Apparently it’s a very novel experience for the desert couriers to be able to enjoy the scenery during their travels. When Raika offered to build them a sort of viewing center, they were hesitant at first, but now, she’s pretty sure they’re not intending to ever leave it. A thin mucous membrane blocks them off from the outside world, see-through fibers and slender pillars of bone making up the architecture of the structure atop Raika’s back. The winds still occasionally blow a few bits of hungering, Ruinous sand into the membranes, but they’re easy enough to wick away when in such small fragments. A constant expenditure, sure, but the formations and patterns of life inside her make recovering this much energy basically a given.
It’s made it even more blatant how much she can offer, and how much power she holds compared to them. If there was hesitation before, touched by the possibility of fear, there’s now a much more solid sense of awe and gratitude. She’s been asking them questions, and Ko-es especially has been very forthcoming with answers.
“So… the east has cities?”
“Absolutely, honored cultivator,” he says, making sure not to call much attention to Kim Ya-ji’s fascinated wandering around the chamber. “Some few possess hundreds of thousands in their walls or deep within their protections. There are three grand kingdoms to the east, one greater empire to the far west around the end of the world, and two to the south. In the east, the Grand Republic of Mora holds the most territory, a series of clans of cultivators with servant-families that span generations, allied to each other. They build their homes and cities around hidden dimensions or the domains of their patriarchs and elders, making islands with some small, dangerous pathways between each. Their territory stretches from the grandest mountain range of the east, Morae’s Lament, but there are several lakes and small seas between many of the mountains, making much of their landscape aquatic.
“Deeper in the wildlands, the tribal kingdoms of the Many and All live among some of the more dangerous portions of the overgrowth. Between almost anyplace in the world that isn’t a wasteland or a specific beast’s terrain, the overgrowth rules as lord, ever-changing, infinite life spiraling out in a hundred ways. It’s impossible to predict how it will change or how the landscape will shift, but there are some tribes that make a home there, and consider anything outside the overgrowth as strange lands. They trade frequently with outsiders, but few can survive traveling in their lands, so they send out scouts most often, and work in alliance with each other to survive.
At the far edge of the east is the Fallen Kingdom. It is still ruled, but only through ghosts and the dead, metallic minds and corpses making up its citizenry and leaders. They are the furthest known outpost of civilization, standing firm against the beast-tides, the passage of the sun as it reforms, and more, using old magics and powerful Dao arrays to maintain a place of stability.”
As he’s talking, Raika is doing her best to self modify. Synapses are… messy, and each minor change has all sorts of effects on the incredibly complex web of a brain. Instead, she routes additional oxygen and nutrients into areas that she finds most activity in. She can sense individual neurons, but keeping track of them is almost impossible, like feeling each grain of sand but being unable to pick it out of a handful. Instead, she tracks where new connections form in tandem with the ongoing words, feeding a bit more Qi into those sections to try and reinforce her memory. An experiment, one with a little less danger than trying to individually format synapses and such.
And hopefully, it’ll lead her into finding better ways to grow her brains and shape their functions. In the meantime, it’s a trial-run of an attempt to create a more perfect memory, and it makes for a good distraction- she has a lot of trains of thought now, and leaving any of them off the tracks feels wrong now.
“What about the west? You mentioned an… empire there?”
Ko-es nods. “I can’t say much more, as I’ve never been. My father’s mother once spent a few years to circle the rim of the Wall and saw it herself, but I cannot know how things have changed since then. It is said that there are buildings of marble and gold, whole mountains of jade- and she made my father swear, and he made me swear, that we would never try to find it for ourselves, lest it eat us whole. She called it a place that is always building, like a sort of mud that everything sinks into and emerges from changed- gilded and more dangerous. I have heard it most called the Golden City or the western empire, and not much else.”
“Hmm. That’s… ok. That’s quite a lot. You mentioned some places in the south… but not the north?”
“Ah, well, yes, honored Raika. The north, they say, is a place of death. Despite my travels, I can’t quite disagree. It is the place closest to the moons, and the Cold Sun. Occasionally pieces of them fall to earth, especially during an eclipse, where the writhing sun crashes into and crawls across them. It is… cold. Always cold. There are some who live amidst the plains of snow, in the deepest winter ice, amid the glacier-mountains and the half-solid mistlands of alien cold… but they are not ones I would like to meet. In a land of such desperate emptiness, of such total lifeless cold, the flesh and soul of the living is more valuable than nearly any other commodity, and only the strongest of beasts and monsters can thrive there. They say there is an ocean at the top of the world, at the hidden north of existence, where the wyrms that make up the sun converge after their journey across the horizon, which boils and freezes and boils again daily. They say it has no bottom, and goes deeper than the world is wide.”
“...then what about where the sun lands? Down in the far south?”
“The land of drakes and wyrms, of flame and ever-change. More hospitable than the north by far, until you go down far enough that you find the glass. It’s… surprisingly stable, in its own way. The heat makes it so the overgrowth only thrives in the north-eastern areas and towards the west, and the people who live there are well-adapted. Many of them live beneath the earth, and come up primarily to farm the glass, ceramics and crystal that the land becomes as the sun lands. There are two kingdoms there: the nomadic peoples of the Path-born, whose territory is marked by the trails they leave across the sands and stones, and the under-folk, who worship gods in the ground and have near-infinite forms, stretch from near the tribelands of the Many and All down almost to where the sun touches down every night. Both tend to be great business, and often very hospitable peoples.”
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Raika sighs. Even at such a broad overview, it’s… it’s a massive idea. The fourth ring is more or less the size of the first three combined, and the fifth ring, long-considered the edge of the Empire, feels further and stranger to define than ever. And the idea of the Empire, what it’s connection might be to the Gilded City that Ko-es mentioned…
“You brought up before how sometimes things come from the… end of the world. From the Wall. What do they… do?”
Ko-es shudders. “Tales differ, but… they’re never good. Sometimes armies of gold and black jade march out, armed with Daemons and worse, and cut their way out into the world, but they rarely stay very long. They’ll wander out, kill anyone in their way and then retreat back towards the Wall. I’ve heard rumors that they build things in the areas they travel through, tales of black pillars dug into the earth- but if they’re real, then they don’t last very long. I’ve never actually seen one, though as I’ve mentioned, my travels are limited.”
“That’s all? They just wander out, kill people and retreat?”
“Not always. Plenty of them die here, there are whole battlefields of their armor and the dead. But those who loot the corpses only ever find blood and ash, like the bodies are just… gone. Just the armor stays behind. Some people say that there’s only armor, but plenty have spoken of sensing blood and bone beneath them, and heard them speaking with air, so I believe they’re more likely some kind of devils. I would not speculate on their origin, especially not to disrespect your own greater wisdom on the matter.
“On occasion, however, they have done more. They sometimes march out in force. There have been three wars in my life that originate from the end of the world- once, against the Fallen Kingdom, and twice into the Grand Republic of Mora. Both times they entered the Republic, multiple lesser domains were lost, and in one of the battles, one of the peaks of Morae’s Lament was torn down, killing… a lot of people. Tens of thousands at least. One of the Divine Supremes was lost, the youngest one I believe.”
“But… why? They never talk to anyone? They never say anything?”
“I apologize, honored one. If they have, this lowly one has heard nothing of the sort, but I have never been anywhere near such conflicts. I am a sand-traveler, a simple courier, carrying on a family legacy, and I doubt I will surpass Foundation Establishment in my lifetime.”
“Foundation Establishment… You mean the Foundational realm?”
“As you say, honored one. There are as many names for the steps toward ascension as there are stars in the sky, and my family has always called the first steps Qi Gathering, Foundation Establishment, and Golden Core.”
“What if your core isn’t golden?”
He gives a huff, something like a polite laugh. “I believe that to call it golden is only to denote its value, honored one.”
She huffs right back, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, alright. What would you say is directly east of here? From our point on the map towards the direction we’re heading.”
He shrugs. “Apologies, great one, but it’s a broad direction. If we turn a bit towards the south, the southeast of the world is always troubled by overgrowth, and the villages of the Many and All and their alliances are common enough. A bit towards the north, but not quite enough to enter the frozen reaches, we’ll enter the upper edge of the Grand Republic, and to the absolute edge of the east before it’s just wilderness forever, you hit the Fallen Kingdom. There’s months of travel in between even the furthest edges of each, all through the territories of cultivators, beasts, rogue Daemons and the like… the sands, for all their dangers, are reliable. Much harder to predict what you’ll run into in the overgrowth and the wilds. I can’t see any precise point from where we travel now.”
Raika sighs, yet again. The directions that the fortress city gave her, or more precisely her Heart, just point due east, nothing more specific. There’s been the slightest change as she’s traveled, but it only manifests as vaguely as the directions themselves; turn too much in one direction and she just knows whether or not she’s more or less on-heading, no more. Unfortunately, the sensation is broad enough that she can’t feel much more than “east, but not perfectly east”. Not a very useful metric.
Best case scenario, she takes a hard northward turn, then another one hard south, and triangulates off of that. Unfortunately, considering how little it’s changed in days of wandering around dunes, she’d probably have to travel days more to be able to triangulate anything properly, and that feels like time she doesn’t have.
It’s not a constant concern, but the feeling is still there. Two more years until Taurus’ plans kick off, and the whole time she’s gone, he’s still there, doing whatever he pleases. Kaena, Taran, Maen, even Yun Ka are all still right alongside him, and Hisheng, Qen Hou, Hao Nera, all of them are too far for her to reach out here. Rushing into things is just a death sentence, but delaying to try to figure everything out perfectly just doesn’t feel right.
She gives a polite bow, bending mostly at the shoulders from a seated position. “This one thanks the honorable Ko-es for answering my questions. The world is vast, and I find that I tend to do better when informed on it than not.”
Ko-es bows back twice as deep, edging near a kowtow yet again. “This lowly one is happy to inform his honorable host of what little he knows.”
Raika snorts, getting up off the ground. “Still far too polite, but I’ll accept it. Is the direction we’re going still good for you for now?”
He maintains the bow, refusing to raise his head. “I believe so, honored one, and am grateful for your aid.”
Raika looks over at Kim Ya-ji, raising an eyebrow. The younger sand-courier looks through the membrane, out into the dunes… and shrugs, but then nods. It’s… less helpful than she’d like, but confirmation enough. While she wouldn’t fault him for it, it would be annoying to have tried to do him a favor and have taken him off course due to an insistence on being polite.
“I’m glad to hear it. I’m thinking that we’ll part ways in another day or two. It’s not much, but I think I can smell something other than bone, dust and rust coming on the breeze.”
“This one thanks you for your generosity. Is there anything more we can offer?”
She smiles, but shakes her head softly. “Thank you, but no. For now, this is enough, though advice on some smaller place to stop after we part ways would be helpful when we do so. In the meantime, I’m afraid I have some work to do on my cultivation. If you need anything, please, feel free to reach me. All you will need to do is pulse your Qi three times, and I will feel it and come to you.”
Ko-es bows one more time, exhaustingly, and she gives him a polite bow in return. Kim Ya-ji is slightly less intense about the bowing and scraping, ‘only’ bowing at the waist from where she stands.
She seems like a good egg. Young enough that maybe she and Jin might get along a bit.
She’s… she’s not worried. Definitely not. Whatever is happening with him, he’s not having nightmares, not that she can detect from heartbeat, breathing or hormones. His Qi remains stable, if still… a bit off from what it was before. She’s gone into cultivator trances before, though none quite as traumatic or direct as his. She’s heard of deeper experiences that can last weeks, maybe even months. None that she’s heard of at the Qi-Gathering realm, but…
Ok. Maybe she is a little worried.
She keeps an eye on him always. Half a mind dedicated to tracking any and all changes constantly, every moment of every day.
She can’t help him yet. In the meantime, all she can do is keep moving forward. And if moving forward helps her find a way to heal him, all the damn better.