Mask on. Now.

She smiles, soft and polite even as she feels liquified flesh and bone dripping from her arms, letting the wounds decorating them paint themselves in blood across the floor rather than holding onto them. She bows at the waist, the height of manners and politeness as she forces her flesh to change back to its more solid state, to begin reforming and regrowing, ignoring the slight rumbling of her stomach and internals as she draws on them to provide.

Hmm. Something for later.

“So good to see you here, honored cultivator,” she says, standing upright, smile plastered and held. “I’m afraid that we’ve managed to overcome this challenge without assistance, but I’m certain there shall be more opportunities to work together soon.”

“No doubt,” Jun Vral says, smiling almost as well as she does. “Especially with those lovely tunnels you seem to have uncovered. An unexplored avenue of attack, I assume?”

“We baited an ambush earlier,” Taran rasps, only lying a little. “Little did they know we had such a valued member of our team on hand to flush them out.”

Raika nods at him, though she keeps the movement short and polite. An acknowledgement, but not a sign of closeness; the more apart she seems, the more she can keep herself as a target. Taran isn’t… quite a friend, per se, but it’s instinct at this point to set herself as the focal point, and if she exaggerates the difference between them, the enemy might try to exploit a weakness that isn’t quite there.

And Jun Vral is the enemy.

Nothing that smells like he does can be right. And no one that can make such a sickening Qi signature come to be can be trusted as an ally. Whether or not he knows it, whether or not he acts like it, he reeks of Zhoulong.

And Zhoulong reeks of something that scares her.

She’s been through enough shit that at this point, she’s pretty sure that something that scares her is what might charitably be called “bad fucking news”.

“It’s always positive seeing fellow members of a Research expedition so proactive,” Jun Vral smiles. “I usually have plenty of trouble getting my traveling companions to do anything outside their duties at all, much less enact such well-crafted plans.”

“Hardly anything ornate,” Taran rasps, taking the lead in a move that Raika feels grateful for in spite of the distance she’s trying to impose. “Luck and strength, at the end. Real cultivator-ey of us, if I do say so myself.”

Jun Vral tilts their head at that, flesh undulating into scales and back again as they move. “You don’t consider yourself a cultivator, then?” he asks, seeming genuinely curious.

Taran throws his head back and laughs. “No,” he says, “no I do not. To cultivate is to pursue strength and a greater self, and I aim for neither.”

Jun Vral nods at that, not pushing, turning instead to Raika. “And you, honored sister?” he asks. “Such tremendous transformative strength, especially coming from someone who lost their cultivation entirely for so long. Most don’t last more than a month in the state you existed in for… years, was it?”

“Only a year and a half, perhaps,” she says, saccharine sweet. “Hardly anything in the span of the life of a true cultivator, no?”

He chuckles, the sound coming out in a hissing pattern. “I wasn’t aware you were a hidden old monster, honored sister,” he smiles.

“Hardly,” she agrees, “Though I hear it’s quite rude to reference a woman’s age in such casual conversation, no matter how young she may be. And I’m afraid you find me at a disadvantage, honored brother; you seem far more familiar with me than I am with you.”

He bows at that, a short one. “I meant no offense, honored sister,” he says, face serious when he comes back upright. “But please, if I can rectify that issue, I would love to do so. Ask what you will of me, and I shall endeavor to answer truthfully and entirely.”

Behind her mask, she frowns. He’s being frustratingly sincere, or at least doing an exceptional job at faking it. As deeply annoying as the polite back-and-forth might be, though, it’s a good opportunity to gather information.

“I thank you for the kind opportunity,” she says, flexing away some of the itch of burrowing Qi and regrowing flesh as the process starts to form new wrists. She makes sure to keep Taran in the corner of her eye, even as she moves towards central stage. “I’ve only just joined the ‘expedition’ of Researcher Boriah, I admit, and I have not had much opportunity to hear much about the wider workings of the Division of Altered Cultivation. How has your experience been with Honored Researcher Zhoulong?”

He smiles, and she doesn’t believe for an instant that it’s sincere. “Oh, entirely beneficial. I would not be the man I am today without the kind ministrations and attention of Researcher Zhoulong, much less capable of traveling as freely as I do. My cultivation path allows me little margin for error, and without his guidance I’m sure I’d be lost.”

“And I should note, the topic of your honored self has been a minor spot of fixation in Researcher Zhoulong since he heard of you. I truly meant no ambush, approaching armed with hearsay and piecemeal information. Most of the Division’s expeditions meet only back in Central, not out here in the wilds, much less the wilds of the third ring. I hear most Researchers head out to the fourth, nowadays; more isolated subcultures out there, and more possibility of deviation from standard norms, as Researcher Zhoulong might say.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I can hardly see why I’d be so interesting,” she says. “While my transformation is a source of personal pride to be sure, it can hardly be compared to some of the wonders I’ve already seen.”

Jun Vral smiles at that, his fangs prominent and the expression seemingly genuine. If he’s acting, she can’t see it with her eyes. “You flatter us, honored sister, but sell yourself too short. The tales of recovering from the crippling of a Dantian are myths at best, and I’ve yet to hear one that doesn’t involve the healing of said Dantian, yet here you are, free of any meridians or distinct Qi signature, regrowing whole limbs before my very eyes.”

Her freshly-formed knuckles crack a bit as she flexes them unconsciously, the tic of her awareness visible thanks to the lack of skin to hide the movement behind.

She doesn’t like him examining her.

He’s not as bad as Kaena, not by a long shot, but she can still smell him, even now, a whiff coming through every time his flesh undulates, every time the illusion of a body turns to the illusion of a crawling pile of snakes. He smells like a scaled, slithering thing, branching off itself, pinned to a cutting board and peeled open, organs still squirming inside yet exposed to the air. She doesn’t doubt everything she says will in some way shape or form end up before Zhoulong to be dissected piece by piece.

Newly formed fingers grasp Dink, still hanging about her neck, and lightly tap it against her sternum.

Breathe, it tells her. Calm.

“Hardly too special an ability,” she says with a smile. “I doubt it’s not one in your skillset.”

He laughs. “To a degree,” he nods. “But I would be remiss if I didn’t showcase one such ability now. Better to start seeking information sooner than later, no?”

And then he starts to break apart.

One arm first, then the next, inverting her regeneration from moments prior, his limbs dissolve entirely. The illusion of a bundle of snakes is proven more than optical trickery as dozens, then hundreds of snakes all fall from his sleeves, slithering over each other and spreading out in a radius about the forest, the majority heading straight for the exposed tunnel before them even as the other two move off towards the other locations of conflict. Taran hisses, the sound deeply unnatural as corpse-like throat tries to imitate living flesh at a higher volume than normal, but the snakes give both of them at least a bit of a radius, keeping them clear of scaly flesh.

Though she does see a few of them taking bits of her.

Dead or wounded flesh, left discarded and tossed to the dirt in favor of cleaner regeneration, quickly finds itself swallowed by serpentine jaws, before she has much chance at all to speak. Truth be told, she’s not sure what to say, except that it seems impolite?

“I apologize,” Jun Vral says. “My selves can tend to get a bit hungry, and Qi signature or not the Qi around you is rich. I hope you don’t mind.”

She does mind. She minds a lot. In normal circumstances, she might say that he can eat her flesh if he wants, but he didn’t even ask. Nevermind that, the fact that he’s an enemy remains, and that anything he takes might be used against her somehow, or worse, taken to be examined.

She wears the mask instead. No fuss just yet. Call it a loss, a minor outplaying, and try for a victory later.

“Not at all,” she says, smiling. “I’m happy to assist a member of a fellow expedition, and I was hardly making much use of it anyways. Do be careful of the blades in those tunnels, will you? Their cuts tend to stick around.”

He politely nods, and she is already bowing. “We’ll leave you to your work, honored brother, and eagerly await your findings,” she says.

“Yeah,” Taran rasps. “What she said.”

And he walks out of the clearing first, giving her the perfect exit in pursuit of him, Jun Vral waving at them as they leave.

Let him deal with the cuts that grow. If he can digest them, good for him, and if not, well… he didn’t ask.

Taran looks at her as they walk.

“You’re really going all in on this act, aren’tcha?” he asks.

She smiles, keeping the mask on, very aware of the possibility of some scaled spies still around them. Between her ability to hear exquisitely well and the scent of vivisection and scales, it’s not hard to track them, and, to his credit, whether it’s arrogance or politeness, Jun Vral has only left a few near them.

“I don’t know what you mean, senior brother,” she says politely, face cooler, her smile now toothless entirely. “I simply meant to offer our new arrival the respect accorded to a peer. It is hardly his fault we are in such a situation.”

He huffs. “You give Hao Kai a run for his money, I’ll give you that. You could do better, though. Your eyes flicker a lot more when you’re concentrating on keeping your face like that.”

She sighs a bit. Fucking snake spies, listening in.

“I appreciate your advice, senior brother,” she says. “And offer my praise to senior Hao Kai for providing such a thorough education in proper manners and self-control for you to neglect.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “The worst part, I like you like this almost as much as I like you being more honest.”

He pauses then, looking her over as they head over towards where they left Maen, splitting the difference between where they last saw her and the village she was heading to.

“Kaena give you those robes?” he asks.

Raika says nothing for a while.

Eventually, she nods.

“Hmm,” Taran grunts. “Glad to hear.”

They go a bit further in silence, Raika straining to pick up Maen’s scent (she really has gotten better at muffling it, seriously).

“I’m sorry about the kid,” Taran says.

Raika almost stumbles. Altered musculature and a forced awareness of her every reaction and body keeps her upright, but even with all her newfound control and alien morphology, there’s still a hitch in her step, just for a moment.

“I know it’s… he’s done some shit I’m not happy about, some shit I still want to rip his guts out for, but he’s done me a lot of good he didn’t need to. I don’t know the details, Kaena told me a bit, but they only heard a bit themselves. I’m just… sorry that it went down like it did.”

They walk in silence a bit further.

He goes to say something, then shuts his mouth hard enough to click his teeth and nods.

She begins to smell hints of citrus past the blood and snakes in the air. She breathes it in, slow and quiet.

Dink, says the tuning fork on a particularly bumpy step against her sternum.

“Perhaps we can speak on it later, when there is a bit less to perturb our conversation,” she says. “The trees have ears, after all.”

Whether Taran took the hint for what it was or just came to the healthy conclusion that he should probably stay shut the fuck up, he doesn’t say anything, just nods.

She breathes deeper still. Forces herself to inhale the phantom scent of tangerines coming from right behind her.

Maybe he’s genuine. Maybe not. But learning what Taran knows, learning more about Taurus, maybe sowing some dissent… it’s an opportunity, and if she can handle being torn apart by beasts, she can handle the thought of a conversation. She has to.

She refuses to look behind her, though. He is not there.

He is not there.

But she is being judged, nonetheless.