Ok.
Now for the stuff she’s been avoiding.
A non-zero segment of herself falls deeper, deeper in, awakening as the Soul of her inner world.
It’s still much the same as the last time she saw it- which is to say in a constant state of flux, ever-shifting and ever alien as it turns and changes. The landscape and horizon remain as ever, a land of purple, red and silver hills rolling into a dozen valleys, ending in a bamboo perimeter with a glowing band of gold peeking through behind it. The number of creatures spawning and dying has decreased, as best as she can tell, though not from a lack of conflict- the beings that her Heart creates from the landmass have simply become competent enough to endure for longer periods, living lifespans closer to mosquitos than mayflies now. Many of them are starting to specialize, similar trends manifesting as the Heart finds out what it wants, what works, and how to optimize them, though they remain predominantly a strange mix of insectile and mammalian, chitin and hydraulic circulation matched by muscle-fibers and warm blood.
It’ll be interesting if/when she connects her Pillar to her Heart. Might do something interesting, or, at minimum, speed up the process.
In the meantime, she’s paying closer attention to the denizens of the space that she knows and actually gives a shit about.
For one, Dink rests on her shoulder, manifesting alongside her as it almost always does. There’s yet to be much change, but considering that most item spirits develop over generations, she thinks that it’s doing a damn fine job in growing up to be a strapping young tuning-fork-person. The tines of the “item” that makes up its original form act as the head, while a slender stick-figure body of glowing vibration make up the rest of it- while not particularly fleshed out, it’s more than enough in the weird dream-physics of the inner world. Her most trusted companion gives her a merry little wave, sending out a sound not unlike a clear bell.
“Good to see you too, champ,” she says, lightly tapping a fingernail against its tines. She tried to pet them at first, but that actually led to some significant distress- turns out, when the being you’re interacting with is at least partially made of sound, muffling the noise through contact is unpleasant. She’s yet to work her way up to flicking poor Dink full force, but for now, the light taps seem to please it inordinately.
And, conveniently, they happen to act as something of a dinner bell.
Raika smiles as she hears a sound that is… hard to describe. It’s a little bit “crocodile with too many legs”, a little bit “a lot of worms”, and a little bit “very proud, very large beetle doing a very cute little stomping motion”.
Which is convenient to think, considering how accurate it is, and considerably easier than trying to describe the movements phonetically.
Over the closest hill, a small tide of pale, iridescent worms crest like a wave, outright glowing in the forever-rain of the stormy sky above and its starlit raindrops, moving as one singular organism. Riding that wave comes the centi-croc, the first consciously-chosen inhabitant of her inner world to come from the outside- and atop the spirit beast, whose Qi feels considerably denser than the last time she saw it, rides a resplendent creature, as noble and bright as a general upon a mighty steed.
Beetle stamps its little feet onto the centi-croc’s head hard enough to make a “thump” noise audible all the way near the cabin, triumphantly coming to greet its…
Well, she wouldn’t call herself its master, but land-owner seems gross, and “main provider” has connotations.
It’s a very friendly almost-pet, and Raika can’t help but grin at its boisterous greeting and how Dink aggressively waves its little arms at their friend.
The mass of organisms crashes through the central valley of the world, the only part of the landscape that still holds natural coloration, and circle around her, like a series of flanking maneuvers executed by strange and alien organisms. Or like a lot of eager pets looking forward to getting fresh treats.
Raika sighs, taking a seat as Beetle dismounts its fancy mount (who at this point looks perfectly content to act as steed for a much smaller insect) and trots over. The little guy practically waddles, waving his horn back and forth as if swaggering, reaching the ground near her and spinning as if to say “look at all my underlings! Aren’t I doing a great job?”
“Yes, yes you are,” Raika says, patting the little creature (now a lot less little, and closer to the size of a small dog) gently on the head. “You’re doing an excellent job with your swarm of hungry hungry monsters, yes you are, yes you are!”
To her surprise, she actually notes more than a few new creatures in the swarm. While the main mass of iridescent parasite-worms has continued to grow, and seems to have changed to better suit their environment (and commander), they still mostly look the same, and the darker spots in the swarm stand out because of it. Several of the proto-creatures that the Heart has kept forming have joined in, most of them half-buried in worms and looking rather sickly- but their sickliness is, if anything, a good thing. They don’t look infected, they look old, something no other creature she’s noticed has been able to accomplish. Evidence of social symbiosis, maybe? Learning to act in groups to survive longer? Or just Beetle’s influence as an exceptional field commander?
Either way, deserving of nourishment (ie treats).
Reaching out, Raika pulls and pushes, balancing between her exterior and interior worlds. Without the band, it would be simple, but its presence is a constant threat, looming over the horizon and staring hungrily at her, glowing like an angry sun at the edge of her being. Pull in too much, and it’s more than willing to shatter her very being- and there’s always a worry that if she pulls too much out at once, it’ll trigger some new form of restraint, or simply adjust its scale down even faster.
Still, there’s a balance to be had.
Landmass flows outward, terrain altering itself out of existence and into pure energy to be consumed. The burning reactor above her world feeds it constant CHANGE, and in this place, it’s as easy as can be to convert the quasi-real matter into very-real energy, feeding Qi out into her biomass. As it flows out, she replaces it subtly with some of that very same enriched matter, drawing it back in and presenting it like nuggets of bright purple-red flesh to the assembled horde.
The worms and the centi-croc writhe, ready to launch themselves at the meal so rich in Qi and biology it’s practically glowing-
And Beetle stamps. Once, twice, spinning in a circle as if staring daggers at every one of its consigned soldiers.
It takes them a moment- but eventually, the crowd settles.
Just for that, she swaps in a fresh piece, just for the special little guy in charge of her proto-swarm.
Beetle scarfs down a piece of meat and bone roughly the size of its own head with what looks like two big chomps, though they emit the chittering sound of mandibles tearing and slurping up material almost faster than the eye can see. Only after it has eaten two whole pieces on its own does it do another cute little stamp and march confidently back into the swarm, to stand atop the centi-croc’s head.
One more stamp, and and the horde is unleashed.
Raika smiles adoringly at the feeding frenzy, a carpet of iridescent, writhing bodies crawling over and through each other like a singular mass atop the food, even as the spirit beasts and protoforms inside her jostle for their own pieces. She’s happy to provide for those who don’t quite make it- survival of the fittest is for idiots who don’t know how natural selection or purposeful breeding work.
Smiling, Raika sighs, leaving her swarm to their meal as she turns to face the rest of her inner world.
Just a little bit more to deal with, and then she can turn her focus back outward.
First things first- she’s going to have visitors.
The sect assholes she… appropriated have, if nothing else, affirmed just how valuable her inner world is. As a cultivation resource, as a place to contemplate Dao and other comprehensions, she… supposes it’s pretty good. If they play their part, she’s not necessarily opposed to letting them back in, and it’s a sign that her other companions and allies could benefit equally from an attempt at cultivating here.
But it’s one thing to allow visitors, and another to allow them into her home, her deeper self. That simply won’t do.
Not only is the cabin still a mess, a state that, at this point, she’s fairly certain might be as much psychological as it is literal, but it’s private. Personal. If she’s going to allow cultivation in this place, better to actually make a place for cultivation, someplace isolated and prepared for it.
So- time for renovations.
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She chooses a valley a little ways away from the valley, the tribulation-rain pounding down onto ever-changing, ever-spawning earth and saturating it deeper than the relative sanctuary of her original territory. Slowly, she reshapes the hillside, pulling it up from the surface and higher, higher, until it stands as a kind of platform. It’s tall, but not quite an eyesore against the horizon or able to properly look over all the other hills; it’s gone from valley to plateau, the shape distinct from the rest. She flattens the top of it, keeping the grass but forming small buildings of bone and stone in a ring perimeter. Each one has a small room, a few windows facing out, and… well, she’s not certain if people will need bathrooms in here, quasi-physics and all, but might as well have it and not need it. And everyone loves a big, juicy bath. Plumbing actually isn’t that hard to integrate, not compared to reworking her biology from the ground up, something she’s more than learned to master.
She reaches out to the Heart for the next part, and it eagerly reaches back, its excitement palpable. It’s always excited nowadays, as they approach closer and closer to the point that the fortress city gave “directions” to, but it’s also just always a big fan of transmuting things, and she’s happy to offer the opportunity.
She diverts a small percentage of the flow of Qi in her inner world through each of the rooms and the central valley itself, making the air feel a bit thicker, like it’s spiced and energized. A small divot in the Soul floating as the sky makes it so that the tribulation rain falls in only patches, flowing and pausing- it’ll rain as normal for a few hours, and then turn to a drizzle, enough for people to move around freely without getting pelted by metaphysical starlight constantly. Probably. It won’t be easy, but… it’s her, so it's going to stay at least a little bit hard to handle.
…It’s not much. Which she’s fine with! She’s not inviting anyone to come live here, not even Li Shu or Jin, at least not anytime soon. And there’s something to be said for the majesty of the formation of the plateau, the way she has shaped an entire geographic feature into a place of contemplation and power, lush with alien life and rooms for those she chooses to honor.
It’s also pretty bare bones.
Which is fine.
She has other shit to do.
While she’s fused many of the Souls in her inner world together, there are still some that have yet to be touched, either because they’re not quite suitable for each other or because… well, because they’re [SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS], and quite frankly, that thing is a bitch to reach out to.
Currently, she has three “combined” Souls: [Divine Strikes Of Starry Tribulation], [Enacted Artistry Of Function], and [Star Of Roiling Plasma]. The first one is perhaps her overall strongest- fusing two almost wholly-intact Souls, both of high-scale complexity and integrated into the inner world directly, has created a wide-scale manifestation, a many-limbed entity of cloudy arms and glowing eyes that drip tears of Tribulation-concept down onto the earth. The latter has sacrificed power for complexity- as capable of altering the world as [Enacted Artistry Of Function] is, its function (heh) is in changing things, altering them on a profound level but at relatively slow pace, and precise scale. [Star Of Roiling Plasma] is… a big ball of not-just-fire. The Dao trees of Flame and Lightning both grow towards it, and it seems to absorb little drops of floating essence from them, both of them growing in sequence, but otherwise, it doesn’t do much except… well, Roil. It can be tapped as a source of power if need be, and if unleashed, it's a contained star, so it’s not exactly safe- but it’s not as complex as the others.
Which leaves the three remaining Nascent Souls she has yet to figure out what to do with.
[Judgment Sprouting Pain] and [Sleep Beneath Black Skies] don’t really fit. They don’t really work the way the others do, because Raika feels… uncomfortable with them. Stars, Tribulations, Plasma, and just about every part of [Enacted Artistry Of Function] all appear to her on a foundational level, but the idea of judgment leading to pain, and nothing else (unless she adds it somehow) seems wrong to her, and she doesn’t exactly sleep much.
[Sleep Beneath Black Skies] is diffused through the atmosphere, but it’s clearly not at home there, the idea of a restful night sky dancing against the constant downpour of glowing Tribulation. She can still only see it from the corner of her eye, like a sleeping figure glimpsed on a dark field, but for now, it would be a waste to combine it, sacrificing many of its qualities only for a non-specific effect. [Judgment Sprouting Pain], on the other hand, is just sort of sitting still and motionless on a distant hill, close to the (currently) most troublesome part of “herself”.
The woods.
Over about three valleys, taking up close to a fifth of her inner world, are dark woods.
It’s not a forest. A forest has very broad concepts associated with it, and this does not. These are the woods, in which SOMETHING BAD lurks, the trees themselves a gestalt idea made purely to represent the feeling of someplace other, and full of hunting instinct, and ready to strike, ready to do something terrible to you.
And unlike its Nascent cousins, elevated and combined but still somehow incomplete, the Warrior Soul that is / hunts among the woods? It’s very active. It is not a singular moment, a concept combined and expressed- it has agency. It has awareness. It does not leave its borders, but it watches her, hungry and hateful.
If anything, it reminds her of the Heart. They both carry a certain metaphysical weight in her inner being, one of them grown into her very framework and the latter introduced as a heavy weight on the architecture.
It’s not like it was with Zhoulong, that part is clear. Zhoulong was a parasitic entity, a consciousness wrapped in his own Qi- if anything, she guesses that he somehow parasitized his own Nascent Soul, sacrificing it to keep his original being alive in her stomach. How he stayed intact for so long is anyone’s guess, and impressive as hell, but he was a foreign entity, acquired prior to her third Truth, and acted as a parasite.
[SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS] is her. It cannot not be, after being consumed, not without breaking her Truth in the process.
But it is not a friendly part of her.
Enough procrastination. On the outside, she’s just walking, spreading more and more pieces of herself into the world and seeing through many perspectives- busy, busy work, but nothing that demands her attention immediately. She is here, and it’s always better to get things done properly than not.
She approaches the woods.
On a hill to her side, a set of pitch-black scales twitch, thorns sprouting and dripping black droplets from its metal. She nods to it- it is not alien to her, even if it isn’t something she hold close to herself. She turns to look at the beast in the woods, and the scales at her side squeak, turning to one side, measured against some unknown foundation.
Some of the trees twitch, black thorns sprouting from them like malformed splinters- and then fade away, the rustling of the trees simply vanishing them away.
“Don’t worry about it, pal,” she says. “Guy in there is a pretty big one. Scary to deal with, huh?”
[Judgment Sprouting Pain] doesn’t reply- it is a pair of metal scales, and conversation doesn’t really factor into its makeup, not without a connotation of punishment in it. Still, she’s pretty sure that the way its hinges creak indicates some form of annoyance.
“Yeah. Let’s see what we can do about that.”
She slides down the hill, walking without hesitation into the trees.
Immediately it’s like she’s in a different world. Her connection to the Heart, to the Qi, Souls and concepts of her innermost being fade, going quieter, quieter than she’s really comfortable with. Her very being seems to struggle to maintain its form, the alien and resplendent construct of her being pressed down inexorably by the idea of being prey for the bad thing in the woods.
It’s right there.
That’s inaccurate. For clarity- it is everywhere. Every shadow, every shifting leaf in dark woodlands free of any wind, every corner or blind spot holds it. It is [SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS] and she is in the woods- the rest does not matter.
Raika feels something in her strain against the pressure of-
Of a Domain.
The Warrior Soul inside her possesses its own Domain. Exudes it, is a part of it, as a god is a part of their church.
And that Domain says, with no room for interpretation or subtlety, that something bad is here, and SOMETHING BAD happens to things IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS.
She tries to pull back, her first instinct being to pull herself back to more familiar territory, a part of herself less openly hostile-
It feels strained. The balance feels off, like trying to turn off a waterspout with pressure fighting back- not impossible, but awkward, likely to splash and leave a mess, maybe even spring a leak. It feels… not dangerous, perhaps, but something in her instinct says that it would be inadvisable to blindly drag herself back.
Something shifts. Everything is subtly different, as the presence of SOMETHING BAD comes closer, even as it is already here.
She takes in a breath.
Exhales.
I Am Me, I Am Mine.
I Can Change.
We Are What We Eat.
She looks out into the DARK, and tells it something true.
I AM SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS.
The pressure shifts, cratering in a new direction, turning and shifting and-
She is in a clearing.
Behind her, the trees drip with rainfall, scarlet and thick. The trunks glimmer with starlight in their bark, and hidden in the shadows far behind her there is Flame, and Lightning, and a place of deeper things, and always, the danger inherent to their existence. As she feels it, and feels herself within it, it changes, roots intermingling with forever-life as the branches fuse and wind and mate and divide in the canopy above.
In front of her, the trees are jade and shadow, sharp and ever-shifting but ever still. The woods are dark as midnight, as dark as the witching hour of children’s horror stories, and while they seem so very empty of life, there is something BAD in them, wrapped around every leaf and root and branch with the certainty of itself.
She is something vast, and terrible, and across the clearing, she sees something equally vast and equally terrible- except that it’s larger, and better fed, and sharper.
It looks at her.
She looks at it.
[WE ARE SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS].
The alienmost part of her tilts the idea of a head- and its eyes are deep, and dark, and full of the idea of harm committed willingly and eagerly.
No, it says. Not yet.