It’s actually much more of a challenge than she expected to find [Enacted Artistry Of Function]. For all that she’s almost certain the critter has no true sentience, it really does seem to wander around rather determinedly. It might be a whole different situation had the cultivator who created it managed to raise the both of them up to the Warrior realm, but as it stands, a Nascent Soul is, she’s fairly certain… mostly unconscious. Animalistic or mechanical, perhaps, in the case of this specific instance.

But animalistic, mechanic, subconscious or something altogether different, the little fellow has a rather dramatic sense of curiosity.

Perfect awareness of one’s inner world, as she holds, is a hell of a thing, but it still takes long minutes to find it. Unlike [Divine Will From Starry Eyes], or what’s left of it, she can’t just “look up” to find it, she needs to know what’s she’s looking for, point her awareness in its direction. A few moment’s meditation, no more- but still, a surprise to find just how the creature has wandered. Out from the central valley, past one valley, and then another, and then a third.

The original valley holds a bit less than three miles total in diameter. Each valley and hill afterwards, another two-to-three. For a being only two feet tall and made of a mix of different tools and abstract engines, it’s wandered far- and seems like it is having an absolutely joyous time there.

The new life of her Heart, spawning in cycles endlessly from the ground and falling back into it, seem to endlessly fascinate the Soul. [Enacted Artistry Of Function] is wandering about, small mechandrites and grasping claws reaching and click-clacking as it tries to catch the creatures that flutter and skitter and crawl out of the earth. It succeeds a bit less often than it fails, most of the misadjusted bioforms managing to escape in some way or another, but the few that it catches, it does not harm. Most of them it just watches, whirring machine-eyes and vaguely-defined sensors pointing at the little creatures it holds. Only once they expire does it begin to peel them open or pull them apart, carefully cataloging and examining each piece before placing them politely to one side, though always with an air of innocent joy.

The creature trundles on steam-legs, on tank treads, on rolling wheels, an abstraction of the concept of mechanics and functional artistry making an awkward, wobbly tread. It’s… actually kind of endearing.

Dink seems to agree, imitating the movement. It wobbles back and forth on her shoulder, walking in a small little circle. She smiles, flicking the tip of her nail affectionately against the “head” of the item spirit, the tuning fork making a little hum at that.

Alright. Focusing.

She walks over to [Enacted Artistry Of Function], watching the small figure pick up a small little lizard-thing with eight legs. It makes a weird little “squeeing” noise and rolls itself into a ball, with little nodules pushing out from its back against the small hands of brass and copper that hold it, much to [Enacted Artistry Of Function]’s evident fascination.

“So… hello again,” Raika says.

A set of a half-dozen eyes of glass and machine parts turn to her, watching her with just the same innocent fascination as it looks at the creature still in its hands. Otherwise, it provides no real sense of reaction. More stimuli for it to input, perhaps, or a fresh form of artistically-rendered function for it to examine. She is quite an artistic vision, if she does say so herself, but… not exactly productive.

“Can you understand me?” she asks. She watches for that same feeling of comprehension, that ability to divine intent, but… nothing. Or… maybe not nothing.

Curiosity.

Artistry.

Function.

But… no response. Insomuch as there is any intent to it at all, it is… it is only a vague thing, ephemeral. Like a lingering aftertaste, long after a meal has been digested. It’s… it’s possible that it has no intent. That such a thing would require, at its foundation, desire right alongside thoughts. If [Enacted Artistry Of Function] does have thoughts, they are determined by its purpose. If it does have desires, they are something maybe at the level of an insect, instinctive things…

She’ll need to confer “outside”. See if she can find intent in smaller things, explore it in other directions. If she can find intent in something like normal animals, or plants, perhaps, then it means that [Enacted Artistry Of Function] is around that level, and if not, then it is only slightly above.

It is not alive in the traditional sense. It is, for all intents and purposes, an avatar of function, enacted through artistry… and little else.

And yet, she can even now see… something. Perhaps it is something to do with its incarnation, or perhaps the nature of a preserved Nascent Soul, but there is room. Room for improvement.

Room for added function. An artistry in the act of enacting it.

She kneels down next to the creature, sitting on the earth beside it. For a while, the trundling thing, the artisanal, nonsensical machine continues its path, simply plucking one critter after another- and seemingly quite enjoying failing to do so at times. Little creatures pop up and out of the soil, living short, strange little lives before returning to it, new ones being born and lasting just a little bit longer as her Heart exercises long-neglected muscles of creation and inspiration.

And then… gradually. Over time. More and more of the eyes of the half-formed soul turn to Raika.

It is a part of this place. A part of this world, and thus, a part of her body, her soul, and her mind, all in one. It is not as much her as it once was the one who created it, who it was born from, but it remains true nonetheless.

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Eventually, every one of its limbs is silent, and every one of its eyes are on her.

You Are Me. You Are Mine.

And, reflected back at her, like from a warped mirror-

This Is You. This Is Yours.

Variations on a Truth. Comprehension, made into reality.

It is not alive, not in the traditional sense. Not real in the traditional sense.

But that hasn’t stopped it, and it hasn’t stopped her.

She nods her head, slowly. Takes in deep, metaphorical breaths of air that smells of churning rot and afterbirth, of fire above and earthy, bloody change below.

This is going to hurt.

Reaching out through her heart, she pulls a piece of Blacksteel into this world.

The band constricts.

There is a rumbling sound in the earth as the metaphysical equivalent of a small town of land is all compressed in simultaneously. The earth cracks, shuddering, breaking, torn apart by tectonics enacted by an outside will. Everything that is a part of this place, and every part of the being that is Raika that connects to it, feels an instant of pain so blinding it makes burning alive seem like a turbulent vacation.

And then, there are about fifty pounds of razor-sharp obsidian, shaped as bones and splinters and blades, weapons all, stabbing forth out of the ground like shrapnel, rejected by a body.

The little creatures spawning out of the ground, now more frantic than ever with the Heart’s pain, die. There is no other word for it. They come close to the pieces of End and are ended in turn, unformed lives ended before existence could demand more of them than their presence alone, their killers midnight-edged and radiating oblivion. All around her and this half-formed Soul, the world withers.

Blacksteel. Her oldest weapon, outside her own flesh. Stolen from a wisp of a dread thing and a mutation of a part of a satellite, a thing of cold angles and perfect shape. Death, made into a form of decay, and from decay, spawning forth a growth of jagged, hungrier deaths all their own.

It is her. It is hers. It has been hers since the moment she found that Truth, locked away inside trauma and conviction and belief.

And this world is her, and hers.

And so…

The Blacksteel rises in the air. It takes no more than will, takes no more than thought, and with the damage already done, its pain fading step by step, it takes little effort either. She feels Qi and will cycling in her Body, in her Mind, and the Heart, a part of herself, listens to the decision and agrees.

It takes only a moment for the Blacksteel to rise highly enough towards the sky that it touches the sun.

Her Reactor, now something more, an engine of impossible power and transformation, illuminating and empowering her inner world and the abilities of its Heart. Once, she built it out of Blacksteel, and that Blacksteel was changed. Now? In this grander form, contained not by simple mechanics but by a mixture of eldritch divinity and transcendent self-fulfillment?

Now it’s easier.

Her Qi drain drips further, digging a bit into her regeneration, and the monochrome radiance of her inner sun expands, the radiation of so many colors leaking through as the Blacksteel is submerged in it.

She sits still, and is watched by [Enacted Artistry Of Function] with rapt attention.

A few moments later, she pulls what was once Blacksteel out of the forge.

An END is an END. It cannot be anything else. Blacksteel, for all that it changed from its source material, is still of that matter. The Cold Sun and the END behind it lost a piece, that piece was carved into a relic, that relic touched on concepts connected to but not of the END and spawned the strange mineral of sharpened death.

And then, when exposed to True Flame, which is not BEGINNING but is, just like Blacksteel, connected to adjacent concepts… it changed. They both did. A reaction of yin and yang, opposites in synergy to a grander whole, that grander whole being CHANGE, from death to life through consumption and transformation.

What was once Blacksteel and True Flame became her Reactor.

Now, drifting down from the sun above, she presents to a small and potent thing of mechanisms and purpose and curiosity the new thing that was born from all of the above.

Radiant Metal touches down on the ground. It is orange, but not just orange. It is every shade, every possible variation of the color, touching on every point of the spectrum, so long as you look at it just right.

From solid END and plasmic BEGINNING came the radiation of CHANGE, a sun shining in her world and allowing her Truths to magnify themselves and her through it. From that radiation, comes a transformed material entirely.

[Enacted Artistry Of Function] rolls forward on treads/wheels/legs, closer to the materials, its interest in the biology all around forgotten. Grasping hands and clamps and tools reach out to the faintly smoking materials, still shimmering with the all-colors of transformation.

It looks up at her, as if… as if aware. For just a moment, made more. Asking for permission.

She grants it.

And as the Soul goes to touch the materials, she smiles as her gamble is proven right.

The band is an agony, one near total and overwhelming in the extreme. It is a restriction and a consequence on everything that she is, on a foundation that goes deeper than her soul. Were she to be crushed by a literal vice, it would be as a weighted blanket by comparison. To bring anything at all into her inner world is risky, especially when she still doesn’t understand or control the process by which the Heart sends anything back out. Radiation from her reactor-turned-sun is one thing, as is Qi, but the process for the Blacksteel, even with her Truths, was… complicated.

And yet, she paid the cost in agony for a little idea.

What happens if a nascent soul formed of artistry and mechanics was given a material that, currently, she has no real use for? One that, almost by its nature, can’t not have something interesting going on with it?

She is rewarded for the questions by the sight of [Enacted Artistry Of Function] beginning to work.

It touches the Radiant Metal and instantly, the material deforms to its touch. Like clay molded by human hands, it shifts and roils under the artistic Soul’s touch- and then, when pressed against more firmly, it stops moving, held still.

She watches for over an hour as the little avatar shapes the material into dozens of different forms, some which she recognizes, some which don’t look like they conform to the way that geometry works. Each time, the process gets a bit faster, a bit more refined- and each time, something about the metal changes.

She’s not quite sure how, at first, but then… one of the new constructs starts to corrode on contact with the air. Another becomes brittle. One becomes warm to the touch, eagerly outputting waves of static electricity and warmth- another gets colder and colder, absorbing every ounce of heat that comes into its vicinity.

It is all Radiant Metal. But the properties of it seem to… shift, in the hands of an [Artisan].

It might take days, or weeks, for proper payoffs. She’ll have to check in, track the materials, find a way to extract and use them- and potentially have to sacrifice more of her well being and the circumference of her inner world to the band to resupply the little entity.

But just like the teeming hordes of protolife crawling up out of the soil of her ontology, there is rich potential here.

Alright. That’s two down.

One final contact, and then she resurfaces.

One more errand, one more ‘conversation’, and she’ll find herself back in reality, dealing with the horizon she scented the previous day and the fact that Jin is still asleep.