Months and months of preparation, all leading to this.
The final day.
Last minute preparations. Last minute checks. Six almost-perfect months of healing, of change… all to leave again. Back out into the world.
Not that that bell can be unrung. Her meeting with the elder, at the absolute minimum, makes sure of that. It’s one thing to have an Imperial Cultivator at the rank of Researcher (Senior Researcher now, apparently. What delightful news.) tell him to keep an eye from afar and report in, another entirely to have her show up on their doorstep, bold as brass, and start making demands and throwing political clout around.
And, well, fucking one of their core disciples in the woods. That’s going to cause a delightful little stir indeed.
Between that, the village that knows far too much about them at this point, and the fact that Taurus knew where she was all along, tracker or not… even if she hadn’t chosen and announced their departure time, it’s still very much time to go.
So now, all that remains is making sure they’re all ready for it.
Qen Hou’s preparations are the easiest. While none of them have storage rings, this being the boonies of the third ring and all of them being sectless, he also just doesn’t really need much beyond basic supplies. He and Hao Nera get a smaller chunk of the supplies, as well as some personalized gifts: an incense-holder made of bone and a small dagger of Blacksteel from Raika, and a primer on medicinal herbs and how to make pure alcohol from Li Shu.
He was also the most bashful when it came time for giving his own gifts in return. It’s funny, when she first met him, she’d never have thought of the guy as bashful, but now the young master, officious, prim and proper cultivator schtick is a bit easier to see through. It works as a pretty great cover- or it would, if not for how she can taste the moment of anxiety he feels as he hands over his gifts.
To Raika, he gives a small rock, one of those most affected by his impromptu Domain. It spirals, as if melted into strange patterns, but there’s no evidence of burns to it, like it turned liquid for the sake only of its transformation.
She hugs him hard enough that his ribs creak.
To Li Shu, he gives a new set of scalpels. They stand out compared to her usual set, and barely half as sharp, but it’s clear he’s shaped them by hand and enriched them with his Qi to get them to the point of malleability.
She’s no more shy than Raika, and Qen Hou actually grunts in surprise when she crushes him with all her strength.
Hao Nera, on the other hand, was a bit more practical. A single, well-made telescope for Li Shu, clearly ordered from somewhere expensive- and for Raika, a gift-wrapped selection of cured meats.
She ended up using a few of them as seasoning on their last meal together.
It was a grand thing, she’s not shy about admitting it. It’s not like they can carry most of their supplies with them, not without storage rings, so she spent nearly all of the day before cooking nearly everything in their pantry. Even still, most of what’s left will go to the village, but she made sure to put a solid dent in it for their last meal together.
Pork cutlets, noodles in a thick broth with poached eggs, spring onion and mushrooms, rice cooked in spiced water, garlic-potato croquettes, and chicken fried, stir fried, broiled, and added to thick, sauce-filled concoctions of onions and carrots and ginger, all to name just the thicker proteins. A dozen varietals of dumplings, steamed and fried, sat alongside bright, citrusy bits of fruit, in turn next to spicy rice balls, in turn next to cucumbers and enough mushrooms to write a book on; some thin like noodles, others thick and meaty, others cooked to crispiness and small enough to take in one bite, and one massive one they found that she cut open, emptied out, and filled with an improvised curry before slamming it into the oven to get golden.
There was a period of time, right around what would have normally been lunch time, that Raika considered adding lighter options. Bits of salad, perhaps, or simpler sliced carrots and corn. But then again… who goes to a final meal as a family to eat salad?
She compromised with pickled ginger, pickled eggs, baby corn fried on an improvised grill, and a bed of lettuce for anyone who wanted to use it to wrap things in.
The meal lasted well into the night. From halfway through the afternoon all the way past sunfall, they ate, and drank Hao Nera’s expensive booze that he poured for everyone, and when Jin passed out with his stomach poking out from his robes, they put him in Raika’s bed for the night and drank more.
In the end, Raika was still in charge of eating the leftovers, but there was a surprisingly small amount. Cultivator stomachs, it would seem, won out against decadence once more.
None of them slept that night.
Raika was surprised by how quiet it was. The fact that the trio didn’t sneak off for one last night (or, if Hao Nera had any say in it, stride off triumphantly) was a pleasant and unexpected gift, and in the end, they didn’t really talk much. Raika passed around her pipe, and the fire died down, and the cabin grew quiet, and at some point they went outside and sat under the stars.
Bright, glowing eyes in the sky blinked down at them, and Raika blinked back. And flipped them off.
And, eventually, the writhing horizon crawled back to the north, and quiet, early-dawn light began to overtake the world once more.
Hao Nera and Qen Hou left before Jin woke up.
Long journey ahead of them… and she got the impression that if either of them stayed much longer, they’d stick around another day, and then another- and that helped no one. They knew it, too.
The sun came up… and her friends walked away.
It didn’t hurt like she thought it would. She’d expected them to stay a little longer. Help move the damn groceries, maybe. But… they’d exchanged their gifts, and eaten their last meal, and watched the sunrise. It felt right to watch them go.
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And besides, she and Li Shu still have work to do.
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She doesn’t ask Li Shu if she’s sure. That would only insult her, especially considering how Raika can sense the steadiness of her breathing, the strength of her heartbeat.
No. Even if Raika asked her to stop, she’d only do it to begin again later. And besides, it’s time.
Li Shu sits, “skyclad”, her body covered in minutely detailed runes and array markings, inside of a complex circle marked with similar formulae. Most of it was copied verbatim from the journals left behind by She Who Stills The Water, but some of it, as is often the case, is a Li Shu original.
What’s left of the night sky still glimmers, and what’s begun of sunlight reflects through the cabin’s windows and down into the living room, re-carved and remade into a place of ritual. And Li Shu begins.
It’s actually not that complicated. Some things take a lot to be communicated and made Real: Truth, complex arrays, enchanted materials infused with specific concepts. Raika’s cursed skin is one example: a negation of the movement of Qi, creating a material wall by inverting natural properties and imbuing new ones, magnifying what was already there. Arrays to block perception, to create spontaneous formations of flame and ice, to enchant specific properties onto different things, they all take a lot of work to understand and properly set up.
This one sure as shit did too, but its purpose is… less complex. Less and more. It’s not trying to generate a specific construct or piece of arcane machinery, not trying to ape a natural formation.
It’s just trying to establish a dialogue.
Qi and blood flows into the ritual circle, Raika’s own Qi-saturated crimson seeping into it. Raika sits to one side, ready to intervene if things go south… but the chances of that, while high, barely factor in.
Li Shu knows what she’s doing.
Jin and Raika watch, off to one side, as the ritual circle begins to grow.
With the sound of crackling wood, the carvings begin to expand to the tune of flowing Qi, energy consumed from the blood being drawn into transformation naturally, easily. It’s part of her nature, and it translates to the blood (and thus the ritual) with barely any effort, as Li Shu intended. Some of the runes and symbols multiply and fuse together immediately, breaking apart the floor into new “sentences”, while others (primarily those that Li Shu changed) struggle, expanding slowly and fighting to scratch their way into the more expansive formulae. More and more of the floor of the cabin is turned to ritual formation, incantations and runes copied from books of Craft cracking into form and altering the space around them, making more channels for the blood to flow through.
With a sound of splitting wood and the smell of crimson, the world is remade.
The ritual doesn’t build any one specific effect, any one natural or unnatural form of phenomena.
But it allows room for almost all of them.
The ritual reaches the outer dimensions of the room and keeps going, crawling up the walls, onto the ceiling, the whole room raining splinters as the space is reshaped and reformed. The scratchmark runes and symbols carve themselves into the furniture, into the glass, back over themselves until something that no longer resembles a circle is carved into relief, layered over itself in dimensions.
And Raika feels it as reality turns to LOOK.
It’s like the beast tide. Her tribulation. The attention of a vast, unknowable, impossible thing beyond everything that is, looking down at the world with emotions that cannot be quantified but can be approximated as DISGUST.
And in the briefest, screaming instant of time that it takes for the impossible thing to SEE her, Li Shu lies.
As Above, So Below
My Nails Above, My Soul Below
And she lets out a little whimper as her nails are torn clean off her hands and feet.
They are plucked out from her, removed so neatly and so completely that there is no blood, merely raw flesh exposed to the air. After the initial separation, there doesn’t even seem to be pain as Li Shu looks down at her newly crimson fingers with wide eyes.
The nails themselves suddenly crackle. The ritual formulae scrawl their way from the walls into them where they lie, so many words and hissing, scratching lines of half-forgotten language overlapping on them that for a moment, it looks like they’ll be ground into dust.
But they don’t. They should. By all rights the depth of the carving words and the number of them should reduce them to nothing at all… and yet they remain.
And the thing beyond reality SEES them.
It SEES the nails… and the nails are her.
As Above, So Below
And then the cabin shakes hard enough that a massive crack spawns in their surroundings, large enough to let sunlight in through what was the roof.
And the impossible, unknowable comprehension of the world itself looking down at the crawling maggots on its body- vanishes.
Li Shu gasps, her Qi roiling violently against itself. Raika is there in a moment, throwing a towel over her shoulders and pulling her out of the center of the circle and off to the side, and Li Shu flinches against the touch, looking around in confusion like she doesn’t know what’s going on.
And then her Qi flares brighter.
The physical contact helps Raika to see her meridians fluctuate, her Dantian beginning to spasm and almost… flicker as the result of the successful ritual kick in.
It’s a tenet of the Craft, that for all things there is a price. Nothing is the manifestation of something new; everything, in turn, is simply swapping parameters, changing one rule or effect for another. In the case of their initiation ritual into the “deeper mysteries”, one’s soul organs and Qi are replaced by directly connecting one’s soul to their sacrifice, so that any and all accumulated Qi can only be touched or manipulated through it.
And this is also where Li Shu decided to be creative.
She told Raika a few days ago about the modifications she wanted to make to the ritual, the little additions to the ritual formulae. How it was a risk.
The ritual works on certain foundational principles of the craft. As Above, So Below. To All Things, A Cost. Foundational ideas held self-evident by the original creators.
Li Shu had smiled as she looked at Raika, surrounded by ink and charcoal and writings that hurt to look at.
“I think I can do better.”
As the laws of existence struggle to interpret what she’s done, Raika holds tight to her friend as she spasms.
The nails on the floor turn a clear, almost pure white, sterile and clean, and as the Qi fluctuates and spasms through reality they begin to grow and multiply. Some of them turn to sharp, crystal-edged shards of keratin, others seem to melt into a kind of liquid, and a few of them begin to sprout thin wires of something almost like webbing, dragging Li Shu’s Qi out of her- yet not. It’s not moving, it’s like the parts that are inside her are overlapping with the parts outside, superimposed and trying to pick a state to collapse into.
Li Shu doesn’t let it.
Her Dantian begins to burn through her reserves, shooting it through her meridians, forcing them to remain active, to remain real, even as she grasps blindly towards her severed nails which continue to change and manifest. One of them begins to shape itself into something like a skeletal system even as another begins to turn a pure, almost glaring white, resisting the effects of dust and air on its being. The properties and forms of keratin multiply and manifest, and Li Shu forces her mind to split in both directions. Raika can taste the ways her veins are squeezing, how fast her heart is beating, how violently and loudly her blood is straining through squeezing muscles and agonizing pressure. Every fiber of her being is clenching so hard that she’s sure it’s going to take days to recover from this, even with her friend’s elixirs and herbs.
And she holds firm.
An impossible thing, witnessing a lie, came to believe it, and that lie came true.
Li Shu, with all the strength of her being, with all the roiling Qi of her organs and her will, tries to introduce a bit of cognitive dissonance.
As Above, So Below
As Without, So Within
And the world shudders as existence meets a new Truth.
And Raika holds her friend, who bleeds from eyes, nose, and gums, and feels the pulse of her meridians through her skin, matched, a few feet away, by the same energy reflected in pale, faintly floral keratin.