She hears them coming before she smells them, which is a nice surprise.

One cigarette left, and the effects are… weaker, maybe. Or maybe she’s getting used to them. It’s not clear, but she can hear them as they approach. She stares down at the cigarette, and forgets how long its been since she’s smoked one.

She ignores the smiling man with the sharp thoughts and the dangerous-

She ignores the boy that is red and broken and smells of tangerines and the people behind him, clad in masks and-

What… what was she thinking about?

They make it to the door, and the stink of them washes into the room.

Kaena. Again. There’s something inside her that flinches at this, that worries even as it smiles, but for the most part its… somewhat reassuring. Maybe.

Something is very, very wrong, but-

Hmm. It stopped again. What’s doing that? It’s like when the mask slipped, but it keeps happening, Taurus’ words absent but new thoughts in a certain direction feel-

Hmm. Gone again.

Kaena is saying something. Raika needs a moment, pulling her pieces back together- and turns to look at them.

“Back with us?” Kaena asks.

“I… I am. Yes. What were you saying?”

Kaena pauses, then nods. “Alright then. Listen to me very closely, as I do not intend to waste time. I want to use my Qi to see if I can reach into you and see what’s wrong with you.”

Raika smiles, a bit vaguely. “There’s nothing wrong with me, it’s-”

Her voice hurts for a moment as she says it, and she realizes her vocal cords thrummed, as they do with her real voice. Discordantly, though, like a poorly struck note.

It’s… no. Wait. It’s alarming, right? Something in her says it is, anyways. It’s… is it supposed to be? She trusts Kaena. She’s trusted Kaena implicitly for… what, months now? Since their help with the twins? Why is she alarmed?”

“- know it’s a bit of a big change, and I know it might be surprising, but-”

“I dunno if you should,” Raika says, the smile turning lower. “I’m- hmm. It might be very confusing. Lots going on inside. Also, since when can you…?”

“It’s a skill I have, beastie. Not one I use if I can avoid it, but some situations call for certain tools.” Raika can see a sort of grimace cross Kaena’s face as they say that, like the lines make them a bit nauseous to speak aloud, but they don’t take them back. “I’m worried. Normally, I’d say you have a heart demon, plain and simple, considering the letter you got, but you’ve been… off for a few days now. Maen says you barely speak to her, and you’ve been staring off randomly almost daily. Since your last fight, since that letter, it’s been worse.”

“I thought you didn’t like touching people?”

“I don’t. I might never. It is what it is. Not much of a sacrifice, but one I’m willing to make over ensuring your brain isn’t melting out of your ears. Normally I’d ask that you just tell me what you sense when you cultivate, but you don’t, so-”

“Oh, I haven’t cultivated in a while. It’s a bit more dangerous to do without-”

She blinks. Without what?

She notices her hand, up near her chest. Reaching toward her throat. Is she wearing something around her throat? That doesn’t sound right. But… it does, doesn’t it? She should have something around her throat. Why doesn’t she? What’s-

Hmm. Gone again.

Raika blinks, realizing Kaena is there. “Oh! Hello. Sorry, gorgeous, you said you wanted to…”

Kaena says nothing for a while. Just looks at her, long and slow. Even through the haze of the smoke, Raika can smell the scent of their Qi, filling the air… and it smells much, much more of mercury than usual. The scent of cream is made thick and toxic, and the peaches smell withered rather than full, dripping down into a quicksilver pond…

There is a moment of strange dissonance, where the scent overwhelms, and something in her… snarls. Stops smiling.

Kaena’s eyes widen, just a bit. Just enough for Raika to know they noticed something.

Kaena takes a long, deep breath.

“Raika. I don’t usually tell stories about myself. I’m better with gossip and fairy tales, and I have little of either to my name. But I need you to understand something right now, and you seem… well, you seem like you have fog for a mind, between this smoke and whatever else. So listen to me very, very carefully.”

“My name is Kaena. It is a name I chose. A name that I earned, over many years, is the Snake of the Garden. Some people vary it, say it differently, but that is what I call myself.

“Most people don’t know much about the Garden. Some fancy pleasure house, up at the base of the World Tree in the middle of the first ring. They’re not wrong, but they’re… limited. The Garden is a place to grow beautiful things. I am a beautiful thing, Raika, and they grew me there. I was born in the Garden. I grew in the Garden. If it had its way, I would die and feed its soil.

“A delicate thing, in the Garden, is only good until it is broken. Then, it is thrown away. I, and many of my siblings and nieces and nephews, were made to be eaten, and then to grow the Garden’s roots from our eaten flesh. Fruit so sweet no one could resist, fruit that could feed a hundred starving, slavering old mouths hungry for Qi and prestige and pleasure, and then a scent that the Garden and its masters could listen through and a seed they could puppet. They would reach through me, when someone was done with me, and move me until I could listen, or move something, or leave something where it should not be. And then I’d come home, to the Garden, and they’d fix me.

“The only way to live was to be eaten and come back unbroken. So I made myself… delicious. And I made it so everyone who took a bite… lost a tooth. Slowly, always, but I made each and every person who touched me bleed for it, squirm, rot just a little.

“I won’t say how. Not even here. But I made of myself a poisonous thing, and eventually it grew to be toxic. But I was slow, so they never could get rid of me without blame, not with how many hungered for my name and the weight it would carry if they bit off a piece of it.

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“So they gave me to Taurus. To the beast of the newest Division, its walls hungry for vivisection and study. And he made it so that I have never had to touch someone I did not want or choose to ever since. And I’ve never wanted to.”

Kaena leans forward then, and an acrid stench of poisonous matter, of something not grown but manufactured and yet living and changing, fills Raika’s nose so potently that she almost sneezes.

“So when I say that it is very, very important that you let me touch you, now, please understand just how fucking severe it is that I am asking you.”

Raika blinks. There is a second where the scent of mercury overwhelms, where the sweetness is the sweet of rot, or of poison, or of sickness, and she-

Something in her warns her about that. Warns her about letting in something like it. How can one trust it? How can one-

There is a growl, deep, deep inside of her.

She would not call her friend an it.

Her first Truth stirs, and she is shocked to find it slow, the marks of its chafing and chains… different? Deeper? Like cracks, or ropes tied to pull it apart.

Something is wrong.

She calls on that Truth, and for a moment, her mind clears.

“I Am Me, I Am Mine,” she whispers, with all the weight it feels like it can take, and her mind snaps back.

The Truth burns. It roils. It twists and turns as if awoken to find itself wounded, and the scent of the smoke vanishes from her lungs. For a moment, she sees the boy, her friend, who still looks dead but for that one instant looks almost crystal clear, before he vanishes alongside the smiling thing.

She cannot remember what is wrong. It’s a second, maybe more, but… something is wrong, and it is not something she can speak away.

Raika turns to Kaena, who has sat patiently, leaning forward, waiting.

“Do it,” she says, and fails to hold her breath as a room’s worth of Qi floods through Kaena’s control and into her body.

And then… nothing.

It’s strangely pleasant, actually. Like a… tingling sensation, down in her lungs.

Kaena blinks.

“Alright then. Let it not be said this one doesn’t rise to a challenge.”

Slowly, Raika can feel something shifting, pulling back. The aura struggles, but eventually, it starts to push through into her ribs, her muscles… and then down to her stomach.

There is a feeling like something squirming, which should not, and-

Kaena blinks, and then performs a very un-sultry growl.

Well. Probably not intended as sultry.

The scent of mercury burns in the air and Raika feels her veins slow, her blood sluggish as the Qi moves through her. She can’t sense it, not really, can only feel its passing and smell it, but she can feel how it affects some of the Qi already in her, weaving through her blood.

She is afraid. It can’t be avoided. It’s not every day even a close friend sticks a poisoned hand down your throat.

Something in her grabs to that, holds her to it, keeps the fear there, but-

Raika keeps her adrenals closed and deactivated. Forces her body to stillness. In this, the disassociation helps; there is nothing stopping her from ignoring how her body feels.

Finally, it reaches her stomach again, and she sees Kaena flinch in surprise and in… a single, brief instant of fear.

And then, grinning wide and gritting their teeth, something like triumph.

They pull back, dragging their Qi out of her body bit by bit. Raika notices that Kaena is breathing harder, still only through their nose but sweating profusely to match it.

They lean back in their chair, and the scent of Qi in the room fades a bit, moving back to its more traditional scent of sweet confections and fruit, and Kaena growls softly in a very improper fashion.

“I… I apologize, Raika, but in my defense, whatever you’ve got going on inside you is wild.”

Raika tilts her head, tracing the scent, eyes wandering a bit. She could swear Kaena is smiling, but- no, it’s… it’s not Kaena. Who is it?

“Apologize for what?” she asks.

“I sensed… something. It seems to be something you ate. It has… I tried to access it, but your body rejected me. I usually go in through the lungs on something like this, but yours are… much larger than they should be. And your stomach- it took a bite out of my Qi, I think.

“Still, it’s enough for me to be able to tell. Something is wrong I believe that ******** is affecting you more actively than you thought. Have you allowed him any leeway recently? Fed on another’s Qi? Do you know how your digestion works?”

Raika shakes her head, frowning. “Who? That- you said a name. No one’s been affecting me lately, I don’t think. It’s- the letter messed with my head, and something’s…”

“Something is wrong, yes, you keep almost saying. Raika, Taurus contacted me. He said you might be under an influence, that I should confirm if I could, and with your behavior recently it only makes sense. You’ve been speaking to the air during your fights, Maen says she thinks you keep seeing him. I need you to stay here. I’m going to get Yun Ka.”

Raika frowns. “Why? I’m- ok, I’m not fine, that’s obvious, I can feel that much, but how could they help?”

They can’t, says the smiling figure she can’t remember. She let him in, and she’s ever so weak, so-

I Am Me, I Am Mine.

It strains further, the Truth of it stretched, badly, but not so much that she can’t feel it beat back whatever’s influencing her again. She growls, shakes her head hard.

“Yes. Ok. Go. No, I’ll find her, it’s- I think it’s better if it’s faster.”

Raika gets up, and-

Stands there. Wondering what the thought that was just cut out of its place might have been.

Kaena slaps her, hard, needing to almost fully extend to reach her face.

“Oh beastie. Never any end to your trouble, is there?”

Without waiting for an answer, Kaena grabs Raika’s hand, tugging her along towards the door. Slowly, the scent of mercury begins to fill her nose again, and Raika, still sluggish, shakes it off enough to look over at her new guide with confusion.

“Come on. I’ll do my best to keep you on track. It’s best to take it slow. We don’t know what your body is trying to do right now, so use your strength only a bit, hmm? I’ll try to keep you as intact as I can, cracked though you may be. No picnic with this thick skin of yours, but we do what we must, beastie. Come on then.”

It’s a hesitant walk, rather than a run. Every few steps, Raika sort of pauses, before Kaena’s scent redoubles and the Qi washes away the image of-

Of someone. Someone who is no longer smiling.

Ok. Played his hand too early, maybe? Or Taurus’ warning, just blind luck?

She’s not so far gone she can’t smile at that. Growl a bit, and feel how it makes her blood shiver, her Qi-

Hmm. What was she doing again?

Ah. Kaena’s pulling her somewhere.

Well. She trusts Kaena, at least. Mostly. Better to follow along, maybe.

The scent of battle wafts in, the Arena’s many rooms a luxury afforded to those recovering in its walls and maintaining impartiality, but it’s still nice to be able to tell what’s happening. Every other thought cut off in an attempt to do… something, her mind drifts. Kaena’s scent is overpowering, even still, but she can vaguely smell something like… like a mine shaft, full of glistening, sharp things, all of them moving, like diamonds and flesh in one, and arrayed against it a subtler bouquet of roiling, burning light, a radiation ozone-scented and bloody…

And then Kaena is knocking on a door. Barging in a moment after.

And stopping.

And Raika is hit with the scent of a forest, deep and dark, whose leaves are sharp enough to flay stone and whose roots crawl with black shadow.