Two projects on the backburner, put back into the forge. Her Heart, the core of some strange dungeon of the world, is pumping out new life in a constant flow, recycling and rebuilding material into a series of potential future tools and inspiration. The most active and self-deterministic of her consumed Souls is hard at work modifying a resource she has barely used as of yet. Already it’s been a lucrative trip, if a bit of a painful one.

But… no reason to stop now. There’s more to play with here.

She walks up to the edge of a hill, just beyond the edge of the garden and the pond it surrounds.

The hill is a little larger than a house. It crackles and moans a bit in the wind, small forks of electricity dashing across its surface- and across the blades which impale it.

A hundred-hundred spears stab into the hill from every direction, each one golden and carved in startling detail with stories and reliefs of great battles. A hundred-hundred spears crackle with flickering fragments of lightning, multi-hued and potent. A hundred-hundred spears are, each and every one, broken.

[Perfect Strike Of Tribulation] isn’t like [Enacted Artistry Of Function]. The latter is active, kept nearly whole, still able to fulfill its functions. [Divine Will From Starry Eyes], while also less distinct than [Enacted Artistry Of Function], at least looks like itself. But the Soul of the lightning-wielder that she consumed simply doesn’t work. It has no room in its interpretation for a failure so catastrophic- she never even gave it a chance to strike at all, and it never measured up to any tribulation she’s experienced. Its context was shattered the moment it (and its host) were defeated.

And yet, here, something remains.

Slowly, she walks up the hill.

Each step is like getting stabbed by blades of razor-grass. Each movement is accompanied by a burning hiss of electricity. No flesh-based pain, this; she can feel the very core of her being, her own soul, struggling against the harm, experiencing the pain. Like a thousand moments of doubt and agony and loss, magnified into something like a physical ache, a burning buzz that wraps through her self, deep into her core.

She walks up the hill nonetheless.

And when she makes it to the top… nothing.

Her mere presence here is already starting to break the hill down further. No single perfect strike, no true tribulation- her existence atop the burial mound of what the Soul once was is enough to make it unravel further, bit by bit.

And… maybe that’s ok.

She still can’t seem to bring anything but Qi in and out of her inner world freely, and she’s yet to bring anything from within out to the world above. The question of whether or not the seal of the band would recognize something leaving or returning as a condition to squeeze in further is also a pressing unknown.

She feels her Truths, reflected back on her in this place. I Can Change, her ontology whispers to her.

And this mound, and what it once was, are a part of her.

Should she try to take its spears? Make them into weapons, something she can try to bring to the outside world? Should she try to restore it, build something new out of it?

She looks up at the impression of a starry figure phasing in and out around her sun-heart-reactor. She looks down at the burial mound of a natal god.

There’s something to be said for being spread too thin. Something to be said for what happens when one tries to pursue every path without choosing one.

Raika reaches out to her Heart, and it responds eagerly at the request.

She kneels, planting a hand on the electric surface, bleeding her soul against its edges- and begins to push.

The ground begins to eat its way up the hill, dissolving it, tearing it apart spear by spear. Lightning sparks up again, striking at the ground around it as if in self defense, but rather than burning the grass, it’s absorbed almost instantly. Rivers of electricity form, multi-hued lightning washing like water through the grass- over to the garden.

Close to the tree of Flame, a few strands of grass start to grow taller, weaving together into a shrub.

The ground rumbles, the hill quaking, the whining of spears being supercharged with electricity filling the valley-

And then… it starts to get quiet. The spears stop singing, their steel made silent. The crackle of lightning fades down to a buzz, and then a static hum, and then not even that.

And then… it’s a hill. A burial mound, holding only the memory of what once was.

Raika looks up.

There is not enough left of [Divine Will From Starry Eyes] to be considered sentient. Even [Enacted Artistry Of Function], for all its functionality, is little better than a programmed animal of a sort. As the last remnants of [Perfect Strike of Tribulation] fade to nothing, she directs the Hearts attention to the sky above.

But not its hunger. Not its desire to consume.

To Change is to destroy, yes- but it’s also to create.

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There is a trembling confusion, a strange and powerful sense of disorientation- and then the hill has moved. The trees, her Dao, sprout from it like plant-growth in fast-forward, blooming to full life at a dozen times the velocity they were originally formed with. What once surrounded the pool of her Heart now stands tall, each tree and blade of grass given a more three-dimensional place in comparison to the others, many of them growing up and around the spears. Most of them are shifted by invisible roots to surround and become offshoots of her Dao of the Blade, a smaller branch forming into the Dao of the Spear, but many of them are absorbed into and change to reflect other weapons and tools. The spears close to the Dao of the Gun become rifled, gain chambers and barrels to match their edges; those that grow around the twin trees of Flame and Lightning reflect their elements, glowing with power and warping along the nature of the ever-changing energies they know reflect; even the lesser grasses have an effect, warping the edges and colors of the spears closest to them.

The hill, once an isolated memorial for a thing that was no more, is remade into something new. A living place, where the roots of what she has consumed grow deep and wrap themselves around an honorary arsenal of golden spears.

And then it’s [Divine Will From Starry Eyes]’s turn.

As the Heart digests what was left of a Nascent Soul, transmuting its components into Dao and concepts, there comes the knowledge that that isn’t all that’s there. Dink, on her shoulder, glows a bit brighter, adding its ‘voice’ to her chorus, guiding her and the arcane mind of her Heart.

Dao, being the patterns of concepts, are crucial to a Soul, as evidenced by the new tree of Lightning growing on the hill and the branch of Spears on the Dao of Blades, but a Soul isn’t just some random expression of Dao- it is energy, consciousness, Qi, ontology itself. A piece of reality, spawning a new version of itself through the mind of a mortal.

She takes what she can use most into her garden of Dao- and with the aid of a strange little tuning fork, adding its voice of frequency to a post-human will and an arcane organ of creation, she sends what’s left up into the sky.

Instantly, what’s left of [Divine Will From Starry Eyes] grasps onto it, like a starving animal being hit with the scent of food. It’s still only partially formed, still a mess of inconsistent manifestation, so the feeding process, as it were, looks… messy. A being of star-filled skies and strange visions spasms and flickers and spreads across the blank void of the world above as she feeds the power of what’s left of another of its kind to it.

And then… there are limbs.

Limbs that are thunderclouds. Strikes of lightning that are spears. Water droplets that are eyes, falling down forever unto the earth.

It begins to rain in Raika’s inner world as [Divine Will From Starry Eyes] becomes something else.

Its name comes easily, as if simply by becoming and being witnessed, the knowledge is created wholesale. [Divine Strikes Of Starry Tribulation] spreads to encompass the sky of this strange not-world, spanning miles and miles as a many-limbed being of all eyes, all storm, all sky. What was once part night-sky, part many-limbed deva, is now something more like a fractal storm, wrapping stars, tribulation, artful violence and sky into one being.

Raika looks out over her world, and knows that it is good.

The valley is now more of an enclosed gorge, a hill of eldritch forestry opposite a cabin which stands higher above it, a deep and bottomless pond somewhere between them. What was once a blank and empty sky is now a series of waves, storms of stars and clouds, of falling raindrops of starlight and churning lightning above, and it pours its rains endless onto an ever-spawning world of flesh divine. And somewhere in all that, a collection of mechanisms and tools dances amidst strange rains, playing with impossible metals and equally impossible life.

Admittedly, it feels a lot more… comfortable isn’t the right word. It is more lively, sure, and a lot more interesting, at least in her opinion, but… not comfortable.

But it feels right. Not perfect, maybe, but she can’t help but wonder if her own predilections and deeper self got reflected in the transformation that [Divine Strikes Of Starry Tribulation] underwent. It’s much more fitting compared to what came before- an occasional starry sky is hardly anything too interesting to her, especially not with the context of the stars looking down on the world. In comparison, the shifting flux of waving storm-limb-waves, slightly painful but ultimately nourishing with rainfall, feels more right. Beautiful, nurturing… but with the context of pain. The earth isn’t just being fed and watered- it is being struck by a divine will, and only because it is her is that land being fed rather than harmed. A harsh, violent, strange rain, falling on a world of ever-shifting biology- and in the middle of it all, a calm place. A home… and a garden.

One made of sharp things, guns, and a bunch of gorgeous elemental arborvitae, but still, a very nice garden.

She’s not sure what else it might lead to, what the exact consequences of creating a place like this be… but to be fair, that’s never stopped her from doing insane and interesting things before. It’ll probably be useful in its own way.

And like she said, it just feels right. Whether or not her being influenced her chosen fusion of Souls, or what consequences that’ll have for her Heart, her Dao, her Qi… well, that’s yet to be seen. But it’s more her now. Or maybe she’s more than before. Both? Both is good.

Raika’s soul sits herself down in the garden. She watches a beetle bossing around a bunch of worms, tromping about in fields of weird bugs and critters and eating a lot of them. She feels Dink on her shoulder, patting her on the cheek.

Next time she focuses on this place… she’ll probably try to fix up the cabin. That would be nice.

Until then… the real world is calling, and she’s pretty sure she’ll get a chance to play with her newly upgraded Dao and work on some other projects once she meets it. Besides- she can sense, from her Mind above, that they’re reaching the edge of the sands, and it’s likely best for her guests to leave now or be taken much too far off their route.

She still feels the pull, ever east. The directions given to her Heart by the dying fortress.

And she’s got an apprentice to help, if she can.

And so, all-that-is-Raika turns its center of attention back to the outside world. Back to the domain of the living and the strange and the dead, where there is business to be done- and, most likely, violence to be had.

She wakes, blinking dozens of eyes and becoming aware of her memories of the last day or so.

Her guests remain in their rooms, sleeping and remaining in sight of each other. The brain in charge of keeping track of them, possibly due to sheer boredom, has been refreshing the scents of the room and providing a lot of water, experimental foods, and interesting color combinations, which seem to have kept them entertained enough. Li Shu, meanwhile, has been experimenting with her Sacrifice, though Raika can feel that her cultivation has increased even in the few days she’s been half-focused on her own meditations. Perhaps being inside her body, Qi rich and steeped in concepts of biology and impossibility as it is, has been a boon for her particular brand of cultivation. Her Sacrifice too seems different, maybe more numerous, or… deeper. Fuller, maybe. She hasn’t been idle, and Raika can smell the mild tang of stress hormones in her rooms. It would seem that her experience in the fortress city, and her meditations on the matter, have only made her more determined to grow.

And, of course, last but not least, she sees Jin.

Still asleep. Still barely breathing. Still static.

Mmmh. That won’t do.

Far away on the horizon, she sees and smells and touches with her senses- something other than sand of bone and Ruin.

Time to get to work.