A quill scratches against paper, shaping the contours of kanji and runes. Word by word, intent is formed shaped into meaning through the forum of language, detailing what needs to be said, and nothing more.

Taurus hums softly to himself as his pen shapes the ink before him.

Moments like this take up most of his days now. Once, that would have tormented him, but he has that part of himself well-chained and quiet. There is a quiet nobility in crafting, with nothing but ink and paper, death and power.

Most of what he writes is simple, accurate, direct. The few red herrings he plants in them are encoded in ways just complex enough to be found by those looking, and hold little meaning. The few letters he writes with purpose, he keeps simple and direct.

Secrets between two old families, and how their feuds might be resolved, if only each side is willing to lend an ear to a benefactor. Calls for information from subtler sources, ready to provide him with input on the goings-on of the Academies, of Central, of the Citadel of the Division of War, of even the first ring should he require it. Missives to make sure that this shipment ends up at a station just far enough off course to be lost, and that another receives a batch of new technologies or supplies they didn’t know they needed.

In spite of the pain, there’s a part of him that’s rather happy he’s bound his cultivation and Soul so thoroughly. He does not think he would look particularly good as a spider, no matter his skill at weaving webs.

There are risks, of course. Some of his ‘vulnerabilities’, bloody and raw and presented to his opponents, can only serve him should they take the bait, but others might genuinely frustrate should they be found out. Some can be spun as an active participation in the realm of realpolitik, while others would leave him open to very public feuds.

That’s what the bigger, quieter web is for.

Singing quietly through the voice of a dead oracle and cold, runic steel, vibrations of news come unto him from all across the land. The pieces of the blade are limited, but his Imperial title of Runemaster is not for show, and there are ways to improve the signals sent between them. Humming a tune (he’s not quite sure where he’s heard it before), he listens to a bit of very good news.

A little piece of metal, left with his most recent problem child, sings to him from right alongside a Broken Instrument.

Nothing in life is guaranteed. The fact that he’s here, sitting on a desk in the Central domain of a Division, happily filling out paperwork, proves that fact.

When it comes to his latest experiment into rebellion, guarantees become more like… suggestions. Raika’s proven herself a difficult creature to understand, and an even more difficult one to predict. Where he thinks she’s leashed, she finds a way to tear herself off of it, spreading chaos and mess all over his floor. When she’s set loose, she finds a quiet place to rest, changing things in ways she likely doesn’t even realize.

There is a certain joyous fascination in finally getting right what makes a person tick.

Raika’s clever. She’s a quick-thinker, one that he admires when it comes to willingness to improvise. Despite the aura she cultivates, she’s no brute, not really.

But she’s ignorant.

A little life in a little piece of the third rin, followed by barely a few years amidst a rather chaotic Imperial stay, does not an education make. There is ever so much mess in the world, and it can take decades to understand its surface level. And a lack of experience, above all else, can be lethal.

He pities cultivators nowadays. He really does. All that impossible, incomprehensible power that the Empire and its resources offer, all to be spent in its service in barely more than a century.

Not that he’s an exception.

Considering her and her ally’s ignorance, she’s most likely to either try to circumvent the fortress city or try to infiltrate it directly. Add in her inability to wield Qi and the fact that her little benefactor is a healer, and only in the Foundational realm, and the easiest path is to infiltrate. From that point, there are only two possibilities.

Either she’ll succeed, and pass through unscathed-

Or they’ll identify her as a special physique of some sort, and take her in for “recycling”.

She can’t use his authority, not without fucking them both, and she knows that. She can’t use a sect’s authority, either; her only connection is the Hungering Roots sect, and that’ll just draw more scrutiny on the lover she’s trying to protect. An individual with no political backing of any kind, no Qi, and a special physique only has one place in a fortress city-

Feeding the Heart within it fresh inspiration for its soldiers.

At that point, she’d either fight back or die. A chance to weaken a fortress city and inflate the danger of the incoming beast tide, or a problem eliminated in the form of an unruly tool.

His hand twitches. The sound of humming in his head gets just a little bit louder, and he has to stop writing for a moment.

Sitting back, he breathes deeply. A rich flow of Qi fills the room, gathered by arrays and formations he’s carved into the chamber around him. Workspace, cultivation chamber, defensive formation, all in one, and while bestial cultivation doesn’t benefit as much from breathing in Qi as he does eating enriched materials, its still useful.

He feels the Qi spiral down towards his core, and he works to refine it into yet another layer.

Spirit Beasts cultivate by adding more and more cores to their body, a process which is possible, but less useful for building a Nascent Soul. His own being so… difficult, he’s discarded the technique.

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Slowly, he reflects on his thoughts. An “unruly tool”. He takes the twitching of his hand, the song he was humming to himself, and shapes both of them into another layer of his core, wrapping it tighter and tighter around the rumbling voice within it.

Most cultivators build nine layers to a Core. It’s what’s needed for a Nascent Soul to bloom. Anything less and it breaks, and the more layers you make, the harder it is to keep it from falling in on itself.

Of course, in turn, the stronger the Nascent Soul becomes, and the harder it must fight to be born.

Taurus wraps the feeling of disgust and wrongness that the thought created in him into his fifty-first layer, and exhales a quiet breath.

Thirty seven minutes. A personal record. He’s getting faster.

Picking up his quill, he begins writing again. Accurately predicting the danger Raika would end up in does not mean that its consequences aren’t messy, but his grasp on said mess is something else entirely. There are many more letters to write, arrays to craft, and pieces to move into place.

He hums quietly to himself, but there are notes missing from the melody.

Deep inside, wrapped in layers of discarded and reforged pieces of Taurus’ self, the [Horned Lord Of The Valley] quietly takes another ponderous step towards the edge of its prison.

So much to do.

So much further to go.

A simple push of his Qi touches on one of the jade pendants in his robes, sending out a message.

A few minutes later, the door to his chamber retracts into its frame, and Kaena walks in.

“You rang, boss?” they ask, smiling wide. They look a bit more tired than he’s used to, their colors a bit faded, a hint of danger louder in their scent- but they remain a vision, dressed in flowing robes that highlight their gold and peach-pink skin.

“There’s been a new development. We’ll need to make a show of things if we’re going to control the narrative and get all we can from it. Do we have any potential candidates that could be deployed into the shallower ends of the fourth?”

They shrug. “You’d know better than I. What exactly are you looking for?”

“Suggestions. I need at least two subjects that we can spin as giving an opportunity to, who might excel in that opportunity in ways we can benefit from. They need to be as disconnected from mainline factions as possible- subtlety isn’t a priority. The more this looks like a power play, the better, so long as we don’t overstep or land on a tiger’s tail.”

“...You know I don’t love it when you talk like that.”

Taurus blinks, looking up at them.

“You always start calling people subjects when you’re… like this. It’s not the best look, T. And you’re humming.”

Taurus blinks. He cracks his jaw a little bit, rolling it around. “So I was. Thank you for the note, but I’m fine. It’s under control.”

“I know it is. It rarely isn’t with you. It’s not a lack of control that worries me.”

Taurus puts down his quill, turning to face Kaena more directly. He waits, quiet.

“Call: Upon the garden, all things rot. From the fields, all things flourish. In the hands of the builders, all things can be made.”

Kaena lets out a low, quiet sound. Something like disappointment.

“Response: Let there be blood from the bloody, wickedness from the wicked, and virtue from the virtuous. Let there be an accounting of days, and progress without the need for chains.”

Taurus twitches.

He raises a hand, flexing it slowly. Joint by joint, he cracks each knuckle, tilting his head to watch the movements as he does.

“Hmm. That bad?”

“How long do you think you’ve been in here?” Kaena asks.

“...three days, maybe.”

“Seven. Not your worst slip.”

“But we can’t afford that sort slip. Not now.”

Kaena shrugs, walking over towards him. As ever, they keep themselves a few inches away, never touching his skin directly, but close enough that some of their Qi presses against him. It fulfills its design, calming his Qi circulation and forcing his system to draw away some of the minor adrenal responses.

“You don’t have to. I’m fine.”

Kaena quirks an eyebrow. “Between the two of us, I believe I’m the better judge of that, thank you kindly.”

Taurus snorts, his nostrils blaring out a burst of hot air strong enough to flutter the papers on his desk. “Are you? I’m starting to wonder the longer you keep your new pets around.”

Kaena’s gaze closes, the smile dropping from their face.

“They’re learning.”

“They’re suffering. The call and response only works if we trust each other. Are you absolutely certain you’re as objective as you think?”

Kaena’s face almost, almost, changes, a new expression coming to their face… and then it goes quiet. They sigh, quiet, even their breath tainted by the smells of the Garden.

“It doesn’t… feel quite like it used to. Being on this side of the leash. The Garden’s commands, the flow of Qi, the open meridians, its… a lot to manage.”

He snorts again.

“You should let them go.”

“And you shouldn’t have let them go to the Wall if you thought that they were going to get eaten by a fortress city.”

Taurus has nothing to say to that.

“Yeah. Choices, love. They fuck us all.”

He does his best to ignore the particular pain in that final sentence. He pushes his own Qi to the surface, pushing back Kaena’s just a bit.

As close to touch from him as they can abide.

“...We can send out the… fuck. Not subjects. The… cultivators. We can send out our chosen few now. I was going to wait a few days, make it a hunting squad, but now… it might allow us to exert some pressure, let us play with the situation a bit more.”

Kaena sighs, low and quiet.

“Sure. I think Maen made contact with a few useful ones in the Academies. Young, hungry, not very connected yet. One of them even has a tie to our beastie.”

“Good. That… that might be useful to her. Offer her another too-”

Kaena shushes him.

He grunts. “Another ally. More options.”

They smile, though it’s a bit sad. “Better.”

“And in the meantime, you’ll finish what you’re doing with your… with the twins. Three days. Then we cut them loose or put them to a higher purpose than pain.”

Kaena says nothing for a moment, and he wonders if they might actually push back on this.

“Alright. That’s doable.

“And you should speak to Taran, when you can. He’s getting worried, and you know that not all of him is as big a fan of you as he is. He can only go into torpor so often before he starts to blend again, and you promised that-”

“I know. Have I ever broken a promise to any of you?”

Kaena looks at him, their eyes tired. “Not yet, love. But I worry about when you’ll take that piece for a prison cell too.”

He clenches his fist, instinctive rebuttals rising up. He’s fine. He has it under control. He has himself under control. He has all the tools he needs to make sure that he stays on track, precisely directed, and if they question that, if they are a threat to that-

Mmh.

No.

No.

“Three years,” he says. “Give or take a few months. We’ll be done by then.”

“...ok.”

They push their Qi at him with a bit more force, and then retract their aura back in towards their body, forever a soft shield. They don’t bow to him- not in private. They never have, and he will never ask it of them.

He will never ask it of them.

Slowly and painfully, he unclenches his fist. He’d been clenching it tight enough that there are little red half-moons in his palm from where dull nails cut into furred flesh.

He can last three more years. There’s still enough of him to remain in control without losing sight of things. And if he does slip… well.

That’s what Kaena’s for. Call and response.

Someday he won’t mean what he says in the call, or care about the response. Or maybe he’ll mean it too much. And they’ll know.

Not yet.

He’s still himself, and he’s still in control.

Distantly, he realizes he’s still humming. He can’t remember even half the notes of the tune anymore, but it’s still there.

For a moment, he remembers that he used to be afraid of that. The thought gives him a little moment of dread.

He takes that thought.

And he starts to build another layer.

He can’t afford to slip again. He has to be in control.

Everything is going according to plan.