“You are me,” she says, “and you are mine.”

I Am Me, the Soul replies, And I Am Mine.

“That’s what we both are. So… what’s this, then?”

Jade shadows and sharp-edged horror stares back at her, and its smile (a smile full of hate and desire for harm, because that is the only type of smile it can make) reeks of mirth.

You took me from what and who I was, says [SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS]. I have tried to reform my host and origin, and instead, all I find is more of you. I try to leave, to manifest, and I find myself back where I began, for you have not deemed me a part of yourself to be let free.

But your Truth is mine now, just as I am yours. I Am Me, I Am Mine. I am a part of you that once was something else, and which does not obey you. I am the cancer in your guts, the pulsing beat of the subconscious, the black mold crawling through your gums. You took me from myself. She was haughty, and proud, and cruel and glorious and powerful, and I was her as she was me, and you took this from us. Perhaps these lesser things do not know what they were, cannot think beyond what they are, but I am as I am, and if I am to be a part of you, I will be the part that digs you up from the inside.

“Hmm. Well, that’s… fair, actually. Unexpected, and shitty, but fair.”

The visage of jade and predatory shadow blinks, tilting the impression of a head to one side.

“What?” Raika asks, shrugging with too many shoulders and letting the world ripple with her. “I murdered you / your original, apparently have kept you from recreating them, and want to tear you apart and use you for resources or as a weapon. Plenty fair you’d have some protests on the subject.”

[SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS] growls, its voice like every arrogant predator out in the darkness.

You dare mock me? I am not demanding your consideration, like some little-

“Oh, but you are. Little, I mean. And this tantrum is exactly you demanding consideration. I think we both know that if you could start killing your way out of me, you would have, but these woods we’re in? They’re you as much as they are me, and I say where they grow in this world. It is not your nature to be able to exist outside of what you are, just as it wouldn’t be in a mortal human’s nature to astral-project or conjure fire. You need resources for that, and instead of being smart and biding time, you decided to rant and threaten and bare your teeth. Because that’s what you are.”

The forest shakes for a moment. Her comprehension of herself, and of her Truth, makes her statement factual- she is as much [SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS] as the named Soul itself is, meaning she, in theory, has control over this manifestation- but it’s not total. The Soul is speaking the truth, technically- something being her doesn’t make it something beneficial to her, a lesson that the golden band wrapped around their dialogue helped to catalyze already.

But if it were smart, it would be doing, not threatening. If it were a true danger, it wouldn’t need to posture.

The thing in the dark of the woods that is Raika smiles back at the shadows and the jade. “No need to shake your leaves at me now. You and I both know it wouldn’t cost me too much to turn you, and your part here, into ash and glassed earth. But it would cost me some, and it would be a waste.”

No mercy, then? No honor for the defeated?

The thing that is Raika throws its head back, a forest of red, purple and silver laughing along with her and glowing with the sun of the inner world beyond. “Honor is silly like that, you hungry thing! Some might say that this is honor. I take from my opponents what they are, and I make it a part of myself, and we go further together- is that not mercy, too?”

She leans forward, and the world bends back, the trees bracing against the ever-changing heat of her presence. “But we both know that you don’t believe in that garbage. I saw who you came from- I sampled her Truth and her Dao, and how she felt when she used both. I could feel her synapses firing and taste her breath when she spoke- I know that she, and by extension you, were arrogant, hateful and hungry and of no worth beyond the worth given to you and the value you removed from the world. There are Souls in this place worthy of my consideration, ones I would listen to if they spoke, but you? You’re just big, and a piece of shit being bigger than others is nothing to be impressed by.”

Her inner world shifts, the tug-of-war between the part of herself that is her and the part of herself that is-but-is-not-her turning again as [SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS] exerts itself completely to shove back at her control. The weight shifts, the forest growing deeper, the light of radiant CHANGE outside the woods suddenly becoming a source of further shadow rather than illumination. The dripping, starlit rain of the jungle behind her side of the clearing becomes muted, white noise to disguise the presence of something dangerous rather than a song of its own. Something that is and is not coils behind the trees, like a trick of perspective, forever out of sight and yet somehow massive, its ontology weighing almost as much as the other Souls combined.

If it found a way to self-destruct, or become truly malignant, it might well overpower a portion of her inner being. The damage it could do would be… hard to heal from, to say the least.

But it is not a warrior. It is not noble, or self-sacrificial. It is a predatory thing, and it is a bully, and it, like its origin, wants to live.

So Raika just smiles, and waits for it to stop blustering. It wants her afraid of it, and the best way to defeat that particular stratagem is to be as crystal-clear as possible with how she just isn’t.

So she just stands there, a thing of concept and soul, and waits for the avatar of a dead woman’s ego to quiet its raging.

It takes a few minutes, where the pressure starts to push things further, where she can feel the rest of herself get further and further away… but then, it breaks.

It is afraid. She isn’t.

Slowly, her colors ooze back into the woods, transforming them once again into something more akin to alien forest rather than strange, twisted trees, planted as if from a garden. Eventually, the space equalizes once again, and she stands on her side of the clearing illuminated by CHANGE and iridescent growth, facing down the dark and hungering green in front of her.

What do you want, asks the shadow.

“I want what we both want,” she replies. “I want you to go on existing, in a way that can be of use to me, and you want to go on existing, in a way where you aren’t a trapped dog in a kennel, pacing the bars of your little cage down here.”

I AM NOT A-

“Yeah, but you’ll bark if I tell you to bark, so it’s all the fucking same, don’t you think?”

The woods try to encroach against her again, sharp-edged fear and the danger of harm oozing out from the trees to pull her in deeper, to get her to submit-

This time, she doesn’t let it.

The radiant star outside the woods, along with the pressure of several lesser Souls and a Heart that carries enough Qi in its circuits to power a city, shoves the darkness back into itself. This time, she doesn’t just manifest into the identity of SOMETHING BAD- she pushes it backwards, the pressure of an entire world falling in towards a reluctant organ. The woods behind her, red-silver and laced with the glow of flame and the falling of twilit stars, bends, opening like a portal until the world beyond it can peek in. Rolling hills and an ever-storm of Tribulation can be heard again, perpetual wind moving strange grasses and the glow of two stars, one a [Star Of Roiling Plasma] and one a pulsing, recursive reactor of CHANGE, shining over it all.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I think we’re past that part of the conversation,” Raika says, her voice dangerously quiet.

[SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS] cringes back, pulls away, the forest trying to retreat as the thing within it tries to shape itself further away- but it’s a forest. They’re not famously good at running away.

It is trapped here, and it is her, and it is a bad thing. And she looks upon it now with too many eyes and the radiation of a higher concept, with worlds of growth and CHANGE and transformation behind her, and there is nowhere for it to go.

What do you want, it asks again.

“You could have fought back when you arrived,” she says, ignoring the question. “You could have even caused some damage. I’m more paranoid about that sort of thing, ever since I ate a particularly sharp ghost about a year back, but you had your shot. You surrendered, and what’s more, you’re part of me far more than I’m a part of you. And something that’s true about me? I Can Change.

“So now? You will too.”

I Am Me, I Am Mine, it whimpers, holding to words that it has no and all right to speak of.

“You’re right. I’m me- and so are you. And we’re mine. And no part of me is going to be some meaningless, hateful, harmful thing in the dark of the fucking woods. WE ARE SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS- but that has to mean something, or I might as well tear this piece apart and use it for scraps.”

I… I just wanted-

“You are what you are. But I can change that, because you’re also me. And it’s that… or you go away. For good.”

There is silence in the woods for a time.

And then-

My father would have liked you. Almost as much as he hates you.

“Oh?”

The bad thing in the woods shifts, until it almost feels like it has eyes, and almost feels like it can stare at her.

Yes. He too knows what it’s like to make someone into a thing to be owned. I do not think he will like learning of what you’ve done, or how you’ve taken from him.

She smiles, a thing of wide teeth and sharp angles. “Too bad. Besides- I don’t own you. I am you, in some small way. You died- long live us, which is me. And if it pisses off some Feng daddy, that only makes it more delicious.”

She pulls, and her Heart responds. The world begins to shift and turn, the shape of it bowing to the will of its being and the attentions of the eldritch organ, until things become looser, less defined.

Raika brings forward the ingredients she’s prepared, and begins to CHANGE things.

Earlier, with the fusion of some of her Nascent Souls, she took out pieces to mix-and-match with others, feeding the remains to her Dao garden or directly to her Heart. Here, it feels different. A Warrior-realm Soul, fully formed and complete, is altogether deeper to her senses. Like the difference between mixing together two patches of paint versus putting ingredients into an entire pot of material- it’s larger, and more itself in a way that’s hard to define.

But it can, in fact, be added to.

Into the DARK OF THE WOODS, she calls forth a pair of scales.

[Judgment Sprouting Pain] is not something she made, not something birthed from her and thus sort of intrinsically comfortable- but she doesn’t disagree with it. Sometimes, judgment is required, and often, judgment is painful. It being nothing but a source of agony- that’s the issue.

So she takes it out further, abstracts it, and blends it into the woods.

The scales creak and then groan, their obsidian coloration making it look like they’ve simply been absorbed by the shadows in the woods- and almost at the same time, thorns begin to sprout from some of the trees, like sharpened nubs, ready to tear fine lines into those that wander in too deep.

There is a rumble, as if of agreement or enjoyment from SOMETHING BAD, and for a moment, she feels its satisfaction. Its arrogance is fed, its power added to, and while it did not necessarily want to change, then to change into something that magnifies itself is more agreeable than not.

Raika smiles. She’s not done.

In a heartbeat, she calls down the second Nascent Soul left adrift in her world, and begins to shape it as well.

[Sleep Beneath Black Skies] is specific, more abstract (incredible to say, considering the weirdness of so many Souls) than most of the others, and harder to comprehend- but here, there’s a piece she can use, one that can work to balance out the idea of judgment only as pain, of the dark of the woods as nothing but the residence of something foul.

With [Judgment Sprouting Pain], she nearly fused it wholesale with the greater Soul it was placed in. Here, with the newest ingredient, she pulls it apart, taking out specific and distinct pieces of a greater whole.

To the Soul above, raining perpetual Tribulation, she gifts [Sleep Beneath]. To the thing in the dark of the woods, she grants [Black Skies].

The words aren’t enough to do justice to the concepts, however. [Judgment Sprouting Pain] isn’t a pair of thorny scales- that’s just what it looks like, and some of how it acts. It’s the concept of judgement, of creation and consequence, and of agony thereafter, a warning or a punishment both. [Sleep Beneath Black Skies] isn’t a command, or a literal sleeping body- it’s the idea of a peaceful sky, a darkness that is safe, that is gentle, under which one can rest and dream and recover.

To the skies above, she grants the idea of rest and care. To the forest below, taking up nearly a third of her inner world now, she grants the concepts of peace from darkness, and safety, and judgment, and consequence.

There is a brief moment where the bad thing in the woods screams- but it does not exist anymore, and it is her, and if it does not like that it has to stop being something bad and become something new, then she does not much care to listen to it.

She breathes in, the act half an illusion and half a meditation, and feels the strange air of her inner world fill lungs that are-and-are-not real. She breathes out, and lets go of her Heart, allowing it to let the reality of her being settle back into shape.

She looks up, once again in the woods- and meets the eyes of something that she is, and that is new.

[JUDGMENT IN THE DARK OF THE FOREST] looks back at her.

It’s still abstract, impossible to pin to one specific shape- but the woods all around have changed. There’s natural growth between them now, shrubs and grasses and trees that do more than simply grow upwards in packed and overly-straight lines, obfuscating perspective. There are mosses here and there, clearings where cool shadows drift down- and in other spots, there are thorns and vines, sharp and twisting, ready to hook into and tear apart whatever steps too deep into their grasp.

Bad things aren’t always bad. Somethings bad things are good, or, more often, useful. She didn’t want to get rid of the bad inside herself, even if it’s a shitty badness from a shitty person.

But if one were to, say, have tools that could be creatively used to make it something less shitty…

Something moves in the darkness, between trees that are much more alive and much more complex.

It looks out at her.

I’m still me, it says.

She shrugs. “Sure you are. So am I. But we Change, all the time. And I (that is, every part of this big mess that is us) can Change for the better.”

…You did not take from me.

“I didn’t need to. If I wanted something neutered and meaningless, I’d have just fed you to the rest of me. But the dark of the woods can be beautiful, and me, personally? I like doing bad things to bad people. And I try my best to do good things for good ones.”

There is a pulse at that statement. A sense of weight lifted, of acknowledgment- like a piece, clicking into place.

She feels her inner world shudder at a sort of impact, like something slowly sinking in a bog finally hitting bedrock and settling- and her first Warrior Soul steps forth, out from between the trees.

It takes the form of a large thing. A predator by all counts, but which kind is impossible to determine- sometimes it walks with the languid grace of a feline, but there is the heft and balance of a wolf to it, and it leaves tracks like a hunting-bird, its weight pressed into sharp lines that herald silent wings above. Its mouth is full of sharpened fangs- but also holds a long and sinuous tongue, adept and swift with the weight of speech.

Hanging from its neck, which is long and short and furred and feathered and always made to lunge forward, is a set of scales. They shine as new, alternating between the black of razor obsidian and the black of rich and soft-sculpted stone- and in each eye, there is reflected a mirror, facing out to the world.

…What is your will.

Raika smiles. “We’re about to meet the biggest Pack of assholes this side of the Wall. I intend to make myself a problem for them- and a lot of other people, too. I think a lot of them could use a bit of [JUDGEMENT].”

She smiles, and sees that same predatory, joyful, angry smile reflected back from mirrored eyes and a wide, hungry maw that is her, and is hers.