time. Maen will be heading back soon.
She finds a hidden corner, above one of the rooms, and anchors herself to it, clawed fingers hooking into stone with the slightest hissing of small cracks. Once she’s secured, she closes her eyes, blocks out the sound of the crowds, and just begins to breathe.
In. And out. In. And out.
Slowly. One breath at a time. Every time she loses it, gets distracted, she taps Dink, ever so lightly, letting the vibration resonate and bring her back, one breath at a time.
A picture forms. She can sense the Qi of dozens of cultivators, even from some of those in the stands, leaking out in minute qualities as they move and enhance their senses to watch the fights. She can sense eddies and flows in it, scent marks left on some as they move, transferred to others, even as they all emit their own particular flavor. Ignoring the scent of flesh, of sweat and skin and hair and blood, she breathes in deep, again and again, and traces the pattern.
Slow, rolling waves. Pressure, like deep darkness beneath the water. She can sense from the servants and weaker servants less of it, like the water lightens in tone as they move past, but the deeper currents remain. From above, the scent of crushing weight, of dark, roiling tides, of strange and shifting things in the deep- and from some, more than even that. The scent of the sect as a whole is a roiling, slow thing, wave after wave, hidden currents and writhing, half-glimpsed forms, cold and deep. She breathes in, and their form of cultivation crafts a picture of how they exert themselves on the world.
And there, at the edge of it… stone. Slight, hard to sense, but there. Ever so slight, the scent of rocks crushed beneath the weight of a sea, washed in the depths of an ocean… and with still waters beneath it.
The far end of the seating arrangement, near the back wall of the arena, where the elders sit. Not quite among them, but close. Someone valued, perhaps.
It only takes a few moments to find a proper exit, the servant’s hallways designed to allow for easy access to the arena and seating for cultivators and workers alike. It’s not even all that hard to keep herself hidden, forcing her body to contract, some of her joints to shift out of place, until she’s at more of a normal height, shifting her features just a bit to make her face less clear and putting her hair away beneath an improvised hood. She steps out into the light of the arena, lost amid a crowd of faces, and looks up at where her senses led her to.
Sitting opposite the Stone Divers sect, the elders and prodigies of the Unearthly Depths sect stand tall and proud, canopies erected over much of their seating and their colors of deep, dark blue, black, and hints of purple on display. Their section is a darkened, abstract shadow of blues and darkness contrasted against the bright white and sandstone orange of the arena’s construction and the burning sun above, and as the tournament goes on, unlike much of the crowd, many of them sit comfortably, uncaring about the minor fights before them. Some of them are exceptions, staring intently, dedicating themselves, but many are content to assume their own strength.
And, third from the right, beneath the seating set up for the sect elders which glint slightly with gold and blue jade in their own section, is a man she recognizes. Not entirely, considering his face is uncovered this time, but the scent came from him, unmistakably, a Qi that smells of dark caverns and deep, still water beneath them, similar but just slightly off from the scent of She Beneath Still Waters. He’s got darker skin, eyes that glimmer a shade of bright yellow, nearly-shaved black hair and a short goatee, sitting proudly with the other inner sect disciples and apprentices, his robes touched with gilding and small talismans. She memorizes his face, makes sure she knows where he’s sitting and can point him out to Kaena for identification.
It’s a good first step. She reminds herself of that as she goes back into the servants tunnels, waiting until she’s out of sight to reconnect her joints properly and move again.
It’s a good step. The plan is working. It’s ok.
The memory of Zhoulong smiling and the gilded cage of the Imperial Palace both haunt her as she runs back anyways.