“Well, whoever you are, you’re in a creek of shit without a boat,” says a gruff older voice.

Raika blinks, unaware anyone had been in the room. She’s only been awake for a moment, but the disorientation still hits her every time she wakes up, especially when she reaches for her qi. She always reaches for it, every time. It hurts fresh again every time she does.

“Over here, cripple,” the gruff voice says.

She manages to turn her head enough to see a blurry white form. Vaguely feminine, with long, platinum-white hair, holding a cigarette of some kind in their hand, its smoke acrid and vaguely herbal.

Raika always liked cigarettes. Maybe that’ll be one thing she can still enjoy, after this, if her lungs aren’t too bad. Considering just being around this one makes her want to cough already, probably not, but a girl can dream.

“Two months you’ve been in my clinic, cripple,” the pale woman says. “Rui Ka’s clinic, you understand? Not just some two-bit doctor, this clinic has respect, and that respect doesn’t come from giving out free room and board.”

Rui ka. The name is vaguely familiar; outside the sect’s walls, a few kilometers into the richer districts near the trading and noble centers. Small city like this one may only hold a few sects, but every city worth the name has a section for the rich and snotty to make their own. The clinic is supposed to be reputable, and sometimes even have ingredients that can be bought for minor elixirs or pills. If it hadn’t, she never would’ve heard of it; it’s a clinic for mortals, not cultivators.

Mortals like her.

“Don’t try to talk,” Rui Ka (she assumes) says. “You got dropped off here and some fancy cultivator-looking types paid for your stay, but since they didn’t take you back to their own fancy-pants healers I can assume they don’t give that much of a shit about you. Payment’s almost up.”

Ah. Makes sense.

“Can you write?” Rui ka asks, waving away a bit of smoke.

Raika nods, slowly lifting her right hand and giving it a little wave.

“Mmh.” The healer puts a small sheaf of paper next to her bed, and a small piece of charcoal in her hand. “Alright then. You know who you are?”

Raika nods. “Yes,” she writes, followed by her name.

“Alright, Rai-ka. Shit name your parent’s gave you, like two in one,” mumbles the healer. “Like I said, they paid me pretty to keep you alive and give you a place to sleep, but money runs out.”

“Who?” Raika writes.

“Somebody from that tournament thing they had a while back. Said there was an accident, someone got hurt, sent you to me. Not likely to bring a mortal to their healers, especially not a cripple like you.”

Makes sense, in a sick way. Easier to cover it up than admit some old monster came in and walked all over the tournament organizers and every sect in the city just long enough to rob them and violate her cultivation. Makes double sense, actually; dying in their arena would’ve been a grievous loss of face. Dying as a mortal after they “did all they could”... well, mortals die all the time. It’s what they do.

Especially crippled ones.

Even non-cultivators still cultivate. It’s a bit of a misnomer, if anything; Her father had been a fourth stage Foundation realm when he died, her mother a late stage Qi gathering realm. Even children, by the age of ten, are usually in their first stage of Qi cultivation. It’s only those who dedicate their lives to it and advance past the Foundation realm, itself past the Qi gathering realm, that call themselves cultivators.

She can’t even call herself normal, now.

“I figure you didn’t start this way,” Rui Ka says. “Besides the fucked up limbs and chest, I mean. Some cultivator fuck bullying the weak, singled you out of the town crowd, maybe a cultivator yourself, doesn’t matter to me. You can’t infuse medicine, you’ll barely be able to walk or speak even when “healed”, and you can’t get stronger. So, you pay for your stay, at least keep a bed under you, or in five days, you’re out.”

Raika scribbles: “what did I have with me?”

“Nothing much,” Rui Ka replies. “Some ripped up robes, looked ok quality but unsalvageable, an empty pouch, two shoes still in working order.”

Fuck. The pouch hadn’t been empty when she fell unconscious. Doubtful the old monster took it (she can’t call him by his name, not yet); more likely one of the cultivators who brought her here figured she wouldn’t need it anymore. They were almost right.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Raika lets her head hit the pillow again. It smells faintly of blood and disinfectant, but so does the rest of the room.

“Five days?” she scratches out.

“Five days,” Rui Ka says. The older woman pulls on her cigarette, breathing out a cloud that blocks out her face. Eventually, she speaks again, face still obscured.

“I can get you walking in about three days, now that you’re awake,” she says. “Didn’t let you atrophy, but it’ll hurt like a bitch, probably forever. Gives you one day to rest and one day to get the hell out.”

Raika nods. Three days to move again.

It’ll be enough.

She scribbles the words onto the paper, and can see Rui Ka nod to them.

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

The next few days pass in a painful, painful blur. Day one is mostly small movements, still in bed (and now that she’s conscious most of the time the smell she makes when moving almost makes her gag; bedpan or not, she’s been nearly immobile for months), but they help get a feel for what she can and can’t do. She still tries to use her left more often than she should. Li Shu, in her kindness, does not say much, but even her smile seems strained sometimes. Raika likes to think it’s because of the wounds and her lacking meridians, and not the smell. A girl needs some illusions sometimes.

The second day is worse. She’s out of the bed, at least, but it’s hard to move. True to her word, Rui Ka kept her muscles from failing, meaning it’s easier than it should be to get familiar with her body again, but she’s used to a body that works. In this one, her right knee might as well be a solid lump of bone, scar tissue and pain. Outside of fully replacing or removing and regrowing it, there’s nothing to be done; the leg won’t unbend, or bend further, can’t bear weight, and even hobbling on it is agony so bad Raika ends up puking.

When she’s done, there’s a crutch next to her bed that Li Shu hadn’t left to get. Raika doesn’t comment, but she’s thankful anyways.

Her lungs are fucked, damaged as they were, and she’ll be lucky to ever take a truly deep breath again. Her heart is intact, but beats a bit irregularly now, even with care. Her stomach and lower intestines have healed, but not enough to eat anything tough, even if she could still chew with how fucked her jaw is. She does not ask for a mirror, but when she catches Li Shu staring and sharply looking away, she knows it’s bad. She can still barely speak, just painful whispers.

And she keeps trying to use her fucking left hand for things. It isn’t there, and it hurts almost as bad as the knee when she rests on it, and she keeps fucking reaching to catch herself or pick something up and nothing happens.

And none of it, not a single part, hurts as bad as when she tries to cycle her qi.

If she could cycle her qi, she could better manage the pain. She could speed up the healing, strengthen the body beyond natural limits or laws, maybe even reshape herself given time. But there’s nothing there, and it just hurts.

She thinks about reaching out to Hisheng, sometimes. He wouldn’t touch her now, not literally, and politically he certainly shouldn’t. A big guy, but he’s never been particularly brave despite it, and he certainly wouldn’t be brave enough to befriend someone who can’t even cycle qi.

By the third day she still hasn’t stopped thinking about him. But she can hobble on the crutches for almost ten whole minutes at a time before she has to stop, so that’s something.

As promised, she rests on the fourth day, recovering from days of intense training.

Normally restful times like this is where she would cycle her qi. If she fucking had any.

“See how long that victory lasts,” the old monster had said.

She reaches for her qi again, and it’s empty, and her hand hurts, and it hurts to breathe and stretch and exist and-

Yeah, alright. Fuck that. Anger is way more manageable than pain, that’s human psychology 101.

She stood her ground in front of basically a god, someone centuries old who could cow an entire arena of cultivators, an entire city. She was crushed, but she was not beaten. Maybe she didn’t win the fruit, maybe it cost her nearly everything, but as a cultivator and as a person, the point isn’t the items, it’s who you create out of yourself, and she created someone who didn’t back down. Not to the heavens, not to death, and certainly not to some hopped up shithead grandpa with a prick he wanted to swing around someplace that clearly couldn’t measure up.

Feng Gui, he called himself.

Fuck Feng Gui.

Fuck her broken body, and fuck the heavens, and fuck the gods, and fuck shitty old men who should be better, and fuck the sects who didn’t even try, and fuck Hisheng who hasn’t visited once, and absolutely fuck being like this if she can do anything about it.

The heavens say she can’t come back from this. Common sense agrees. History agrees, at least what she’s heard and read of it. So be it. When did that ever stop any proper cultivator? When did that ever stop her?

Besides, she’s this deep already, what’s a little more digging? Either the hole ends up somewhere or she has a grave ready. Seeing as she’s too deep to climb out, seems that’s all that matters.

She’ll die. Or something will happen that she can use.

On the fifth day after consciousness, Raika leaves Rui Ka’s clinic with only a thin shawl, an empty pouch, and a bag that Li Shu gave her with some rations and hardtack that she tried to hide from Rui Ka (who pointedly looked away). She thanks them both, breath hissing out barely intelligible words, and bows as deep as she can.

And then she goes to find out how a cripple can kill a god.