Raika takes a seat in the middle of their “camp”, Shi Cho’s fireflies fluttering about its center and leaving a pleasant circle of illumination around them. She makes sure her hands are all visible, and that she sits in a static position, not one from which she could easily pounce. The whole time, she watches both the newcomer to the group and Shapefixit for signs of aggression, trying to understand the new dynamic.

Shi Cho, interestingly, seems to almost match Yun Ka’s passion for Taran’s still body with his beetle. He whispers and croons to it, mumbling a lot of his words but very visibly happy for its return, and she smells just a hint of his Qi coming through, weaving back with the beetle’s.

Shapefixit, on the other hand, keeps her eyes locked on to Raika, and stays standing.

“What’s wrong?” Raika asks. “Everything alright?”

Shapefixit takes a while to say anything, but with both nerds busy, they have time. In the end, she lets out a quiet, warbling hiss, then shakes her head, her eyes never leaving Raika’s.

“Not normal,” she clicks and chirps into words. “Not the same. Predator, now. Predator only, it feels.”

Raika smiles, a human smile with the right amount of teeth. “Not inaccurate. We’re… fixing some things. Putting some pieces back together. I’m a bit more focused right now. But I mean you no harm.”

Shapefixit growls, like a machine-gun spatter of quiet clicks. “Promise it,” she says. “In the true tongue. This one has heard it.”

Raika shakes her head. “I can’t use it right now. The Witch would see.”

“Oh? What do you mean?” Yun Ka pipes up, turning her head from Taran’s still form and peeking over at them. “True speak? And the Witch? I thought the Qi signature down here seemed familiar, but I can’t identify any traditional formations that would allow it to flow like this, and-”

“She’s here,” Raika says. “Somehow. Can smell her. Like cold, dark waters, perfectly still. Something swimming in them. And whenever I speak with my ‘real’ voice, the one that’s… sort of lyrical or rumbly, she hears it.”

“I thought that was an affectation! You mean to say there’s some sort of unique properties to-”

“True speak,” Shapefixit interrupts. “Can’t lie. The speech of the Heavens and the great Beasts and the true Gods. Can only say true things. She has it. Heard her use it. Not always. Sometimes.”

“Fascinating… first True Flame, now something called true speech. Have you considered-”

“Not much, currently. No,” Raika interrupts.

Yun ka pauses, then sighs. “Ah. Apologies. I hate to be rude. I apologize if I in any way offended. I seem to recall you were uncomfortable the last time we spoke too much of your new ontology.”

Raika smiles, as organically and normally as she can. “It’s fine. I know there’s no malice in it. I just prefer to keep my own secrets for now.”

“Can’t keep secrets,” Shapefixit clicks. “Not with true speech. Always comes out.”

Raika shrugs. “I am a proficient liar, when I want to be. I lie to myself all the time. Maybe I’ll figure out how.”

Shi Cho giggles, then freezes awkwardly as the three of them turn to stare at him.

“Sorry! Just… the banter. It’s nice. I don’t hang out with a lot of people.”

Shapefixit huffs out a breath, and even Yun ka laughs a bit.

And then Taran gasps in a long, strained breath, like the wheezing of something long-dead reawakened.

He looks around wildly, his eyes weirdly pale and sightless, his body stiff and creaking as he moves and jangles his needle-piercings-

Yun Ka just pats him lightly on the head with one of her arms.

“There there,” she says. “Calm down. All better now. You should have a nice little infusion to keep you going.”

Even as she says it, a syringe-tipped limb folds back into her contraptions, and Taran takes another long, shaky breath.

“Where… where are-”

“Deep beneath the city. In a weird, fucked up maze,” Raika replies.

He looks at her, and immediately she sees some of the colors in his pupil shift, ever so slightly.

“Who… who are you?”

She tilts her head, and for a moment, the Mask freezes. But then, she smiles again. “I’m Raika. Duh.”

Taran looks at her, a dozen different faint scents wafting from them… and then nods, slow. “Are you… with us?”

She nods, once. Whatever it is that Taran sees in that nod, it seems to mollify them.

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“How are you feeling?” Yun Ka asks. “Any current drains?”

Taran shakes his head. “No. It’s just… it’s just me right now. We don’t have the bandwidth to keep anyone else awake. I’ve been tired since the fight with the corpse-smith, I haven’t had a true rest in a while.”

“Mmh, understood. Raika, can you continue to carry Taran? Perhaps in a more armored method?”

She nods. “I can. What’s happening with them?”

Yun Ka goes to speak, excitement bubbling up about a new subject- but pauses, and looks to Taran first, as if for approval.

He sighs.

“I have… I’m in the Altered Cultivation Division for a reason. I host… more than just myself inside. Human bodies aren’t designed for that. It’s why I have these-” he idly flicks one of the needles working as a piercing across his body- “so that my meridians are rerouted and slowed. I can’t generate or absorb energy like I used to, but I can do it even while asleep, and the more I rest, the more I can store. I haven’t hibernated properly in months, though. That last push at the arena… I’m tapped out. Spending any more could damage me.”

There’s more there, some that might be revealed if they asked, but… overall, not the most practical action. So she just nods, and smiles reassuringly. “Ok. I can carry you, and you can stay… asleep? While I do. I don’t know if I’ll be able to take you the whole time, though.”

Taran nods. “If it’s an emergency, wake me. Better to go out fighting or help to escape. Otherwise…”

“We’ll let you rest,” Yun Ka says, patting them gently. “Go on. Get some sleep.”

Taran nods, stiffness already returning, and they visibly shut down, their eyes going as blank and still as a corpse’s as he curls back up into that semi-foetal position.

“I can help carry him when you can’t,” Yun Ka says. “I understand he must be pretty heavy, and you must be exhausted.”

Raika shakes her head. “That’s not it. I imagine things will become violent again, whether we want them to or not. Fighting while keeping him safe will be easier with you than with me.”

“And what makes you think we will have to fight?” Shi Cho asks. “Perhaps when we find our way out, we will all ascend there together back to the world. There’s no gain in fighting now.”

She looks at him, eyebrow raised.

“For an insect practitioner to have never heard of a Gu jar is an interesting thing indeed.”

He shrugs. “Figured I might as well put it out there. Though I’m curious. In a Gu jar, the ritual area is sealed. These caverns, while strange, are surely just beneath extensive mining tunnels dug into Cragend for generations, hardly truly sealed.”

Raika shakes her head, turning now to Shapefixit. “No. This place is alive. I’ve seen the walls healing over damage, drinking in death and lifeforce. You all must have too. Even for those with spatial rings and food, we won’t last long here, and the Witch has no love for Imperials or sects. There’s only one way out of here. We need to find the master of this space, and take an exit from her.”

“And how do you plan we do that?” Yun Ka asks.

Raika smiles, nodding towards Shapefixit. “With you two. Between your formula, my nose, and Shapefixit, your ability to sess out stone and tunnels, we’re probably in better shape than most. We need to focus on finding our allies, eliminating the danger, and getting out, and the first two are interchangeable.”

Shapefixit shakes her head, clicking, her ears flopping like sails. “Mmmmmmh. Not normal, these. Not cave, not stone. It’s godflesh. Can’t dig through godflesh, can’t use it without asking.”

Yun Ka tilts her head, immediately intrigued again. “Is this a personal belief, or a cultural one? Study of goblinoid culture is exceedingly difficult, I’d love it if-”

Shapefixit hisses, loud and long enough that it echoes strangely down the tunnels around their little clearing. She glares at Yun Ka, eyes like big black pools with slitted yellow centers.

“Is ‘difficult’ because your kind always quick to kill, slow to learn,” she snarls in that same bird-like voice. “It’s godflesh. We’re in its belly, and we are not welcome. That is why it drinks from us.”

“You’ve met this sort of thing before?” Raika asks, leaning forward.

She takes an awkward half-step back, but firms herself, then shakes her head. “No. No speaking. Not until you swear. Not until you truespeak.”

Raika lets out a breath, a bit of frustration going past the mask from the Flesh, but…

“Yun Ka, can you make a formation? Something to limit the Qi around us? The last time I spoke, the Witch heard me. If we block off her Qi, it might make things easier.”

“Ah! An excellent idea, one I’ve worked on a bit. Not much, cause we have to keep moving, it’s important, but if I were stationary and-”

“We’re stationary now.”

“So we are!”

A dozen mechanical limbs unfurl, more than half of them equipped with chalk, vials of powder or small chisels, and in seconds the space around them is carved with a formation, thousands of symbols and letters appearing incredibly quickly as Yun Ka grins at them.

Shi Cho coughs, looking at her in surprise.

Yun Ka shrugs. “I like designing formulae. It’s fun!”

The smell of the dark, still waters beneath the world immediately begins to fade, enough that Raika nods.

“Alright. Shapefixit. I’ll try to be brief.”

She relaxes, and though she finds it… surprisingly difficult, she does eventually manage to dredge up her voice. Her real voice, the one that the part of her that is asleep and busy used in their talks. She sighs, letting the sound vibrate, feeling the small tuning fork around her neck vibrate ever-so-slightly in tune with it… and speaks.

“I will not use anything you tell me to hurt you. You are not my prey.”

The words ripple and echo and Raika can see some of the runic formulae quiver a bit as it contains the way it moves through the world. Shapefixit’s eyes are wide, her body trembling, ever so slightly.

And… she nods.

“We are in godflesh,” she whispers again. “Living earth. There are tales, carved into our eldest who are still and blooming their spores into the world. Speak of a time of greater peace. When goblins had more caves, more places beneath the earth. Monsters and more would come, but the oldest ones came from godflesh, and from godflesh came protection. By sacrifice and prayer, it would let us live, and let us travel through it. It was the old homes. Before you tallies.”

“What changed?” Yun Ka asks.

“It’s godflesh. Valuable. Good for many things. Good for growing shiny stones and treasures. When we came to this city-place, I… we wondered. Your kind took them or killed them slow. Away from your homes, in the farlands.”

“Shapefixit,” Raika says, keeping her voice as human as she can, “can you guide us through it?”

The goblin woman shivers, clicking her teeth together anxiously… but she nods.

“Maybe. A bit.”

“Alright. I’ll use my senses. I need you to tell me when you feel something, or if you can tell one direction is better than another. Can you do that?”

Shapefixit nods, birdlike and sharp but steadier than before.

“Meanwhile, Yun Ka, I need you to start trying to see if you can track the direction all this Qi is flowing from. If we know what direction to go in, it narrows down the search for the Witch. I found that she’s supposedly near where the cracks are that are letting the sea trickle in.”

Shi Cho waves a hand. “Anything I can do?”

“If you could send a few bugs to scout ahead, it would help a lot.”

He nods, his face calm and determined.

“Alright then. We go. Now.”

And they do. Raika carries Taran at first, but it’s not long before they hear the sounds of screaming echoing from down long, long tunnels, and the faintest scent of blood makes it to her nose.