“You think you’re ready?” Li Shu asks.

Raika smiles, half-nude and sitting up on her bed. “Yep. I think this is the right way to go. I don’t think any of us are going to stay here forever, and there’s some stuff I need to touch up before I go further. Besides, don’t you want to see how much better we can do this time?”

Li Shu rolls her eyes, but there’s a smile behind that, sitting across from Raika and looking over what’s been set between them. “Well obviously I’ll knock it out of the water. Last time we did this I just followed along with your mess of an idea. Now I actually have an idea about what I’m doing.”

“Exactly!” Raika says with a clap. “I know how to use my body way better than before, and you’ve gotten way more talented with your technique. Maybe we can even come up with something new, who knows!”

Li Shu shakes her head. “I doubt it.”

She walks over to Raika, looking over the expanse of her skin and the ways that Raika’s reformed it. Her memory isn’t perfect, but she’s raised scar tissue patterning in the shape of the ritual they carved together, almost two years ago, all across her body. There’s a slight tingle as the formulae are once again etched out, but for the most part, it feels just the same.

Raika touches on a few points that Raika remembers roughly, tracing the more irregular patterns there. “It’s not that I couldn’t think of something, I just doubt we have the supplies to add an enchantment here. Your flesh is so dense with Qi that we’d need some really intense reagents to properly layer new formations into it. In theory, if you could figure out the patterns you could just make new formations, but without the right Qi signatures, like fire or water, your options are limited anyways.

“On the other hand, I can almost guarantee that I can reinforce what’s already there. Your body and soul have both memorized the curse we put on you, otherwise it would’ve been unmade in that tribulation you told me about. Or hell, in like, any of your transformations that break the skin. Instead, it’s still holding firm. You may not be able to touch Qi directly, but if not for the curse, you’d still be leaking out most of what you generate, lit up like a signal flare half the time. If we improve the pattern, we should be able to increase it to the point that it can act like a shell around you, blocking Qi effects from getting in… at the cost of making it harder for them to get out as well.”

Raika laughs. “Not like I was going to start casting illusions and blasts of force tomorrow anyways. I think we’ve gotten to the point where even if I did recover the ability to touch Qi directly, I’d be hitting diminishing returns on my time. There’s too many projects as is, and specializing for defense against techniques and a stronger ability to contain and hide my energy is the most valuable direction we can take right now. If I do need to vent Qi out for some reason, all I need to do is bleed it out.”

Li Shu nods. “Alright. Hold still, and keep the patterns visible. It might hurt a bit, but I shouldn’t need to carve the sigils in deep like I did last time. The Witch’s books have some notes on Qi-based biomods, and-”

Raika starts to tune her out. It’s not out of annoyance: when Li Shu gets going she can talk theory for hours on end, and most of the stuff relevant to this operation they’ve already gone over. At this point it’s more about the drone of conversation to keep them both distracted and focused in equal measure. There’s not a lot for Raika to do, and a lot of busywork for Li Shu, cross-referencing their old notes with what Raika remembers on her skin, and then cross-referencing again to the Witch’s texts and her own new notes and theories.

While Li Shu closely and carefully carves patterns into the Flesh, Raika focuses on other projects.

It’s not exactly a conducive environment to be using her new “core” or Truths, but there’s plenty of room to work on the mechanics of her biology and body. The chunk of brain matter she isolated into a new growing vat is still forming, a careful procedure she refuses to rush, meaning it’s still a day or two away from being done. She pumps a bit more Qi into it, a fresh pattern of bloodflow, and watches it shift and change, gaining a few new folds and wrinkles.

She slowly, slowly connects to it.

It’s risky. Doing it with Li Shu present is the safest way to do it, as she’s the closest thing they have to an esoteric medical examiner, but none of them are brain surgeons.

But the Flesh feels right. There’s a sense of something that should work, a mix of instinct and biological process shifting pieces into place, like when you’re walking, see a tricky path, and know you can run through it if you just trust the feeling.

A thread of nerve endings, mirroring those inside her spine, spirals down out of her frontal lobe, down her neck and into her torso, where a channel forms to access the secondary brain-cage.

And… nothing.

She feels Li Shu make it to her shoulders with her knife as she focuses. She doesn’t… feel like she’s thinking faster, or stranger, but it’s not exactly easy to tell, is it? She sends a sort of “pulse” towards the new brain matter, a mix of her Truth commanding it to act and be hers and Qi carried in on her blood.

Nothing. She sighs, tuning out of her body and back out into the world, and-

Oh.

Oh.

Ain’t that something.

The colors have tastes.

The tastes have smells.

The smells have texture.

That last one is especially fucking weird, but there is a sense of elation to it anyways. She has to shut down the new sense almost immediately, canceling the overwhelming amount of input, but it’s exactly what she’s been aiming for, what she’s been trying to achieve with having her distinct parts remain distinct. The Flesh manages the sensory input, but it’s all one brain processing it, even through different parts or “personalities”, and adding in a new thought-center to process that data was the exact right key to figuring out synesthesia.

Li Shu told her about it months ago as a possible avenue to control her overstimulation and get the most out of her evolutions. The human brain is specifically designed for five senses, balanced with certain ranges of each other, and until she learns how to create and connected new sensory data (it’s on the list) it’s always going to be messy without adapting. Forcing repeated exposure to her full sensory range is one way to do it, force her body to adapt… but she’d been doing that on and off for months, and at best she learned to manage it, not control it. Qen Hou had apparently brought up at some point that some musicians in the sect claimed to blend senses together, that there were apparently techniques for it, similar to illusion techniques in how they mess with one’s senses. Li Shu theorized it might be a way to blend her senses together to help better analyze things without overtaxing her brain, melding them more completely.

She reactivates the connection, opening her senses as things shift sideways again. She pays attention to Li Shu’s rune-carving, feeling the pain: it’s red, but a lighter-colored red, the edges of it soft and velvety and tasting mildly of… pressed grapes? Only in the “center” of the color is there the harsher edges, the grittiness of sand but in the form of a papercut, tasting of vinegar…

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Mmmh. It’s a lot, but… it’s overwhelming in a different way. More of it feels subconscious, like she has to focus to pick out the minutiae, but the wider picture holds those details in it already. It’ll take some getting used to, but there’s advantages, especially if, by growing the new brain matter, she can make processing it go easier.

Li Shu taps her on the shoulder, and Raika blinks, shutting down the new senses and coming awake.

“Hi! Hey. Sorry. Drifted off a bit. What’s up?”

Li Shu smiles and taps the dull edge of a scalpel against Raika’s knuckles. “You’ve been staring at the wall like an idiot for like an hour. I’m done with the upper body, just need you to lay down so I can do your legs and face.”

Raika grimaces, but nods. The Flesh gets to work shutting down about half her pain receptors, so things can be felt but aren’t strong enough to flinch from, and Li Shu gets back to work.

It takes a little over three hours of careful, precise carving for Li Shu to get every detail right, every modification in place. The original ritual had maybe a quarter of Raika’s body overtaken by cuts, large formation circles and connected angles making up the ritual- but Li Shu’s changes make parts of it far more fluid. There are sections that look almost organic, winding symbols and circuits like roots and veins, a mix of Craft patterns and Li Shu’s own notes on vein architecture and patterning of muscle-forms. It’s much more connected, reinforced, like a lattice built over the half-empty frame of the original, and…

“Ready?” Li Shu asks.

Raika nods once, resolutely.

Li Shu focuses her strength, pushes against the density of Raika’s flesh and pre-existing curse. From bowls off to one side, crushed, pulped blood and algae from the pond stir, and then ooze up into the air and to trace the runes, filling them, catalyzing Li Shu’s energies. Both flesh and ritual material resist at first, and Raika can smell Li Shu’s scent washing over the air as she pushes harder, holds the pressure… and eventually, like gears grinding into motion or a rock rolling downhill, the curse reactivates. The familiar pattern of Qi-blockage on her exterior skin shifts, touches on the modifications, and clicks into place like a puzzle piece.

There’s a moment where she can feel her flesh writhing in tune with something else, not just Qi but… like a touch behind it, like something deeper. Her soul? Li Shu mentioned that the curse was probably affecting both, working on a deeper level-

The sensation passes as suddenly the feeling of Li Shu’s Qi in her body goes inert, even as the scent in the air remains. The pulped matter of Qi-rich blood and dark blue algae lock into place, absorbed by ritual, Qi, and target all, and there’s a moment where it begins to dissipate and fuse into her, the Qi and properties both expended to facilitate the ritual and leaking into its makeup under Li Shu’s direction.

“I think it worked,” she says, sitting up.

Li Shu’s face is pale and drawn, sweating considerably for the minute and change it took for the ritual to take effect again.

“Damn right it did,” she pants. “I’ve… damn. That was good training if nothing else. Your body went from mud to rock just then, I can’t push even a drop of Qi into it anymore. I’ve trained to push my Qi into a body through its resistances, and I can’t get further than the first few layers of skin.”

Raika grins, flexing her skin. She can feel it a bit, the way that Qi touches her flesh and just… slides off, little eddies and flows around her rather than moving through her like she isn’t there or moving sluggishly through her body or into her meridians.

“Its… I can feel it. On my skin. Like… like a breeze you never noticed before.”

“Oh?”

She nods. “Yeah. Like… feeling the water on your skin, and you didn’t notice before cause it was kinda flowing through you before. It’s stronger, but-”

“It should be broader, too,” Li Shu interrupts. “You were already shifting it, but now it should be anything you use as a skin, not just skin proper. If you make armor, it… should become denser as well. I’m not sure, still needs testing, but hopefully this integrated it, rather than just putting it “on top” of you.”

Raika smiles, large and wide. “Definitely looking forward to testing that. Whatever else, it feels a lot more solid. Great stuff.”

Li Shu beams, proud of her work.

Raika looks at her, bright and happy, sweating and tired but proud… and laughs a little.

Li Shu pouts at her. “Oh what now?”

“I dunno. Haven’t had a hot, sweaty woman in my room staring at me naked in a few months. I thought it was funny.”

Li Shu blushes, but only lightly, rolling her eyes. “I’m a healer. You’re my patient. What kind of healer would I be if I wasted all my time staring at your tits?”

Raika laughs again, leaning back into the bed. “No complaints from me. Your work is exemplary. I was just… mentioning something to Hisheng a few days back. About being proud of you, of your dynamic with the others. Still growing and all, but… proud of it.”

Li Shu smiles, playing with her hair a bit, her bun messier than what it was when they first met. “Yeah, well… it’s nice. I feel comfortable with them. Qen Hou is still Qen Hou, but… it’s nice to be closer to someone. And Hao Nera is fun, but I feel like… it’s sort of stupid, but I feel like I can trust him to care what I think? We met when he ambushed us with a gang of bandits, you know. Some real cultivator stuff, to find out a year later we’d be partners.”

Raika smiles, stretching as she gets up, absorbing the ritual formulae back into her skin and leaving her flesh unblemished again. “I get you. Well… maybe not exactly, but in terms of relationships, I can say just about all the ones I’ve had the last few years have been surprising.”

“...do you miss Maen?”

Raika pauses, freezing momentarily where she was picking up her robes again. Eventually, she sighs, the Mask stepping forward to better manage their reactions.

“Yeah. I… looking back, I’m not sure how much of it started as just need, but… a good piece of it was more. Or maybe turning into something more. I’m glad she’s out there, growing, and I… I trust her to do so on her terms.”

She shrugs, slipping back into her clothing as she does and sighing. “It’s better this way. We’ll see how it turns out. And in the meantime…”

She steps out of the room, making her way through the living room and towards the door. The kid, wide eyed and alert as he almost always is when he’s near his little bundle of stuff in one of the corners, tracks her as she walks, and she gives him a rumble and a nod.

“Hey!” she yells, her voice booming through the cabin. “Qen Hou! Get over here! I need you to light me on fire a bit!”

She opens the door to a crisp day, clouds blotting out the sun and turning the sky a dull grey with hints of rain. She opens her senses and sees the world in new shades: the rain tastes of damp and cold and feels like ripples of liquid and looks like shifting patterns of flying blue dots, all at once, her brains melding her senses into a kaleidoscopic comprehension that she has to blink to get under control. Out in the open air, she throws her robe to the side, her Flesh already shifting to remove her privates and chest, melding them into a sleeker form as her skin shifts towards chitin, her under-armor flowing like nanoscale and thickly-woven threads of impact-dispersing muscle fibers.

She hears/smells/tastes/feels/sees Qen Hou sigh and walk out of the house, his hands already smoldering, the air around him reshaped in her senses to reflect the smell of magnesium and ozone his flames exude. She turns to look at him, a few sets of peripheral eyes forming on her clavicle and forehead, and sees him with her new senses.

He looks like the perfect center of a storm. A brewing, trembling thing that sends the feeling of shivers through the colors of a glowing, radiated eye of wind and plasma that are visible through that smell of burning magnesium and strange, near-clear energies. She looks at him, and the person is there, in the middle of it, but he’s so much more than a person. Under synesthesia, she hears his muscles move as shifting colors inside his skin, smells his sweat and blood like a feeling of radial warmth, a physical sonar sense, and “sees” his Qi as physically and distinctly as she does his body. She sees the entirety of her friend in that moment… and she sees the thing inside him.

In that aura of shifting storm, of calm amid burning plasma and shifting currents of swirling, well-controlled energy just as visible and real as the muscles in his flesh or the jelly in his eyes, there is a sort of bubble. Like an embryonic sac, but wrapped in multiple layers… and deep within, she senses something like the color purple, consumed and consuming, like velvet scales sharp enough to cut flowing through a thick mane of something.

She sighs, loud enough that the grass ripples around her.

“You look beautiful,” she says honestly.

Qen Hou sighs, his aura and ontology folding into his hands and igniting as clear white flames, tinged with glorious indigo, magenta and neon.

“Seriously, what is it about you people?” he grumbles, warping the world with his existence, like the glorious, plasmic core of his very own hurricane. “I swear, I live with a bunch of perverts and maniacs.”

She can’t help but smile wide at that, and launch herself at him.