Raika sits across the table from the kid. Kaena and Maen both have their own table right alongside, with an absolute mountain of bags and packages sitting beside them and Pai Jin at the entrance to the balcony patio, standing guard like he’s in enemy territory, though his eyes tend to stay more on them than for any potential incoming dangers.
She expected the patrons of the Diving Duck (known for its famous fried skyduck!) to clear out, honestly, but she really overestimated their impact on that one. They strike a pretty picturesque group, and they’re drawing plenty of looks, but it’s not like Cragend doesn’t have its own sects, or like those same sects don’t come down off their mountains. Despite the changes the Empire has made, sects are still the lifeblood of the cities they inhabit, with the inter-city trade only supported by their presence, even if that trade is only possible due to the scarier authority keeping conflicts at a minimum.
The Roaring Skies and Ground Beneath Sea sects make their homes here, the two surviving sects who adapted to the Empire’s arrival to the third ring however many centuries ago. Both are popular, numerous, both have aspirants coming from across the third ring seeking to become part of their sects, and all of them possess the resources to change the city’s fortunes in a hundred ways. Artifacts, alchemical groups and supplies, and, of course, cultivators that can defend against spirit beast attacks and gain prestige within the Empire.
And of course, for every Inner Sect disciple who’s cultivated into power, there’s twenty or more Outer Sect disciples with less focus on them and money to burn in the genuinely fascinating city.
All that is to say that while they absolutely get some people shuffling away or staring, Raika’s country-bumpkin expectations get an interesting new experience as the owner of the little restaurant they found their way to rushed over with what seems like a genuine smile and not a hint of fear in his scent.
So. They got the balcony seats, which Kaena happily paid for, but they didn’t cause too much of a stir. It’s really for the best; she’s pretty sure that any more excitement and the kid may have passed out.
He (she thinks it’s a he, and it’s very rude to check even if you have magic senses) sort of just… sits there, shivering, in pain and in cold from the outside air.
“Kaena, we really could have used just a regular booth,” Maen says with a bit of a grimace. “It’s almost double the price to sit up here, and they’re clearly freezing.”
“Firstly, I don’t do regular seating. If I must sit at this lovely establishment, it shall be in what little luxury befits me in it. Secondly, my dearest kitten, they’re shivering because they’re hungry and beaten and probably terrified.”
“That part probably doesn’t help,” Raika nods.
“Do you have a name, kid?” she asks.
They meet her gaze for a second in surprise before their gaze darts back down and they sort of woozily try to bow.
“Yeah, alright, none of that. You’re built like a couple of sticks as it is, and those kids were not pulling punches, the little fucks.”
“And while we’re so very happy that the little one is still breathing, what exactly are they doing here?” Kaena asks. “I’m not exactly firm on the whole motherhood concept, but you don’t strike me as the type, beastie.”
Pai Jin seems to try and pay particularly close attention to the answer, his posture just as rigid and precise as ever but his attention felt.
“It’s a fair question,” she says. Then, she shrugs. “Probably gonna feed them, maybe buy them a healing pill or something, and then we head off. Depends mostly on them, I think, but they’re pretty overwhelmed, so we’re going to start with food.”
“Why?” Pai Jin asks.
She raises her eyebrow at him. “First thing you’ve said since I picked them up. You disapprove?”
“Depends on your intentions.”
She narrows her eyes. For a moment, Maen tenses, like she’s getting ready to fight or hide, and Raika blinks at that, looking over in surprise. Maen blinks back at her.
“You were making the face,” she says with a little shrug.
“What face?”
“The face. The one where you’re putting everything away, so it looks calm, but also like you’re going to start growing extra teeth.”
Raika cocks an eyebrow. “Ok, I’ll work on that, but don’t tell him.”
Maen blushes a bit, then shrugs apologetically.
“No harm, no foul,” Kaena says, clapping Maen on the shoulder and tousling her hair. “Besides, Pae Jin here’s one of the good ones. He’s got a stick so far up his ass it’s actually doing the work of a spine, wouldn’t you know.”
Pai Jin turns a brief glare at Kaena, but never lets his gaze waver from over Raika for too long.
She takes a breath, cracking her neck to one side.
“They give you a scroll about us when you get assigned here?” Raika asks.
He shakes his head.
She nods. Thinks. There’s something she respects on how protective he’s being towards the kid, and how closely he’s watching her behavior around him. It’s almost paternal, the way he doesn’t move but stays primed for any movement towards the kid. She doesn’t know much about him, but… circumstances dictate. And as signs of character go, between that and his Qi, she makes a decision.
“I was homeless and crippled for a year and change. You don’t survive on the streets that long, especially if you can’t really walk or find food, unless you make friends. I made a good one. He’s dead now. Sometimes I… pretend that he’d like something I’m doing. Call it a reminder. I’m certainly not bringing the kid with us, they’re thin as a rail. Anybody at the palace gets annoyed and they’d turn to literal jelly.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The kid quivers at that, their breath speeding up a bit as a mix of emotions, primarily anxiety, start to bubble up and stain their scent.
“Kid,” Raika says, turning her attention from Pai Jin entirely. “Breathe. Slower. I know it hurts. We’ll work on that. You’re going to be ok. No one here is going to hurt you, and we’ll be on our way soon.”
She’s not sure they even hear her, to be honest. Their breaths get a bit faster, their eyes wider, and she goes to reach out to touch them and they flinch and she has to pull back.
And then Pai Jin reaches over without words, without movement, and suddenly things change.
The world shifts, very slightly. It’s not like a Truth, not nearly so blunt or self-imposed; he stirs his cultivation, ash, earth and rainfall all touching the air around him, not in the drowning blast of scent that would be him flexing his cultivation but in a rich, nuanced way that leaves Raika a bit dizzy.
The world shifts, very slightly, towards a certain idea. The plates and cups on the table shift in place, the sounds coming from the open area behind and beneath them seem to grow more evenly distributed, until each table has achieved a sort of symmetry or-
Dink rings, very slightly, with the changing of the world, and she understands Balance.
She looks at him, and though she knows he can’t sense her properly, can’t feel or see her changes, he seems to pick up on at least some of the question and threat she’s holding.
“Dao of Balance,” he says, softly. “Minor application. Calmed them down.”
Raika does not need to look over to see that the kid is less panicked, that they’ve sort of stuttered in place with the sensation of a Dao exercised so closely, and that it maybe did something to even out their reaction. She also does not say anything, and keeps her mask on very tightly.
“All you strapping guards got Daos in the palace, or just you, Pai Jin?” Kaena asks with a laugh and a feather-light touch of Qi against Raika.
It does not stop her from keeping the sharp, serrated points of bone she’s building under her skin pointed at Pai Jin’s eyes and throat, but it does slow the reaction a bit.
Pai Jin looks a bit uncomfortable as the three of them stare at him, Kaena in a clear sort of warning look, Raika blank and artificially calm, Maen once again braced and ready to move. He clears his throat.
“Apologies. I… didn’t mean to disrupt as I have. I simply sought to calm our guest, not to disturb any of you.” He gives more of a nod than a bow, but it’s in that direction. “Apologies. I prefer not to see the young in distress.”
“A very understandable feeling, wouldn’t you say Raika?” Kaena asks.
Raika nods, and lets the mask’s smile come across as pleasant and relieved. “I’m glad we share common ground on that, Trooper Pai Jin,” she says. “But perhaps a bit of warning next time, so that we are not caught so off-guard and likely to react instinctively. Don’t you think?”
It is then that there is a slight shift in the smell behind her, which she really should be paying better attention to, and footsteps come up the stairs to the upper floors of the restaurant.
“Oh thank fuck the foods here,” Maen says, sighing explosively in relief.
Seeing as Kaena offered to fit the bill, Raika ordered two of everything, and it takes the servers no less than three trips to bring it all up.
“I hope it is to your satisfaction, honored cultivators!” the proprietor says as he bows, the last of the food arriving with him. “We thank you for your patronage, and hope it’s to your liking!”
“I look forward to finding out!” Kaena tells him with a laugh, “but keep the kitchens running, we like to eat and we’re celebrating a day on the town. And bring us a bottle or two of your finest wine when you have it, kind sir!”
The proprietor nods and hurries off, leaving the lot of them alone again, and Raika can’t help but let a smile slip out as the beaten and battered urchin stares, wide eyed, at the piles of food laid out in front of them.
A dozen steaming carrier bundles of dumplings, stacked high on top of each other. Three plates holding steaming braised fish as large as the kid’s head and covered in a gorgeous dark glaze that adds both acidity and sweetness to the tender flesh. Steaming bowls of noodles, poached and cooked eggs, bowls and bowls of rice, two entire racks of pork ribs and belly, scallion pancakes piled high, diced salmon. Tender whole chickens cooked in oil, in ovens, in pans, a plate full of oysters and clams and crabs and lobsters and crayfish from the nearby lake in all their multi-colored and oversized glory, and some sort of massive central plate with a foot and a half tall pile of some of the sweet underground roots and tubers that grow beneath the harsh soil, cooked until soft and crispy and shaped like little picks before being covered in salt, crispy flakes and some sort of thick and syrupy green sauce that smells of citrus and herbs.
Raika’s stomach growls loud enough that Pai Jin actually looks over in surprise, his arm going for his weapon before Maen breaks out laughing.
“Shush! I weigh like three times as much as you and it’s all muscle!”
“She’s right, Maen, don’t be mean!” Kaena says, their voice dripping an artificial concern. “You know Raika had a transformation recently. They’re half spirit beast now, they’ve got the appetite of a wild boar.”
“More like a gorgeous stag,” Raika huffs.
Before she reaches for any of the food for herself, she takes a bowl from amidst the mix, simple broth with a few floating pieces of tofu, two slices of thin chicken, and some scallions atop. She places it carefully in front of the kid, whose eyes, still owlishly wide, fixate on it immediately.
Raika puts a spoon next to him.
“My word, my blood and my name,” she says quietly. “Freely given, to be taken or denied as you will. No tricks. And eat slow. You look like you haven’t had a proper meal in days. Eat too quickly and you’ll puke.”
“I know,” the frail figure says quietly.
Raika goes to say something else, but… from the look of them, they probably really do.
“Pai Jin,” she says instead, “you want in on this? Because if not I’m about to eat everything on this table.”
He gives her a Look:™.
“As flattered as I am by your generosity, Cultivator Raika, I’m afraid I’m still on duty, and not at liberty to indulge myself so freely.”
She smiles back at him in her mask, enjoying poking at him. “Quite the pity, Honored Trooper. Your dedication to your work is a credit to your name and Imperial Soldiers everywhere.”
And before he has a chance to answer, she starts eating, which is apparently enough to stun him into silence as she does.
It is, she admits, a bit of a performance.
As a cultivator advances, the will of the world bends against their own, fed and altered by Qi as it becomes in their journey. They’re strong because they say they’re strong: even a skinny or obese cultivator can crush metal and break mountains. The rate at which the changes occur vary in intensity, growing exponentially as one advances up the realms, and, as always, directly influencing one’s Qi magnifies those qualities, or creates new ones if used in unique patterns. A member of the Divergent Paths can eat rocks as one might eat fried flakes.
Raika isn’t near that realm yet, not by far, but she’s a bit of an abnormality normally, and especially in her “body” cultivation.
So it is that she does not discriminate in what she eats.
All three fish, bones and all, are gone in about a minute flat. One, two, four bowls of noodles and spiced meat, three boiled eggs shell and all and another twelve in a dozen other ways, and that’s not even to speak of the horrors that are visited upon the dumplings.
She stops devouring long enough to give the kid a glare. “Eat,” she orders, and they go pale for a second before Pai Jin gives them a nod.
She grumbles at being trusted less than the damn soldier and icon of Imperial authority, but it’s hard to blame him. The soldier strikes a dashing figure of majesty in his ornate chivalric armor, silver and gold metals and pale white ceramics emulating the colors of the Empire, never mind the slight whirring and flickering glow of electricity and Qi that powers the mechanics, weapons and strength-enhancing properties of the half-machine armor.
As much as she hates a man in uniform, it’s the absolute figure of a young child’s dream of a hero.
The kid takes a sip of the broth, moving slowly and trembling, and takes their first sip.
She can’t help but smile at the sight as she eats her own meal.
“Uuuh… Raika?” Maen asks. “You, uh… ate one of the spoons, there.”
She blinks, looking down at the shattered pieces of ceramic in her hand. She feels around in her mouth for the crunchier bits.
“Huh. Actually doesn’t taste that bad.”