Taurus and Zhoulong arrive together, flying fast enough to be a blur in flagrant displays of Qi use. The competition, then, is still going strong. Alongside them, “the twins” and Kaena are pulled along, floating behind them and held aloft purely by the Qi of the two masters they accompany.
It’s easy to forget sometimes, Raika thinks, that if not for the Empire and how intense things are in the inner ring, Taurus would be easily at the level of a sect patriarch, or at least an elder. For all her improvements, he stands high above her in terms of power.
Good.
They both land, the grass in a radius around them flattening and a wave of their scents washing past her as they touch the ground once more. Kaena is barely half a step faster but manages to bow to them just before the twins do, quiet thanks emerging from their lips just before either of the two lighter-skinned variants can keep up.
Raika smiles. This might work out well after all.
Pleasantries out of the way (and Taurus clearly impatient about being fawned over, even as Zhoulong preens very slightly at the thanks he gets), goes to step forward- and is interrupted as Zhoulong steps forward instead.
She is very glad she’s gotten more comfortable with her mask, because that almost makes her laugh. It’s just so… childish. The whole thing, really, this little competition, and she wonders if all Researcher meetings are like this, or just the ones with Zhoulong in them. She hopes it’s the latter. It would be nice if he were, in all respects, more an exception than a norm. It would make what happens next easier to sell, too.
Zhoulong steps forward, arms as wide as his smile as he beams at them. “Expertly done!” He laughs. “I see no major wounds, nothing requiring maintenance, and you won me a bet, my loves! Ten whole minutes before the ol stick in the mud over here thought you’d call for us!”
“I suppose not all of us spend time on such frivolous exercise as to gain experience with them, honored brother,” Taurus says, smooth as silk and showing no signs of frustration with whatever he may have lost.
“Nonsense, my friend, it’s all in one’s instincts!” He says with a smile. “A crane flying doesn’t need to practice finding the wind, it simply does so, and here, I have found the wind beneath my wings, the jingling to my purse, the favor to my ledger. Truly, life is a fine thing, is it not?”
Shapefixit, the twins, and Jun Vral all speak simultaneously, bowing their heads and saying a polite “yes, master”.
“See, this is why you never make it up in the world, Boriah!” he smiles and says. “The only one of your darlings that gives proper obesiance is the one trained from birth for it. You really need to enforce more discipline.”
“I’d prefer you enforce some discipline of your own,” Taurus replies, his eyes getting a bit more dangerous as he stares down at Zhoulong. “Especially coming from a meddler of your status. Pray tell, honored brother, when was the last time you delivered something truly unique back to the Grandmaster?”
Zhoulong laughs, putting up his hands in a placating gesture. “All right, all right. No need to get so ornery about it, junior brother. Just giving some advice. Surely no need to be so on edge, we’re all friends here, aren’t we?”
“So!” he says, turning back to the group. “Where’s the target?”
Raika says nothing. Jun Vral, Taran, Shapefixit and 13 (who maybe can’t speak) all say nothing.
She walks past him, silently, and bows to Taurus, keeping her head low as she holds out the satchel containing the documents from below.
She usually can’t sense Qi pressure except as slight alterations.
Zhoulong lets go of his restraint, and she feels like she can’t breathe.
The smell alone is one thing, but for the first time since the elders of the Purple Flame sect, she can feel herself have to struggle to stay upright and awake. The world feels like it bends towards Zhoulong, like he’s suddenly heavier than anything else in the area, and by his presence the world transforms. She can feel her muscles suddenly straining, her lungs aching, the jelly of her eyes trembling. Taran, the twins, Shapefixit and Jun Vral all fall to their knees immediately, and the smell of blood leaking from eyes and ears makes itself clear to her; only Kaena, Taurus, and 13 remain upright.
And her. She does not fall. She holds the bag out to Taurus.
“What,” Zhoulong says, deathly quiet, “is the meaning of this, Boriah?”
Taurus turns to him. Looks back down to Raika. Looks back up to Zhoulong.
She smells a very small hint of alchemy, hears Taran rustle and make a small ‘clink’ noise amidst the writhing and the sounds of labored breathing.
Whatever signal he’s sent, it’s enough. Taurus’s pressure awakens, a wave of Qi emerging from him, unrestrained and pressing down on the world by its sheer presence, and for a moment, things even out. The pressure seems to equalize, maybe slightly favoring Taurus in terms of sheer metaphysical weight he exudes. It’s a masterful technique, not just exerting his essence wildly, but shaping it like an umbrella of sorts in an area around him, leaving a sort of balanced pressure in the center and protecting those at its edges. She’s heard that great masters can use their presence this way, the weight of Qi unrestrained yet somehow perfectly controlled, but she’s never seen it.
Then she feels herself start to bleed internally, and she realizes that for all the clashing pressures might have equalized somehow, their new state is not necessarily survivable to her, trapped in the middle.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Kaena takes the bag from her, and she immediately falls to one knee, letting it seem like she can’t withstand the pressure while also making sure she’s maintaining some degree of posture.
“I’m curious myself,” he rumbles, quietly. “But it may be easier for us to find out if my subordinates can speak, don’t you think honored brother?”
For a moment, she suffers, feeling the blood start to pool and forcing it by will alone to circulate properly, keeping herself awake and aware a while longer.
And then, Zhoulong reels back his presence like it was never there, the scent of sharp wind and high peaks overwhelming the space entirely until Taurus pulls his aura back a moment later.
She can’t help but gasp, letting some blood dribble out through nose and mouth as she breathes again. She does not have time to notice the others, not with the leftover sensation of the last few moments still overwhelming her.
“Well?” Taurus asks, letting Kaena sift through the bag’s contents. “Why is it you’ve disrespected a Researcher of a Division of the Empire so, Raika?”
She breathes, coughs, once, tasting her own blood, flavored something like iron and copper but richer too, now. Funny. She hadn’t noticed that before.
She can feel the danger. The knife’s edge. The risk, the potential harm here. She can’t help but smile.
She deserves it, and she’s so, so close to dancing across the razor well enough that someone who deserves worse gets their due.
“I am afraid I can no longer consider the honored Researcher Zhoulong an honorable member of the Division, or the Empire,” she says, keeping her head bowed and her hair over her face so they can’t see her grinning.
She smells scalpels and glass and blood as Zhoulong goes to say something, to take a step forward, but a rumble and a look from Taurus are enough to shut him up.
“Explain,” he says simply.
“Honored Researcher Boriah,” she says, “Upon arriving in the depths of the hidden compound and confronting the one responsible for the deaths of mortal servants of the Empire, the assault on Paleblossom city, and the production of black metal from an interaction with sunstone, we found him long dead, having attempted a union or transformation with a powerful relic. It is unknown if his madness overtook him, or if something went wrong in a procedure, but he discovered an artifact in the form of a skull shaped from sunstone, and tried to replace his own with it, to lethal results. We bring to you here, as an Honored Researcher of the Division of Altered Cultivation, his notes and proof of his madness.”
“And proof of his collusion with Researcher Zhoulong to incite the ongoing turmoil, on the false belief he would be accepted freely back into the fold if he only showed results.”
“WHAT?!” Zhoulong roars, and before he can unleash his presence again Taurus holds up one hand.
“Honored Brother,” Taurus says, as quietly as his frame can manage. “If you attempt to use your aura to harm or intimidate my subjects again, I will have no choice but to assume these allegations are true, and you’re hoping to hide evidence.”
Zhoulong says nothing for a moment, but his scent does fade.
“I will have your post for this,” he says, smiling again, his own mask firm. “I’ll have your head, ‘Honored brother’. You cannot believe this slander, and to promote it like this is a farce.”
Taurus, with all the same poise and self control he’s shown to Zhoulong so far, ignores him.
“Continue,” he says to Raika.
“It’s all there, in the writings” she says, tilting her head up and briefly making intense, painful eye contact with Kaena, hoping to piggyback on whatever signal Taran managed to get across to get them to play along. “You can see the pages on top, they detail how he spoke about returning, how he was promised that if he was useful, he’d be allowed back into the Divisions. How he wanted to work with the Honored Altered Cultivation Division. He claimed it was told to him by a superior.”
All true. The notes had been there, in black and white. She ate the papers about the sunstone, about the black metal, about the most “interesting” of the experiments he had planned, all the better to paint the corpse-smith as incompetent, mad and lucky, or perhaps supported by a benefactor. The ones she kept, of course, were his ramblings and his notes on already-completed experiments. Including the parts where, just like he told her, he was desperate and half-mad trying to get back into a Division’s good graces.
“This alone is not enough for me to doubt the integrity of the mighty and honorable Researcher Zhoulong,” she continues, “but for the aid of Jun Vral, one of his subjects and direct subordinates. He confirmed that several of the examination, vivisection and alteration tables in the main lair of the compound possessed near identical traits to those of Researcher Zhoulong’s work. Including tools he assures he has not seen in any of the many visits that Researcher Zhoulong pays to other Researchers. These facts, together, clearly indicate that Researcher Zhoulong involved himself in these criminal and tortuous acts, without approval from the Division, which in turn is what allowed him to arrive at our location so soon after we arrived. He knew ahead of time.”
Moment of truth.
If Zhoulong can pull information out of Jun Vral directly from here, then the plan’s fucked. If, as she assumes, he needs time, tools, and Qi, then the plan only breaks when Jun Vral or one of the others does. It would have been less risky to just say she noticed Jun Vral hide some kind of reaction, or even that she smelled Zhoulong’s Qi somehow, but either lie, while carrying less risk for them all, had a much lower chance of working.
She feels / scents Zhoulong’s Qi begin to stir, but Taurus faces him then, silently. He pulls back his aura, hands up in mock surrender, smiling.
Again. Moment of truth. They fail here, or if he doesn’t react as she predicted, then it’ll be torture for Jun Vral and the rest of Zhoulong’s “subjects”, and he’ll have some kind of evidence that she’s lying.
“That’s idiotic,” Zhoulong scoffs. “You know I have friends back at Central, and you’re notoriously good with filing your travel plans, Boriah. All it took was a few questions. And believe me, I have enough projects of my own to consider!”
“And yet, you came here, senior brother,” Taurus rumbles. “To interfere with mine. Never mind the fact that most of your projects have been with you decades longer than most Researchers. Even those with a family as prestigious as yours, and as many decades-old papers published as you, have to pursue achievements sometime.”
“And that’s not to speak on your famous lack of discipline,” he finishes with a smile.
Zhoulong is very quiet now.
“Careful, ‘brother’,” he says. “I have centuries of experience over you. I’ve been working with the Altered Cultivation Division a hundred years longer. I’ve been here since the start. It would do you well not to make certain implications.”
Taurus snorts. It is a beautiful, marvelous, wonderful sound to her ears.
And, this close to him, she can still smell his Qi. And how the thing that lives inside of it seems to grow in presence, its hooves sharp, its horns bright and bloody.
“You’ve been here a century, it’s true,” he says, smiling. “But I’d hardly say you’re a starting figure, a century old member of a two hundred year Division, who didn’t join it beforehand in the centuries of life you brag to me about. It’s a small distance in the life of a cultivator, it’s true, but not so small one as young as you or I wouldn’t notice. Unless one were a braggart.”
“And that whole time,” he says, grinning with that massive, almost alien smile, “and still just a Researcher.”
She has him. He’s on board, trusting her lie, using it himself. Now she just-
Zhoulong, his aura like a blanket, like a lead weight, like a suffocating gas and bend in gravity, launches himself at Taurus, the edge of his hand reeking like the perfect, clean edge of a scalpel.
Click.
Last piece in place.
Plan worked. Now, to make sure it doesn’t kill everybody here.