“This little thing?” Taran howls. “She’s crippled! No cultivation! You’re telling me she bounced back all the way to a Truth?”

“Oh my goodness!” Kaena has exclaimed in the meantime. “What a marvelous development! You must be one of a kind, darling!”

Yun Ka has not stopped speaking since the revelation. “Have you confirmed it? I thought I detected a fluctuation through the gate, and it would help to explain a lot about their survival, but there’s no records of anyone so far from the Heavens having a Truth, maybe ever, how did you-”

Taurus does the aura equivalent of a flex, a brief wave of the lightest touch of his Qi enough to wash over the room and silence all the babbling. He’s smiling as he does it, though.

“I confirmed it while we were speaking,” he says. “And even if I hadn’t, it explains a lot. I have no idea how you got your hands on it, kid, but congratulations are in order. You don’t see many Truths before the divergent pathways, and even then, they’re rare.”

“Ok, ok, stop,” Raika says, shaking her head. “What the hell is a Truth? I’ve never heard it spoken like that before, and I have no idea what it is.”

He snorts, a gust of wind forming from it. “Not a surprise,” he says. “Earlier, I mentioned a little bit of what we do here. The Division of Altered Cultivation is responsible for discovering esoteric forms of cultivation, and technically things beyond just cultivation, study them, and find out how they can best benefit the Empire and its citizens.”

Taran gives off a snort of his own at the description, but Taurus doesn’t say anything.

“To do this,” he continues, “we need to understand the powers inherent in our world. There’s Qi, background energy that permeates all things and can be shaped by most other powers, including one’s soul and living body. There’s Dao, infinitely rare and infinitely valuable, the very concept of any of the infinite things beneath heaven made manifest and comprehended. There’s Demonic energies, which, as you know, only the highest ranks of the Imperial structures are allowed to interact with, and which so often leave ruin behind them. But beyond these three, there are two more that people often neglect.”

“The one you have shown signs of is known as Truth, and, ironically, it’s basically Heaven’s Will.”

She blinks. “What does that mean?” she asks. “First of all, the whole point of this whole cultivation thing is defying Heaven’s Will, isn’t it? Why else cultivate, if not to be stronger and better and more than what this world demands of us?”

“I said basically, not actually,” the half-bull rumbles. “Heaven’s Will is full of Truth that can be defied, yes, like death, or age, or simply how things work. But if one were to develop their own will, and stamp it onto the world, then that would be their own Truth, not just Heaven’s Truth. Doesn’t mean it can’t be broken, or unmade or subverted, just like Heaven’s Will, but somehow, with barely any Qi, no Dao, no demonic traces, no evidence of tampering by formations or runes or sigils, you’ve created a law of the world that you demand to be true. You know what it is.”

She breathes, a slight gasp on the exhale. “I Am Me, I Am Mine,” she whispers.

Somehow, this time, she can tell she isn’t the only one who feels the weight of the words. What always felt like the weight of revelation, of understanding, is less easily classifiable as such when she sees four cultivators leagues above her shudder as she speaks the words.

Taurus nods. “I wouldn’t go about saying it so freely,” he rumbles. “Yours doesn’t have much weight to it yet, but even having a Truth is enough to tempt even the wisest of powerful fools to try to use you to find out how to get one of their own. In fact, I wouldn’t even act like you know what it is; if you need to talk about it, say Truth, not Truth, not unless I’ve given a signal that it’s ok to do so.”

“I’m… not sure I understand, but I can keep a secret,” she nods.

“Good. Keeping secrets is half the job,” he responds with a solemn nod, though Taran snorts in the background at the line.

“But… how is it different from Dao?” she asks.

“Oh, actually elementary!” pipes up Yun Ka. “Dao is a concept, Truth is a rule! Truth can affect Dao, and Dao can affect Truth, but one is understanding the pieces of something and how it reflects the whole, while the other is just saying something that is how things work, not what they are. Do you think your Truth maybe helped you heal? Does it function like a biological modification? Oh, to think I get to study a Truth, haha!”

“Down, pervert,” Taran chuckles darkly. “Gotta wait for Daddy Taurus over there to give permission before you have your tools in her goolies, yeah?”

Yun Ka blushes violently, turning and throwing a pen from one of the pouches on her at him. “Hush, Taran, you know that’s not how I meant it!”

“That’s how you always mean it when you get that look!” He protests with a cackle.

“And on that note,” Taurus rumbles, “I believe I’ll be showing Raika to her quarters now to let her get some rest. I’ll be back in a moment. Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone this time, huh?”

Taran gives a lazy salute as Yun Ka stammers out a bow, but Raika’s eyes are on Kaena. They haven’t participated in the chaos much, preferring to remain lounging and aloof, but… the smell hasn’t faded. Even when Taurus let loose with his wave of Qi, even with the hints of that impossible thing that grows in his soul and its breath like a whirlwind, the smell of peaches, cream, and toxin never quite vanished.

Kaena gives a soft, gentle wave and a dip of the head as Raika is escorted, Taurus’ hand on her shoulder, out of the central chamber.

They walk in silence for a while. It’s all just fancy hallways and expensive ornaments, from end-tables carved out of elder and ebonwood, to ornate gilded veins all through the palace, to portraits and paintings decorating dozens of doorways and expansive, wide hallways. She keeps quiet just to process, and Taurus seems inclined to let her do just that, keeping the silence alongside her.

Eventually, she starts to add into her processing just how massive the space they’re in is. They’ve been almost five minutes down just two corridors, one ending in what looks like a lesser sibling to the massive open-concept room she appeared in, the other ending in what looks like an overly fancy lobby of some kind, several smaller hallways leading away from it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“This is the hub,” Taurus rumbles, answering the question before she’s asked it. “Straight ahead are the baths, private and social. The door on the right over there is for an improvised storage space, we packed it full of things you are not allowed to touch until I’m sure you won’t blow yourself up, and left side has the hallway to the bedroom wing. Come on, I’ll show you to your room and leave you to it, let you get some rest.”

She pauses, the disconnect between her cell and the opulence of this place a bit too much. She isn’t hyperventilating, per se, but she is starting to notice that her breaths are both deeper than she used to be able to draw air and a bit faster than normal.

She means to say something like “just a moment” or “sure” or “understood, honored cultivator” or some combination of request for a pause to breathe and appeasement.

Instead, she asks; “Why did she have his eyes?”

She expected him to blink, maybe having forgotten the altercation or not knowing what she means. Instead, he sighs, and the sheer amount of breath he exhales is enough for some of the curtains and overly delicate ornamentation of the room to shift and rustle.

“You have had a very difficult journey,” he rumbles. “Not exactly ideal before your tribulation, and far worse than most ever dream of experiencing after it. I understand you have a lot of anger, and in a sense I am glad as it’s likely what allowed you to survive until now. If you were simply feral after all your trauma, or left entirely inhuman after your miraculous survival against that young master Shin Ren, this conversation would have gone very differently, and I’d have expected less from you as we rebuilt you.”

He kneels, and even still his eyeline is almost above her head.

“But you are not feral, even if you are more than a bit mad. So I will say this one time. If you ever try to kill anyone you just met in that room, I will kill you, and it will not matter how much you manage to twist and grow yourself in an attempt to stop me. Every one of those people is under my protection, and if I find out you’ve tried to use, abuse, or kill any of them, I will not negotiate, or imprison you, or give you enough grace that you might be forgiven. I will find where you are, and I will end you.”

“Am I clear?”

Raika… nods.

“Good,” he rumbles. “Yun Ka is one of the descendants of Imperial Magister and Honored One Beneath the Heavens, Feng Gui.”

She flinches at his name, at his title, and a moment later at the fact that he has family. He’d mentioned a nephew, and most old cultivators have spread their loins across half the settled continent, but it had never clicked before that he had family, people she could ask, people she could find, people she-

Ah. So that’s why he gave the “bad things will happen” speech right now. She wouldn’t, probably, have used Yun Ka as a hostage. There’s no telling she even knows her ancestor, necessarily, and nothing to say that she is for sure someone he’d even give a shit about, but even if both were guaranteed, hostage taking feels a bit… well, like a dynamic mix of stupid and foolish to Raika. Never mind the deep discomfort the idea brings up.

But it doesn’t leave, despite how uncomfortably it sits in her mind.

The blood of Feng Gui is right in the other room.

Yun Ka didn’t cripple Raika. Probably didn’t even know it happened at the time, and may not know how it happened now. She’s no guarantee against Feng Gui, that much is obvious even beyond the fact that Raika isn’t in the habit of pursuing her enemies with subtlety and threats.

But the thought doesn’t leave, because the blood of Feng Gui is so close.

She breathes out.

“Thank you for telling me,” she eventually says, bowing lightly. “I appreciate the honesty of honored cultivator Taurus, and hope to repay that honesty with the assurance that this one will heed his words.”

He doesn’t move for a little while. Then… he nods.

“Good,” he rumbles. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think Yun Ka has spoken to much of her family in over a decade, and holds her rank in the Imperial machine far more dearly than her bloodline. I understand, however, if you’d rather limit your interactions with her.”

Raika grins at that, more teeth than mirth. “That won’t be an issue,” she assures the demi-titan. “Best way to get over a problem is to confront it. If I can’t even look into eyes like his, how am I going to pluck them from his head someday?”

Taurus blinks, then breaks into that sound of rock-breaking that she thinks is laughter from him. “Try not to say shit like that to your direct Imperial supervisor, huh?” he laughs. “Still, I’m glad you’re coming at this from what may be considered a good route. Now come on, that’s enough excitement for a few hours.”

Her rooms are opulent, gorgeous, full of silks and colors and fancy clothes and beautiful makeup and mirrors and windows and gently blowing curtains and paintings. They also have a bed, which is way more important, and definitely her favorite part.

She’s asleep in moments, and though her sleep is haunted by occasional flashes of green, they’re overwhelmed by the smell of the breeze from the open balcony and the memory of figs wrapped in bacon. For the first time in a month, Raika dreams of things other than pain.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taurus looks up from the desk he’s been writing at as he senses Taran approaching.

The door swings open perfectly soundlessly as he lays down the comically small quill he’s grown used to writing with, and he turns from where he was kneeling to face the smaller figure.

“Sure you know what you’re doing with this one, boss?” Taran asks, their gait stiff and faintly unnatural as they walk, slowly, to let themselves fall against a couch in the expansive quarters, finally ceasing the clattering of myriad firearms.

“Worried about me?” Taurus rumbles, just a hint of mirth to his tone.

“Always, idiot,” grumbles the pale vestige. “You’re a bleeding heart, and pretty soon somebody’ll make it more fact than metaphor. Especially if you keep picking up the kinds of strays you prefer.”

“If I didn’t seek out such interesting strays,” Taurus says, “you’d still be as miserable as when I found you, no?”

Taran waves a limp hand, huffing. “You should have left me,” he grumbles. “Lords know it would be a hell of a lot less trouble for both of us, and I could finally get a good dirt nap.”

Taurus flicks a little piece of charcoal at his subordinate’s forehead, though this time they move, hand flicking out to snatch it and toss it into their sharpened maw. “You know I’m right, boss,” he mumbles as he chews. “You’re pushing it. Coulda gone to pick up that Li Shu kid instead if you really wanted to be here, or that kid a few provinces ago they say’s been eating beast meat. Neither one would be drawing as much heat. This Raika girl is trouble with just the broken cultivation she’s kicking the shit out of, now we find out she’s got a Truth and a capital-G grudge against some higher up. I’m already problem enough for three other Leaders in the division, Kaena’s practically a walking pipe bomb, and don't get me started on the nerd. What’s the plan here?”

Taurus doesn’t respond for a while. They’ve known each other long enough that the silence is more comfortable than painful, but there’s tension in it. The massive figure turns his head towards the window, every inch of its frame carved with intricate silencing and defensive runes and arrays, staring out at the dance of the moons. Lua, largest and most vibrant of her siblings, carries on her journey from one horizon to the other, always following and altering the trail of her cousin of the day, but rambunctious Rua spirals energetically in a circle around her big sister, making a dance of red stone against the greater ivory of Lua. Even the third sibling, Sha, has joined the dance today, electing to leave her position as a star to flicker like a green flame behind and to the left of her sister, shining softly and adding a hint of jade to the night.

“Not sure yet,” Taurus eventually murmurs. “But isn’t it better to have all the best pieces before I think of one?”

Taran tsks. He doesn’t believe his friend.

But he does trust him. So he gets up, and leaves the Leader of Project Thirty-Seven of the Division of Altered Cultivation to meditate on the strange celestials, and how their light shapes the night beneath them.