“We’ve just about reached our destination,” Raika says. “Ready to disembark?”

Ko-es bows, though he’s kept the lesson about not kowtowing at least. “Yes, honored one. We appreciate your generosity in transporting us closer to our destination.”

Raika laughs softly, finishing forming her body and some rudimentary clothes so she can step around the corner of the improvised doorway. “No need for thanks. Your information makes for an even trade in my mind, and your willingness to accommodate this detour is appreciated.”

“Even still, honored one. South, southeast- so long as we are not heading north or west, the strides of your construct have saved us many days of travel, and in great comfort and safety. I am only satisfied that this lowly one was able and willing to provide anything at all for your esteemed self.”

She scoffs a bit, but she also nods politely. “Your appreciation is noted, Ko-es. Though I do feel I have to ask… is your beastkin companion going to be as content as you when it comes to disembarking.”

The green-skinned flora of Ko-es’ face pales a bit. “Honored one, we would never seek to inconvenience-”

“Alright, got it, she will be. Good to know.”

Ko-es pales further, gulping audibly. He looks over at Many-Grasping, who has been staring from the other side of the room this whole time. Raika can smell the fanaticism coming off that one, even without the bright eyes staring at her and bowing away every time she looks over.

He sighs then. Steels himself.

“Honored one, I shall ensure that no harm comes of it. If need be, I will willingly trade my life for hers.”

She looks at him, impressed yet again. “You continue to carry yourself with honor, courier. Is everybody that travels the sands as brave as you, or are you just comfortable with the thought of dying?”

At this, she finally gets a smile out of him. A meek one, maybe, but still.

“My family has walked these sands and the lands beyond for generations. If I am willing to kill, then I must also be willing to die, and to avoid either fate requires honor. I have taken them under my wing, and I am eldest guide in our journey. If I were to value their lives as less than my own, it would be impossible to build trust in so deadly a terrain. If I need to die to protect them, then that is my responsibility, as one who swore to guide and train them.”

“I like that mentality. A bit self-sacrificial, maybe, but I can relate. Don’t worry- I’m neither willing to kill her or you for something so banal as disrespect. So long as she or your other charge don’t try to kill me or those I care for, I don’t particularly care what you do. Not that I’d like you to make your choices my problems, but there’s no need to assume I’m going to start killing anyone yet.”

Ko-es breathes a little sigh of relief, bowing again. But… not quite so deeply this time, which is nice.

Slowly, she lowers her body down towards the sands, aiming for a quieter spot in the shifting tides. It still nibbles away at her underbelly and strider-legs, but barely anything compared to the zones where the sands are awake and aggressive.

“Come on then. I see something else on the horizon, and I’d like to see it soon. So far, all I’ve seen of everything you’ve talked to me about have been dead ruins and the western war-zones. I’d like to see something new.”

Ko-es nods, and turns to the others. Kim Ya-ji leaps into action, eager to please her mentor, but there’s not really all that much to do. Their bags are packed, kept constantly ready to move out at a moment’s notice. A well-trained habit, and a good one, too. Ko-es and her are both holding their travel bags, his storage ring, and their rug- but Many-Grasping stays right where she is.

Raika turns to her.

Many-Grasping keeps her intent open and clear. She bows again, putting her head down near the ground.

Lord, she sends through intent.

Raika sighs.

“Ko-es!” she calls, turning him from where he stands at the freshly-forming doorway. “Is it an issue with you if this one stays?”

Ko-es turns, sees Many-Grasping- and Raika locks him with a look, doing her best to remind him of what she just told him.

He sighs. “I… swore an oath to guide and deliver her through these wastes. But ultimately, it was her den mother who arranged a meeting between us, and she who requested to come on this voyage. So long as she offers a marker or letter, so I have… some way to explain this?”

Many-Grasping looks right at her, as if asking for permission. Raika gives it easily enough, nodding.

In an instant, Many-Grasping rises to her feet, walking over to Kim Ya-ji and Ko-Es. She bows to them, her legs all at odd angles yet again with her joints, and rises up with- oh.

Well, that’s a bone coming out of her mouth. Which is interesting.

She coughs, once, and it slides out of her throat into her hand. Three claws carve a strange little spiral into it, three lines that curve around it, and she hands the bone politely to Ko-es.

For his part, he actually takes it in stride, a lot less surprised than Raika herself. He nods. “This will do. I assume it’s a personal marker? Something no one else would know?”

Many-Grasping nods, sending invisible waves of complex intent at her former guide. He seems to pick up on… some of it, at least, though it’s clear he only gets enough to understand a “yes”. To be fair, Raika gets the impression that Many-Grasping is pretty talkative in the language of purely intent, because really, a yes would have sufficed.

He sighs, but nods. “Very well. If asked, I shall provide this as proof of your willing choice to depart. And… keep the supplies. Please. We shall do fine without, especially put so ahead of schedule. Consider it a parting gift, I suppose.”

Many-Grasping nods, and bows again, limbs all akimbo. This time, she sends something a lot simpler.

Gratitude.

A few moments later, with a bright, smiling Kim Ya-ji and a polite but focused Ko-es walking along the sands again, Raika turns her attention back to the east- and to her surprise long-term passenger.

It’ll be a boon to have someone who can act as a guide through at least some part of the fourth ring. A convenient way to have someone with information, however minor, on hand.

On the other hand, she also knows next to nothing about the inhuman beastkin, and she seems pretty intense.

Well. If there’s anything she’s learned, it’s that the most unexpected and universally successful tactic, which she has used time and again, is to be direct and honest.

“Alright, listen up. If you’re sticking around long-term, there’s a few things you should understand. One: I’m not going to keep talking fancy all the time, that’s exhausting, and if you make a fuss about it? Kicked. Two: if you treat me like some high-and-mighty shithead, I’ll get annoyed real quick. My tolerance for that lasts exactly as long as it needs to. Three: if you harm, plot to harm, attempt to injure or harass or so much as intentionally annoy my friend or my apprentice, I will absolutely abandon you in the wilderness and/or beat you nearly to death, as the offense demands. Got it?”

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Acquiescence. Lord.

“Ok, see, I know that intent language works differently, but if you can’t avoid thinking it, avoid bringing it up. I am lord of nothing but myself, and frankly, I’m pretty sure the world is better off that way. Now, you’re… effectively a guest, I think. So what do you need as a guest?”

Nothing. Gratitude.

Raika frowns. Shifting her control towards emulating the Language-Without-Words, she sends a wave of intent at Many-Grasping.

Annoyance. Request = Honesty.

Many-Grasping shudders, but manages to get herself back under control without too much effort. Would Not / Cannot Demand Of Lord. Apologies. Obeisance.

This time, Raika actually growls, though she keeps it quiet, down in the back of her throat. The way that Intent works, there’s no way to lie, at least none that she’s found. To try to deceive would, by its very nature, reveal the presence of a lie, as you would have the intent to lie bright and clear. It is a language of truth absolute, one which can only be spoken by some mixture of bodily language, qi movement, and actual, conscious and literal intention.

So Many-Grasping “saying” the “word” Obeisance has… connotations. It can’t not be what she means, its meaning and the context surrounding it spoken into existence by the very method used.

And with how she keeps calling Raika a Lord… well, there’s questions there. None that are a priority at the moment, but questions nonetheless. Either way, it seems like despite her best efforts, Many-Grasping is absolutely going to keep being… just insufferably genuine in how servile she is.

Raika sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. She really needs to figure out if she can grow plants out of her body- making a pipe is easy enough, but it’s not exactly useful without something to smoke in said pipe.

“Alright… let’s try this again.”

She turns back to Many-Grasping, who has remained at a sort of half-bow constantly. She’s… not entirely sure how to translate what she’s about to say into Intent, so might as well take the opportunity to make use of a power she usually keeps under wraps.

She lets out a sigh, and the air trembles under the musical note that comes with it. Half-guttural, half-orchestral, the first whisper of an unlocked set of arcane vocal cords.

She feels Many-Grabbing stiffen through the air, feels Dink tremble out a matching note at almost subsonic levels, feels her own flesh and Heart shiver at the act.

“Bow only when you must. Stand proud of your own self, not low in my shadow. Learn, if you want to learn, watch, if you want to watch, ask if you need, but live free of the thought that I shall demand more than I do in word and deed.”

Now for the riskier part.

“So long as you do not harm me or mine, I will not harm you.”

The first few sentences came out with weight, true. She could literally see the impact they had on Many-Grasping, the way that her blood shifted flow, the sparks in her neurology lighting up, her Qi shifting like it was being shaped- but this last sentence affects someone entirely different. Raika feels her own words curling back into her, but… they’ve always been there.

Bone-deep certainty rises, and she understands that if she did not mean the words, she would not have been able to say them. And now that they are spoken, they are more than meant- they are sworn. Oathed out loud, with a voice weighty enough that it warps the world, ever so slightly, in towards themselves.

That’s… annoying. And potentially very restrictive.

It’s enough for Many-Grasping to shudder across her entire body, the weight of the words reaching between the two of them. A binding vow, made truer than normal by a voice she does not much understand, the voice which prompted the beastkin to call her Lord.

She waits for Many-Grasping to recover, politely ignoring the… carnal reaction that the beastkin’s blood and hormones have had to her voice.

Eventually, still shaken but steady, Many-Grasping sends her Intent towards Raika.

Gratitude = Totality. You Are Good. I Am Safe. I Will Learn. I Hear Thy Voice.

Raika blinks.

“Thy”? Really? That’s something that comes across with Intent? In practical terms, it’s the sense of nobility and grace offered to the recipient that is transmitted, but still.

She clears her throat, shifting her vocal cords back towards something vaguely human-base. “Good. Now that that’s resolved, let me be clear- do you need food?”

Many-Grasping turns her eyes to Raika, large and confused. As if the thought of continuing to receive free food is ludicrous- and to be fair, it is, at least a bit. But it’s not like she’s going to have a ton of space to hunt or farm inside Raika’s body, and Raika has no idea when they’ll be encountering a place or person they might be able to trade with. It’s only fair, considering that she’s the one who accepted her as a guest, that she’d offer to at least feed her newest passenger.

Raika awkwardly scratches the back of her neck as Many-Grasping looks at her like some kind of Imperial Noble. Then she sighs.

“Ok, you seem a bit overwhelmed. I’ll deliver water and food to the room, and if you want me to modify something, just let me know. We’re about to leave the sands, so I’m… going to go focus on that.”

And before the starry-eyed beastkin can try to bow again, she just dissolves her body back into the Body, reabsorbing the biomass and neural matter.

Yeesh. That was… surprisingly tiring! Raika shakes a metaphorical head, shuddering a bit, wondering if there’s going to be more people acting like that around her in the 4th ring. She dearly hopes not- one is exhausting enough.

Turning back to her panopticon-gaze, Raika watches as the land beyond the sands gets closer. It’s a slight uphill slope, like the sands, and the space between here and the Wall, are all lowered a few feet down into the earth. Or maybe more than a few feet, considering the depth of the sands in places.

Rather than grass, Raika is surprised to find as she approaches that the ground they’re emerging on seems to be made of stone sculptures. Delicately shaped, precisely tailored, each individual statue seems to perfectly mimic a living object. The sands end at the edge of a bit of rocky earth and dirt, and rather than natural growth, there are instead razor-thin stalagmites, perfectly shaped like grass. Grass in motion, grass bending, grass growing alongside simple flowers, complex vines, and strange mounds of strange, mossy-looking stone.

All of it made entirely from stone.

The type of stone seems consistent- a base grey for most of the bodies of the plants and mounds, with striations of orange, black, and paler grey making up the distinguishing features. Some of the flowers glitter, and it’s only when she’s about a half-mile out that she can make out the fact that at the center of their petals and in their seeds are crystals. Tiny gems, glimmering slightly with grey, copper and orange colors.

The sun crawls across the sky, traveling at her back down to the south, and it illuminates a plain made out like a living ecosystem, cast perfectly in stone.

At first, she wonders if it’s best to try and see if Many-Grasping has some kind of insight into the material- but no. Not so soon, not when she can try to find out for herself. Now that she’s close enough to its edge, she’s started to identify the scent wafting in past death and Ruin that make up the sands.

Emanating from the carved landscape comes the scent of earth and stone. Not just in the physical, but in her Qi senses too, her synesthesia letting her see and taste the chalky cloud emanating from the ground and all that grows from it. Stone Qi, as pure as any she’s encountered, with dozens of other scents at its edges and intermingling like ingredients through its layers.

Her stomach rumbles, even as her head aches at the thought of the band crushing her inner world. It just… it smells so rich. So inviting. The Sands smell fine, but Ruin is not a flavor she’s particularly fond of. On the other hand, the stone prairie, perhaps due to how long she’s been smelling nothing but the dead sands and what they hold, smells delicious, like-

Well actually, it doesn’t smell like anything. It wasn’t so long ago that she can’t remember the fact that stone isn’t exactly a smell that her body used to find appetizing. But now, the Qi calls to her, just as it called from the bodies of those around her, turning every possible flavor of messy biology into something at least vaguely appetizing.

Hmm. When did she stop feeling hungry around people? Maybe… midway through her fight in the fortress city? …After she’d eaten a lot of people. Maybe she got bored of the taste and didn’t realize?

No... no, the bodies of the four platoon leaders she ate also smelled damn fine, even without the Dao and Souls that came with them.

…Qi. The density of Qi, or the saturation of it into a body. She trained her body to survive Qi poisoning, and now her altered tongue, stomach, and mind all hunger for more. And not just for the amount she creates inside herself, natural formations of veins and muscle-fibers fueling her and her abilities- it’s like, at the sight of something so infused with Qi, her body just reacts, a lesser version of the impulse and more ontological experience of consuming Dao.

Raw Qi isn’t quite the ticket- that’s the baseline. She craves flavored Qi.

And stone-gem-life combo-flavor seems appealing enough.

As she’s thought this chain through, she arrives at the edge of the dead sands. They are quiet here, have been for a few miles out, as if lulled to sleep this far from the constant bloodshed of the wall. Slowly, Raika reaches a long strider-limb over the stone prairie- and enters the 4th ring proper.

She wonders if she can find a way to get just a nibble.