For a moment, she doesn’t feel the leash. For a moment, she doesn’t care about the rest of the world. For a moment, she is not a thing that deserves punishment, she is not slave to those who broke her and the one she owed and chose to help. She gives herself the gift of forgetting about her friends, and how alone she is, and where she stands, and simply flies, free and true, teeth bared and body little more than a weapon to strike with.
And the beast meets her in kind.
Its skin is metallic, plates of some kind of biological alloy rippling like scales and armor both, large enough to act as daggers in and of themselves, and extend over every vulnerable area she can see. It has six legs, each of them rippling with muscle beneath tough greenish-brown skin as it shifts position and extends claws shaped like reaper’s blades, designed to cut across whole swathes of flesh and bring the filetted slices to a face that is all maw except for the eyes.
So many eyes. A crown of them, like a bubble made of shifting pupils in over-wet black scleras sitting atop a jaw that unhinges in a half-dozen different directions to shriek a battle cry at her as she flies at it.
And then, as it raises its frontmost claws to catch her in her mad forward dash, she plants a single step onto the ground and forces her entire body to launch itself sideways, against a tree trunk, and then forward again in the time it takes for a human to blink.
The energy and momentum tear at her, trying to keep the action from happening and, failing that, hurt her for attempting it, but her body endures. Modified as it is, muscle fibers interlaced and rewoven into new formats, tendons and ligaments strengthened and given space to work with, joints reinforced and rearranged, her flesh does not care about what she should be doing, only about what they can do together. And right now, she can switch directions on a dime at the speed of a living rocket and still be ready to tear apart her prey.
A cluster of its eyes swivel and manage to track her, and a moment before impact, even at her speed, the spirit beast raises its hackles, armored scales becoming erect like a line of daggers for her to impale herself on.
So be it.
She lands between most of them, puppeteering her hand and body to find points of contact she chooses rather than just what is instinctively quick, but even still they’re cut up and open severely. She focuses on her heartbeat, pushing Qi towards the wounded areas while slowing the bloodflow around them to keep herself from bleeding too much, and then she forces her hand down further, fingers hooked into claws against the base of the armored quills / armor.
She wrenches, not sharp enough to pierce the leathery hide but still strong enough to damage the muscle and flesh beneath as she yanks it out of place and leaves a cluster of bloodied living daggers suddenly stiff and still. She roars again, and the beast roars with her, a wave of new scales lifting along its whole body as it tries to roll over and crush her.
Instead, she leaps back and away, flexing her new musculature and clearing a large enough space that the creature’s roll has no chance of reaching her. Instead, as it writhes and tries to rip apart the enemy it believes is still clinging to it, she charges forward again and kicks it in the face as hard as she can.
The force of it shocks even her. Two of its six jaws dislocate with a crunch, flapping about obscenely and bleeding freely where the tearing force broke its skin. The beast shrieks again, more garbled this time, finding its feet, and Raika has already moved, ducking a wild swipe that she can feel just barely miss her.
She tracks the thing. It’s heart beats erratically, a strange rhythm that she can’t quite parse until she realizes that there’s two, beating together yet slightly apart. The creature does not seem to breathe, its throat emitting no sound unless it is performing one of those frighteningly high-pitched screeches, but she can smell a fleshy, mucousy scent near its stomach and, as she watches, notices vents pulling in air and letting it flow back out through what must be a series of lungs.
Raika adds not stealing more medical texts from the pavilion of the Purple Flame something-or-other sect to her list of regrets, but even looking at this thing is a joy. It’s just… fascinating.
It takes to its hind legs then, disturbing cracking and flexing sounds coming from it as its two frontmost pairs of limbs extend and distort, their reach increasing even as the armor-quills on its back extend outward in a complete cone from its spine. It’s a defensive posture; come towards its more vulnerable belly, and there’s four sets of scythes ready to rip and tear and shred whatever comes close, but come at it from behind and there’s an impenetrable shell.
Raika, for the first time in a while, lets herself smile entirely naturally at the challenge before her.
This thing can kill her, that much is certain. A good enough swipe across the throat, a cut deep enough to sever joint or bone, and she’ll be back to square one of her crippling or worse. And for the first time since Taurus stole her, for the first time since she’s realized exactly how deserving she is of all the misery she’s built and been given, she feels… just a bit of joy, at that thought.
A part of her seems to think that that’s a concerning development, but it’s currently being very unhelpful, so she ignores it.
She hears Maen gasp as she dashes in. She hears the wind, whistling through the trees and the sharpened edges of the thing before her. She can smell the rich earth she kicks up as she moves, the fallen rain it has absorbed in the last few days and the things which have walked and crawled on it. She can feel the breeze of air resistance pushing against her skin, whispering of her opponent's weight and presence on the world as it continues to somehow mask its Qi scent from her.
And she feels her own flesh, like a symphony, like a tool so lovingly forged into shape by pain and technique and blind experimentation. And, after just a moment of blissful peace, she takes that tool in hand and uses it.
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Her heart thunders. Her blood flows to muscle and bone and flesh, flushing the air her lungs have purified and absorbed into every part that needs it, every part she knows she can use, and even with all of her enhancements and changes, she can still feel her bones creak and her muscles groan at the force she demands they exert.
She is in range of the beast’s claws.
The first strike comes from her right, and she forces her arm to keep up and bats it away, the impact of it ringing in her deliciously and making even Dink, hanging about her neck, tremble with the force, but it’s diverted just over her head. The second strike is from the left, down towards her throat, and she takes one step into its guard on the way and lets it whiff. The third and fourth attacks come at the same time, dislocated joints letting the limbs move like razored whips towards her stomach.
She pushes down, ever so slightly, and she is airborne, only just enough to let herself roll in the air above both blades.
And then she is in, and she forces herself to move faster.
She lands and corrects her stance at the same time, her entire body redirecting every ounce of force into one, two, three punches, blood splattering from the cuts all over her and leaving a red mist as she moves through it. The first blow lands on the broken rib, making it worse, shoving it deeper, while the second and third land just above and beneath it, cracking the ribs around it as well and collapsing in half of its left side. The creature spasms even as its limbs are already retracting, arcing down into a four-sided attack that she can’t back out of.
So instead of back, she goes up, using the creature’s own lower legs as a platform to jump up and to its face. Its throat is protected by its own mouth, unhinged jaw more than blocking access to it with a gaping throat and rings of teeth, but that’s fine; she doesn’t need to hit its throat from the outside. She locks her legs around its shoulders, ignoring the cuts that make it through her skin (and pleasantly surprised by those that are stopped) and punches full force into the back of its throat.
The spirit beast rears back, choking from collapsed ribs and violently impacted throat, and she takes the opportunity to grab it by the eyeballs.
Her hand crushes a good dozen of them, grabbing the fleshy, gooey cluster of three hundred and sixty degree vision in a vice grip. The beast screams again, the screech even higher pitched than before, like a demented teakettle in the body of a multi-ton abomination of grown steel and hidden flesh, but she doesn’t care, using her arm alone to bring her entire body out of reach of the thing’s claws and balancing on it above its head.
She whispers to it then. Just a soft thing, a little exchange between foes. It feels right, where it never has before; this thing brought her joy. It cut her, and she broke it, and neither one expected much to be different, except which of them would win. She smiles at it, blissfully calm as it flails its disjointed whip-limbs and flutters its armored quills like wind chimes against each other, trying to find her.
“Thank you,” she says, wearing the calmest, most beatific smile she’s felt in years.
Then she flexes again, flinging herself straight up above its head, spinning in place, and bringing down an axe kick with every ounce of her body and its altered properties.
And then the clearing is silent, save for the sound of metal scraping on metal, slowly increasing in volume as the beast slips, totters, and falls.
She lays on the ground next to it, collapsed from the exertion. And she laughs, and laughs, and laughs. She just… lets herself be, for a while. There’s a corpse beside her, and everything hurts, her body cut into pieces and her reworked systems already showing signs of strain and a need for improvement, and she feels at peace with the world in a way she has not allowed herself, not earned, in months.
Then she hears Maen shriek, and shoots upright to see what’s wrong, every part of her working together to try and find what’s happening.
Maen is looking around at the woods, spinning in place, the look on her face absolutely terrified as she hyperventilates.
Shit. She’d forgotten about Maen.
“What’s wrong?” she yells. In a moment she’s back on her feet, the place where she stood left with a cloud of dirt as she bursts from there back to Maen’s side. “You’re alright, I killed it, it’s dead-”
“No!” Maen yells, eyes dilated to their very fullest, the reek of adrenaline and fear filling the air around her and flowing around them with the air currents. “It’s not- that’s only one. Can’t you- they’re right there!”
Raika looks around, falling deep into her senses, forcing panic and worry aside and dredging back up the readiness she used to be able to jump into so easily. Don’t worry about Maen, don’t worry about yourself; worry about your surroundings and what’s in them.
The state doesn’t come as easily anymore, not with so little overall combat recently and so much else cluttering up her mind, but it is still there, and she brings it back from the fight a moment ago, casting her senses out in every direction.
But she can’t smell anything out of place, not a whiff of Qi save Maen’s, panicked and agitated and flung about around her body in an untrained attempt to somehow protect herself with it. There are no cultivators, no Qi save the natural Qi all around, the wind through the trees, the scent of upturned earth and spilled blood and something vital and animalistic, the sound only of her heart and Maen’s heart and-
And another.
Quieter. It… blends into the background, somehow. She has to feel it, track her own heart and Maen’s mortal heart, and then- there. Synchronized with them. Kept nearly silent, but somehow… deeper.
And then… it clicks.
She searches for it. Recognizes it, even as Maen spasms with fear, writhing in her grip, straining in animal panic to get away as the scent of her Qi, sharp and animalistic and feral, screams out into the air.
It’s more than one heartbeat. Synchronized, precisely and perfectly, to the beat of their would-be prey.
One reverb, an echo. Then another. And another. And a third, and fourth, and fifth.
Raika grips Maen a little tighter, causing the young woman to flinch. “Maen,” she whispers, I need you to stay right. Here. You understand? Whatever you do, do not leave this spot.”
Maen whimpers, once. And then, in a fit of what must be tremendous focus, makes herself quiet, and still, more like prey than the scent of her would indicate.
“Good girl,” Raika whispers. And then, she takes one step back. Another.
Gradually, Maen’s heartbeat becomes more and more distinct. Gradually, the sound of the echoes flutters around only her own heart.
“Maen,” Raika whispers, “I need you to breathe for me, ok? I need you to stay very, very still, and do that thing you did back on the cliff, remember? I need you to hide, ok? Can you do that for me?”
Maen whimpers, once, eyes still violently wide, pupils dilated and wandering about. And then… she nods, and crouches down against the closest tree. Raika picks up Maen’s bag and puts it in front of the smaller woman as she kneels, obscuring most of her almost entirely. Amidst the roots, her scent fades, unnaturally but helpfully gone silent and replaced only ever so lightly by the smell of citrus.
Then Raika steps back, then further, then over to the corpse of the creature she just killed. She tears off one of its loosened jaws, and, circling all around with trophy held high, snarls at the woods.
“Well, come on then, you beautiful things,” she says, worried and afraid and pumping with something like joy but far less friendly. “We all have things to do, so let’s have some fun before we’re through, eh?”
And slowly, the woods all around come to life with the rustling of movement and the growling of beasts.