“You are to keep all limbs attached at all times,” Maen tells her in as commanding of a voice as she can manage. “You are not to let yourself bleed out. You are absolutely not to remove all your skin, and I swear if I find an organ out of your body one more time I’m going to pour shampoo and vinegar on it, do you understand me?”

Raika smiles, using conscious control of flesh to shift the muscles into the right shape. “Yes, mother dear,” she says with a chuckle she doesn’t quite feel. “Still don’t understand why you’re making such a fuss about this.”

“If you’re going to be dragging me around, and no one here kills me, then I have a right to basic, common decency,” Maen hisses, “and I consider it basic common decency that if I can’t stop you from doing horrifying terrible things to yourself you at least don’t do anything so gross I have to puke.”

In the weeks since Raika came out of her semi-catatonic state, the dynamic has… shifted a little. Raika remembers the blushing, adventurous yet quiet servant girl she’d met back in the purple something-or-other sect and reflects that she rather misses her.

Maen still does tend to be quieter than most, and she’s blushed plenty, but the occasional yelling, Raika supposes, is enough to make her nostalgic for a simpler time. On this, the third time that Maen has walked into a room to find Raika doing something horrifying and potentially lethal, it would seem that a line is being drawn between the poor felinid woman and the ongoing training exercises Raika has been doing to herself.

In this case it’s been a fascinating exploration of how much finer she can make her cardio-muscular control if she can see systems in question. And, as it turns out, also an exploration of how surprisingly easy it is to peel back a large enough chunk of the skin on her leg if she has a sharp enough knife.

“Ok,” Raika says, “that’s entirely fair. But you haven’t puked, and I haven’t removed anywhere close to all my skin, so…”

Maen huffs, stomping her foot. “And you need to find a room for it! Or put up a sign! Or something, so I don’t walk into a room with you looking like a damn medical experiment!” She huffs. “At least make some noises or something! I mean doesn’t that hurt?”

Raika shrugs. “Yeah, but not that much. If you pinch off the right… pieces? Like veins but not, they’re way smaller, anyways if you pinch them off you just get a really intense tingling sensation, and I’ve got tons of experience with weird tingling sensations.” She turns to look at Maen again, a cheeky smile placed on her face. “You know, junior sister, if you wanted to hear me making noises, all you had to do is ask.”

Maen just crosses her arm, giving Raika a Look. “You’re doing it again,” she grumbles.

Raika lets the expression come off. Her face, like it always is when she isn’t controlling it, falls to a sort of resting dead-eyed look. “What was it this time?”

Maen sighs, sitting on the bed at the far end of the room. “Still the eyes. Even with how they look now, it’s still… I guess it’s not easy to tell, maybe it’s just that I saw it in the beginning.” She looks over at Raika. “I’d rather you not use it with me. Not when it’s just us. If that’s alright, honored cultivator.”

Raika scoffs, genuinely this time, letting her brain move her face the old-fashioned way. “From cripple to honored cultivator,” she mumbles. “We both know I’m anything but.”

“It’s an official title, I think,” Maen tells her. “At least it’s what they’ve been introducing you as whenever someone asks. The governor’s been sending people every other day now, and it’s what Yun Ka always calls you.”

“I suppose it does come out sounding better than “prisoner”,” she says. “But I wouldn’t exactly call this cultivation. It usually involves some organs I don’t have and a lot less knifework, if I remember correctly.”

Maen shudders at the mention of the knifework, looking at Raika’s leg.

“Sorry,” Raika says softly. She puts the knife down and moves the outer layer back over the muscle, holding it there for a while. In a moment, she’s upped her heart rate to the elevated levels she needs, and eddies of blood flow have begun to push sharp, chaotic fluxes of life energy against the wound.

“How fast has it gotten?” Maen asks, visibly trying to mask her discomfort and, it would seem, genuinely curious. “Used to be it still took days.”

“For something this small?” she asks. “Minutes, maybe, until it scabs over. An hour or two to be gone, if I focus on it and keep the flow there. Feels like it’s been getting faster as my body adjusts.”

“Do you think anyone can do that?” Maen asks. “I mean, force a body to adjust to Qi that way?”

Raika shrugs. “I don’t know. There’s plenty to still figure out, I guess. Good thing we’re in the Division of Altered Cultivation, eh?”

Maen doesn’t laugh at the joke. If it can be called that, which she isn’t so sure about.

It’s ok. Raika doesn’t blame her. It wasn’t really funny.

She still sees the stain in the corners when she’s not ready for it. Still wakes up cold and sweaty some nights. Whenever she dreams about it, she always wakes from the dream the moment she notices Taurus’ hand. There’s a blur, after that, and then when she wakes up it’s in every shadow around her.

She shakes her head, Dinking against it softly. She places the tuning fork back down against her chest, letting it hang from the steel chain she got for it.

Say what you will about Taurus, killer of her idiot apprentice and friend, he’s been entirely willing to accommodate nearly every request. True, she hasn’t asked anything silly like going outside or endless cultivation pills, but she can’t really use the latter and the former… she’s not ready yet. And even if she was, she’s not exactly sure what she’d do. She proved pretty conclusively (and impulsively, she reflects) that she knows exactly where the tracker they implanted in her is, and she’s pretty sure she could cut it out (so long as there’s no traps or hidden dangers in it, which is more than likely), but… if she did leave, Taurus made it more than clear that he knows who she’d go to.

Li Shu.

She’s still not sure what would happen if they saw each other now. During their last conversation, Li Shu had told her, with every ounce of confidence and clarity, that Raika did not deserve the pain she’d suffered. It had been enlightening, and meant more to her than she can fully recall right now.

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But then she’d proven herself exactly as worthy and deserving of that pain, and more, by dint of her own bloody-minded stupidity and the whims of a world that couldn't care less about the lives of those trying their best upon it.

She doesn’t kid herself. She got JiaJia killed, and she deserves pain for that. All the better if she can use pain to become something more, something worthy of avenging him. But he isn’t the only one that matters.

Whatever her current dynamic with Maen is, her newfound companion doesn’t deserve to be unmade like JiaJia was, and it would take barely any effort for someone as strong as Taurus to enact that change in this palace. Li Shu, of course, deserves a better life than Raika can provide, one free of the threat of those chasing her or the influence of those who want to use her against Raika. Despite herself, she can’t help but think of others, too. Qen Hou is top of the list; he may be an ass, and they may have never truly been on the same page, but he’s a good person, and her actions carry weight against him now if she wields them wrong. Rui Ka, the ornery old healer Raika barely knew but who saved her life. If they go far back enough, maybe even her old sect. Most of them she could do without, but many don’t deserve to be sacrifices to keep her in check.

If and when she moves, she’ll have to do it in a way that either separates her from them entirely or makes damn sure they’re safe, and that if they’re to die it’s by their own fates and choices, not mindless ripples from her own poor choices and consequences. She’s still not sure which direction she wants to go in, but in either way, she needs to be stronger. Not just stronger; she needs to be more. More knowledgeable, more aware, wiser, smarter, and with a lot more tricks in her sleeves.

Maen touches her on the shoulder, and she snaps back to the present with a jolt and a flinch away from the physical contact.

“Sorry,” Maen says, pulling her hand away quickly but staying close, trying to be a comfort. “You were doing it again. Drifting off, I mean.”

“It’s fine,” Raika tells her for the upteenth time. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here.”

In truth, she hadn’t really “gone anywhere” back when she’d been in her catatonia after they’d been brought to the palace, but she doesn’t need to tell Maen that, or wonder at why her companion would think so.

“How are you doing, though?” Raika asks, forcefully moving the conversation to less heavy topics. “I doubt you’re finding all that much time to cultivate wasting all your time checking on me and whining about some minor cuts.”

Maen rolls her eyes. “It’s going fine,” she sighs. “It’s easier than I thought, but I’m not really surprised. Maybe my family hasn’t ever had a powerful cultivator before, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my breaking that trend has a lot more to do with the quality of supplies here than anything. I ask for cultivation pills and a room to meditate, I get one.”

“More of the mysteriously appearing things?” Raika asks.

Maen nods. “Still not sure what that’s all about. Still, I haven’t asked for a cultivation method, like you asked. That’s… actually what I was coming to talk about. I was wondering if you could, you know… check in again?”

Raika huffs. “Yeah,” she says, “no trouble. Lay down on the bed, cultivate a little. Make sure you push some Qi out whenever you complete a loop, I’d like to be able to check it a few times, make sure that I’m right about this.”

Maen gulps, but nods, and walks over to the bed, moving steadily and quietly as she refocuses from the earlier panic and enjoys the effects of an all-new panic.

She lays on the bed, and a few seconds after closing her eyes and putting her hands in a meditative grip in front of her, Raika picks up the scent of her in the air, and walks over.

It hasn’t changed much, but it has changed. The scent of Yuzu is stronger now, with the scent of claws fading in only occasionally. Maen completes her first cycling and a small “puff” of Qi escapes, which Raika takes a moment to sniff carefully. It’s honestly like the yuzu is starting to get deeper, richer, while the other scents fade; added to the citrusy scent is a hint of something medicinal, and a touch of a smell like… grass. Freshly cut grass.

Raika leans in closer, sitting on the bed and leaning in close, eyes closed to let her focus. She can hear Maen’s heartbeat speed up a bit, experiments in self harm paying dividends and letting her hear the girl’s heart like it’s exposed entirely, but she does her best to focus, putting it to the side. As it speeds up, though, she smells the scent of claws again, and she makes herself entirely still, letting the scent reach her rather than trying to grab it.

As her heartbeat increases… there it is. Claws, lightly blooded. Dirt and stone and prey beneath them, proof of a journey, of a hunt. The slightest hint of heat, of sweat, of sharpened edges scraping against the world, of flesh and skin made to slash and coil and cut…

Maen’s heartbeat rises again, and Raika loses the scent. It’s not that it’s not there anymore, but she loses the ability to track its nuance as the yuzu-and-grass scent briefly overpowers it, and a new scent joins the group and makes it all the more difficult to shift her perception around.

She’s started to smell Maen sweating. The smell of her breath and her skin, of her hair from when she shifts ever so slightly. And there’s another scent, too.

She lets her eyes fall open, looking down at Maen as she leans over her and examines her, the felinid’s cheeks turning lightly pink as she breathes a bit unevenly.

Raika isn’t an idiot. She’s not been very active in plenty of ways since her crippling, but there are some things that are very hard to forget. The look that Maen gives her is one, and it’s one she’s seen in moments like this one before, when she draws close. Maen’s got the hots for her, and badly enough that Raika can smell her arousal, the tiniest hint of it fluttering in the air, hinting at what she wants, whether or not she’s entirely committed to the idea. It’s enough of a distraction, every time, to break Raika’s concentration.

Maen’s pretty. Raika knows this, objectively and subjectively both. Physically, sure, she’s lithe, soft, just short enough to be on the cuter side with the way she uses her features. And that’s not even mentioning the way her ears flick when she’s annoyed (or the entirely different way they flick when she’s close to Raika, like this). And maybe there’s something about the danger, or the desire for connection in a strange place, or just raw physical attraction, but she is visibly, often awkwardly attracted to Raika.

For a moment, she lets herself indulge the thought. Indulge in the idea of reaching out, of touching. Of experiencing that moment of intimacy, that moment free of pain and full of connection, whatever may come from it. She lets herself wonder what would happen if she let herself…

No.

A shudder runs through her. Revulsion at herself. Panic at the thought. A glimpse of a smiling face, reminding her she doesn’t deserve it.

She sits up, away from Maen.

“I think you shouldn’t use the cultivation aids,” she says, using her will to control her voice rather than trusting it not to betray her. “Your Qi has two scents, and one of them is a lot more… animalistic, maybe. If I had to guess, your family might have some beast Qi from your bloodline, which may be part of why you haven’t had much luck cultivating. You need to find a way to express your Qi more naturally and all at once, and if I had to guess, the pills are probably designed for pure human cultivators, not for those with beast blood.”

Maen gulps, lets out a breath, nods quickly. “Ok,” she says, closing her eyes for a moment before she sits back up. “Any advice on how to… you know, express my Qi more naturally?”

“Exercise, maybe,” Raika tells her, standing off the bed and sitting back at the chair next to the knife, slowly. “Physical activity. I sensed it more when your heartrate sped up.”

Maen blushes again, but nods.

“You should also probably ask Taurus,” Raika tells her, voice flat and emotionless.

Maen hesitates. “Are you…”

“Yeah,” Raika says, voice in that same tone. “He practices some kind of bestial cultivation. So long as we’re here, he’s a resource, and for now, neither one of us can be anywhere else. So ask him.”

“And I think I’d like a bit of space, Maen.”

Maen nods. They’ve had this exchange before. If she does take offense at it, if the dismissal does hurt her, she’s gotten good at hiding it, and Raika has gotten exceptional at making sure she doesn’t look to try and find out. She bows, thanks Raika, and walks back out the door. She’ll probably be back to check on her in a few hours.

Raika looks over at her mirror. She found a new one, and cracked it, and stayed awake in front of it until whatever strange effect the palace has to fix or remove broken things gave up and let her have it.

She has work to do, and the beginnings of a plan forming.

Everything else can wait.