She breathes, deep and loud and long, and does her best not to think about their new visitors.

She keeps the politicking and masking back in the mess that is the poor little village. As much as she values her new perspective, as proud as she feels of the fact that she has the patience to utilize it, it’s still exhausting to exercise both constantly, especially so soon after the blood and ruinous violence that defined her so severely barely days ago. It took her the better part of a day, night, experienced medical intervention, and another day to be able to move without feeling overwhelmed, and adding to that the effort of being constantly controlling her face and dredging her mind for whatever bullcrap people think is “proper” or “polite” has left her a bit worn.

When Kaena emerged from the basement to greet Zhoulong’s group, she took Taran’s unspoken invitation to go out on patrol almost instantly.

It really was unspoken, too; whoever is in control, or fronting, or however their system may work, seems either willingly or entirely nonverbal. As Kaena took over introductions and assisting their new “visitors”, the rifle-wielder looked over at Raika, eyebrow cocked, face half-masked, and jerked their heads towards the woods. Frankly, that’s all she really needed. Any excuse to get the hell away from what they smelled like.

Though she did grab Maen first. No fucking way she’s leaving her alone with them, or with Zhoulong. Not ever.

They waited for about thirty minutes on the outskirts of town, just to be quite sure that there wouldn’t be any more blinding mad rushes of beasts crawling out of theoretically nowhere trying to get a taste. Raika isn’t worried, hasn’t been since she woke up; something feels… different. Beyond the fact that there’s been no mention of a beast tide assaulting the village so far, she also feels… like she knows exactly how empty the woods are. It’s no single sensation, no single idea or feeling, but somehow as she stares into the trees, her mind picturing vividly every shadow crawling with new teeth and claws, she just knows, deeper than the fear, that it is empty there. The instinct of trauma and a new, unnamed thing clash, and despite how she’s sure she will have screaming nightmares for years because of that week alone, she is even more sure of the fact that she is alone here.

Well. Except for the ghosts, Maen, and Taran.

A brief dialogue from Dink helps to quiet the former, and as for the latter… she knows where they are.

Which seems to start really annoying whoever is fronting in Taran.

They’ve been traveling ahead of her and Maen. Maen sticks close to her, her Qi repressed constantly, which Raika can’t help but appreciate not only for the good sense it demonstrates, but for how much it helps with the constant flood of new smells washing against her. The act of quieting her Qi seems to release some of its scent, ironically, but it’s still less overall than if Raika tried to drink deeper of the air around them and pick it up, so she’s still grateful. Further, it seems like the scent of Yuzu has started to fade as well, which bodes well for theoretical balance between the felinid woman’s scents.

Raika smiles, half-mask, half victorious grin, as their guide doubles back to check on them once more and finds them much further along than expected again.

Raika can’t smell them. Not unless they’re very close, which is strange considering how every time they move, the scent of alchemical concoctions and elixirs seems to waft from them, a dusty, chemical-and-herb smell that stings the back of her throat. They wander far, utterly silent even as they carry a rifle literally taller than they are without bumping even a single branch, and their scent fades fast, but… she can tell where they are. Always. She’s not sure how, yet, but… part of her wonders if she can’t run off and try to hunt a spirit beast, just to see what her new abilities might be or mean.

The third time they double back, they just give Raika a little huff, before turning away again.

“Is there something I can call you?” Raika asks them.

They cock their head, and then turn and raise an eyebrow at Maen.

“Wha- I didn’t know that she didn’t know!” Maen says with a blink and a bit of a blush. “Uh, okay, apologies. Raika, this is one of Taran’s Others. He mentioned that her name is Tracker before they switched, but… not much else, if I’m being honest. You know how he can be.”

Raika shrugs. A bit, maybe, but not that much. Nice dude. Full of baggage. Bit lazy. All in all, pretty relatable. “Well, Tracker,” she says, “it’s nice to meet you, I guess. One tap for yes, two for no, body language for the rest?”

Tracker seems a bit taken aback by the blase attitude, but recovers to their bored posture pretty quick. They tap their rifle butt against a nearby trunk, but then also just points at her head and nods or shakes. Cues for sound, cues for visual.

Raika smiles, more casually, and nods. “Sure. I’m not really sure what sort of set-up you have with Taran, but let me know if there’s anything you want me to annoy him about when he’s front and center. Hao Kai had plenty, so I figured I’d ask.”

Tracker throws her head back, laughing soundlessly and shaking their head. They make some sort of hand signals, a gesture-language maybe, then shakes her head again and just gives a shrug, before briefly standing upright and miming sipping tea, then making a “talk” motion with her free hand.

“He is a bit of a talker,” Raika chuckles, keeping responses vague but enjoying the ‘description’.

Tracker nods, smiles beneath their mask, and then hooks a thumb back over their shoulder, raising an eye as a question.

“We’ll be fine,” Raika says. “You scout ahead, I’ve got some stuff to catch up on about… all this.”

“And I’ll be happy to help,” Maen says, still nervous in the woods but enjoying the ambiance of the conversation. “Can’t exactly keep up, but anything I can do, I shall, ‘honored fellows’!”

Tracker lets out another soundless laugh, the slight sound of raspy air leaking from lungs less an indicator as the body language that accompanies it, and then gives a salute. She turns, hopping over a fallen log and taking off again, not moving all that fast but somehow seeming to step exactly where she needs to avoid any hazards and guarantee speedy travel through the woods.

“That… does bring up a question,” Maen says. “Why did you bring me? Is… is it a training thing? Because I’ve been working on that, and I’d rather you be able to focus out here. Though if my being here helps with any bad memories, I’m glad for it! Taurus brought you back already in the cocoon, but Yun Ka has that weird podium of hers, and I tracked you whenever I could, and it definitely looked… fraught. I’ve only heard of sensing a beast’s pressure and presence, not really their Qi, not without some powerful Qi senses or a higher cultivation, but I suppose the Empire has devices to track even this now.”

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

“Training is a good idea,” Raika interrupts. “I’ve noticed your results, and you don’t smell like medical herbs anymore. When it comes to Qi, I might be able to still smell it, but only very close, and only if you’re trying to hide it, ironically. Have you been cultivating at all?”

Maen nods, a bit embarrassed if the blush is anything to go by. “A bit,” she admits. “I’m… not in the habit, and it’s only been a few weeks. Busy ones, too.”

Raika snorts, trembling a bit at the way her lungs exhale more air than she’s taken in and the muscle-movements shift all sorts of things inside her. “I’m not some old master or sect cultivator, Maen. Cultivate at your pace. I only got you out of that mess and into this one because you asked me to. Your path is your own.”

She blinks. “Well, I, uh…” she gulps, then takes a breath. “Well, yes, I’ve heard that cultivators should have their own paths. But I still trust your advice, and you’ve at least done a lot more cultivation than I have. So, what’s next?”

“Well,” Raika says, scratching the back of their head, “I guess just that. Find an isolated room and trance for a while. It just takes some meditation, but usually after the first time you get it, your mind and body just start to shift together on instinct. At least that’s how it’s always been for me, and how it was explained to me is that cultivation and its pursuit are the truth of life itself, so we’re made to be able to cultivate by birth and life itself.”

Maen nods. “Well ok! That seems doable, I suppose. Does beg the question again, though, of why I’m here?”

“I…” she hesitates.

No. This is Maen. She needs someone to trust, or she’ll go fucking madder than she already is.

Perfect honesty, or none at all here.

“I didn’t want you near them,” she says, fighting to keep her voice at normal volume, to exude confidence and casual ease that she usually feels, and which has been missing since her evolution and its difficulties. “They smell… bad. I don’t know how to describe it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense out of my head sometimes, but Researcher Zhoulong and that Jun Vral both, and I can only assume the rest as well. I couldn’t get close enough, and I don’t want to until I have to.”

“Do you think they’re a direct danger?” Maen asks, quietly.

“Absolutely.”

“So we’re avoiding them?”

Raika hums a note. “Maybe. For now, at least. I needed out, though, and I am not leaving you alone with them if I can help it.”

At this, Maen grins the cheekiest grin Raika has seen from her. She leans over and pokes Raika in the bicep, which is basically head-height for her.

“Oooooh,” she whispers dramatically, “you like me.”

“Obviously,” Raika grins, this one free and feral. “You can thank Kaena for the help, but your tongue is pretty good at being convincing when it isn’t trying to be clever.”

Maen laughs at that, and Raika blinks, then grins wider.

It’s… nice. To know she can still joke.

And then something moves in the underbrush and absolutely ruins the moment.

There is a moment of severe disconnect, an instinct that feels out of place moving her entire body faster than she can even perceive what’s happening, even with her enhanced senses. The thing does not smell like anything at all, it has no heartbeat, it has an anti-presence even as it clouds itself in dirt. It has barely shifted, hardly even twitched, but even that much is enough to tell her that it is here and that it can move.

It is buried. Under the earth, maybe five or six feet deep, somehow beneath the roots (and she can feel a tree’s roots now, ain’t that something) and cloaked in the density of the ground and the scents of all that’s around it. She’s not sensitive enough to pick up a shape or details or much at all, but the ground moved as the thing trembled, and in that trembling she directs her attention towards it. And it shifts.

As she enters a stance, her entire body moving like a well-oiled machine in a way that makes her want to vomit and roar at once, it moves again.

“What is it?” Maen asks, Qi quieted to almost nothing, stepping away cautiously.

“Something moving underground,” Raika growls, quiet.

As she takes a step towards it, it explodes into motion.

In a moment of upheaval, a hill is spawned where there was flatly inclined earth before. Everything around her shifts and alters, Maen falling over backwards behind her but her own feet locked steady against the earth, muscles shifting, and sharpened points locking her against the ground as her joints shift and change her into something she can barely call a human stance at all. She balances on the balls of her feet, taloned claws digging into the soil, her balance perfect even as the ground roils, and then the hill practically detonates.

The thing that emerges does not look like a zombie. If it ever did, the roiling black stabbing through it in every direction rectifies that illusion. It is wrapped about a corpse, emerging from it like the whole emerges from the soil, but in the naked form of grey and necrotic flesh in front of her, she sees a hateful garden of black and metal.

What was once a person, a young man by the looks of him, has lost half its face to a metallic mask, lenses and strange apparatuses reminding Raika a bit of Yun Ka as they click and whirr. Where there used to be arms, there are now what look like art projects, black metal sharpened to razor edges and grinding against itself with a horrific screech as mimicries of hands and claws and joints shoot out towards her. Where before there was a human torso, now there is strangely sagging skin, jutting spikes reminiscent of a mouth or animal trap yawning open towards her as if to swallow her directly.

It is a horror. A nightmare. A desecration.

It is… slow.

She blinks at that. Or rather, she tries to.

She blinks, and a new set of eyelids shutter closed and open again, keeping her vision uninterrupted as she stares at the thing launching itself at her. It’s not frozen, no, but it seems like it’s moving at maybe three-quarters speed, every moment telegraphed.

She feels her heart, and sees it is sped up on its own, but without any pain or stress. New chambers beat there, blood flowing out far faster and more violently and brought back twice as quick. The tingling starts again, her Qi flowing through flesh and bone and organ, but it follows patterns now, flowing like jetsam in tandem with her blood and shivering apart into a feeling of raw energy and strength as she tenses muscles it flows past.

And then she steps forward and tears the abomination’s arms off at the shoulder.

It can’t stop her. It can’t move fast enough.

She grins then.

It staggers, face just as slack, the strange apparatus covering half its face flickering wildly and clicking like an infuriated insect as it darts between her and Maen, as if confused.

“I’ve fought stoats tougher than you,” Raika tells it, stepping forward again.

And then she takes its head in her hand, and simply… removes it.

Ah, the glories of power.

The broken toy of some horrifying underworld collapses, strings cut. She takes its legs off and opens its torso anyways, just to make sure, but the only piece of marble she finds is ensconced neatly in its head, the machinery it’s connected to still ticking away frantically.

“What the fuck is that!?” Maen yells, now seeming almost as annoyed as she is terrified.

Raika turns to her, smiling, reveling in power even as she feels a headache coming on from how much she had to focus just to keep steady during those few seconds. “Don’t know,” she says, holding the head like a trophy. “But if it’s all we have to deal with to catch this weapon-smith, we might have to come up with some excuse to stay, because this thing… wasn’t that tough.”

Maen narrows her eyes. “Oh yeah, honored one?” she asks. “Then why are you bleeding?”

Raika looks down, surprised. There, on her left arm, is a cut. She frowns, focusing on it, but… rather than simply closing or shifting as she commands, the cut remains. The wound sits there, its weight somehow… more? As she watches, the blood keeps leaking, even as she wills it to stop, wills her skin to close over it. In the end, she simply restricts the bloodflow heading to that part of her arm, slowing the bleeding but still not stopping it.

She turns to look at the thing she holds, then down at its ruined body. A glint of red against its ribcage, from when she tore it apart.

She remembers the smell of the cold at the end of things, and wonders.

Then she looks down at the hill it exploded from, suddenly far more eager to check and feel for any signs of another one, and is surprised once more.

“Maen?” she asks. “Any chance Yun Ka might have mentioned some kind of tunnels under the village?”

Maen tilts her head at the question. “No, why?”

Raika takes a step to her left as she feels Tracker coming closer to check on them, revealing the smooth, almost organic-looking tunnel exposed beneath ruptured soil.

“Because I think we should probably check for tunnels under the village.”