Jun Vral holds himself very still.

It takes almost a full thirty seconds before he shifts or moves at all. When he does, it’s to alter himself, his human self, or the illusion of it, breaking as several serpents become visible, shifting from where they bled together so perfectly as to appear to be a whole human. Their eyes swivel, looking up and down the hallway, at the room behind him.

Raika makes very, very sure that any changes to pressure that might indicate a servant fade, fast. After a while, they usually learn that she doesn’t want them around at a particular time. They seem to be active still, though their definition of active is as faint as they are, but it still works, for now, to keep them relatively unbothered.

“Can he tell you to do things?” Jun Vral asks.

She scoffs. “He can tell me to do whatever the fuck he wants, doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”

“It’s true!” Zhoulong says from behind him, smiling wide. “I’ve tried it all! Your murderous friend here is particularly stubborn, Jun Vral my dearest. Can you imagine if I’d gotten to her before that fucking beastblood? Oh, the fun times we could have had, Raika my dear. What a subject to miss out on.”

“Is he… here?” Jun Vral asks.

“He is,” she nods. “Usually shows his face when it would annoy me most, or when he thinks he’d be entertained. Can we speak somewhere more private?”

Jun Vral doesn’t move, and she catches a whiff of him when she asks him that question.

He’s afraid. Just the thought of Zhoulong, of what he might potentially do through Raika, has him as still as an animal caught in the light, in the eyes of a predator.

She exhales, slowly, and takes a step back and away from the door.

Jun Vral watches her. Zhoulong smiles over his shoulder, half his face in shadow, so it’s just the smile and his bright eyes hovering next to his favorite toy.

“Jun Vral,” Raika says, with as much sincerity and ceremony as she can; “I slew your would-be master once, and I’d happily do so again. Some piece of him lingers, and I want to know if you knew of any way he could have caused such a thing. There’s every chance this is just a… quirk of my own body, somehow, but I need to know. I mean you no harm. I’d rather talk about this somewhere where the guards won’t immediately hear what we say is all.”

Every single one of the serpents that make the man are dreadfully still, and for a moment, she’s not sure if he intends to retreat or bare his fangs and strike.

Then, breathing out a sigh of his own, he nods once, and steps back from the door, letting it swing further open and inviting her in.

She moves a bit slower than she would normally, making sure that every part of her is visible, even as she shifts her biology back towards her “baseline”, humanizing her frame. As he steps back, keeping her in view, she closes the door slowly and gently behind herself, making sure there is no lock or anything that might impede his ability to leave, and then walks diagonally, towards the center of the room.

Like every room in this fucking place, it’s expansive and expensive, and she has to pause and stare down some slightly-formed accretions that may-or-may-not be more of the spirits forming. There’s an amphitheater-like section, several tiers of stairs / seats lain out with cushions leading into a sort of firepit or hookah table, with the actual bed, closets and amenities further in the room, against the back wall and on an upraised section that one has to walk up to. To the left of the main lounge-pit is the expansive, arched doorway leading to the personal bath, large enough to be worthy of a public bathhouse. She heads down into the pit, seating herself a bit below ground level.

Slowly, his Qi filling the room, flowing in tight, controlled bands but still agitated, Jun Vral seats himself at the edge of the pit, a bit above her eye level, even with her height.

Zhoulong, of course, dramatically drapes himself over Jun Vral’s lap, before slumping and falling at his feet, tongue rolling out as he winks theatrically at Raika.

“How does he manifest?” Jun Vral begins. “Are you sure it’s him, and not some… errant guilt of yours, shaping an illusion?”

She shrugs. “I’m not, but I’m not guilty over killing him, and I’d do it again if I needed to. Ask me something only he’d know, maybe?”

Jun Vral sighs, long and slow, but nods. “Alright. The name of the village I’m from. It would be in his notes somewhere, but I doubt you’ve had access.”

She looks at the specter, raising an eyebrow. Jun Vral shifts, and moves a few feet over from where he was sitting as he follows her line of sight.

“And why should I help you?” Zhoulong asks. “I mean honestly. Isn’t it more fun to drive you apart? Make him think you mad? You’ve hardly done me any favors, Raika the Bloody. Why should I assist you in any endeavor, much less reveal secrets of mine?”

“He’s talking around it and being difficult about how sad he is that I killed his ass,” Raika tells Jun Vral.

Jun Vral lets out a rather short lived laugh, surprised at himself if his expression is any indication, but Zhoulong sits up.

“Oh fuck you, freak. You think you have any right to that claim? Sneaking in like a worm, like- like a snake! The worst kind, the metaphorical type. You didn’t kill me, you snatched a bite at the last second. If I’d been at my regular, even half of that, I’d have sliced you apart!”

“Yeah, see, now he’s moaning about how much he would have won by if only I hadn’t gotten him beat half to death and finished him off.”

Jun Vral laughs again, though this time there’s a note of it being a bit forced. “Are you sure this isn’t… I don’t know, some kind of haunting, or specter?”

She shrugs. “You tell me. He’s not answering questions, but he also hasn’t made anything move or done anything other than be a bit annoying. He didn’t show up until we got here, so it was a quiet few weeks at first, but now the bastard will not shut up whenever he’s around.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Jun Vral leans forward, putting a hand to his chin. “How often is he around?” he asks.

“Not often. It was once or twice a day at first, but now he only really shows up if he finds something interesting. Usually to add commentary. I think it takes some kind of effort to remain, or to reappear, and he’s not particularly able or willing to do so very often.”

“Well, that’s something. When I saw the body, it had a… it had the same sort of wound that the cold constructs we faced could deliver, but shaped like a bite. Did you…”

“Yes, I ate a piece.”

Jun Vral leans forward at this, looking at her rather intently. “How did he taste?”

She pauses, leaning back a bit. But…

“He tasted like veal, mostly. Tough, but… like it was marbled with flavor. Like the feeling of a good night’s sleep, and a passionate revelation upon waking, all wrapped in this sort of… crisp, bright sharpness and clarity. It was… I don’t just want to say good, but it was so, so good, and there’s not a lot I can do to describe the details. It didn’t taste like anything I’ve ever eaten, before or since, no matter how sharp my palate gets. I don’t know if it would’ve been the same for you. I hope so. If I’d known, I’d have tried to take a piece to share.”

He blinks at that. “You’re serious?”

She nods and shrugs.

“I don’t really lie anymore. Not sure why,it just feels… unnecessary. And a bit off. If anyone deserved a piece of him it was you. The twins wouldn’t like it, and I don’t know if that Project 13 fellow… eats? So it would be just you and Shapefixit, I suppose.”

Jun Vral laughs, and this time it is something authentic and true and bright.

“Truly! Truly us freaks of the world must stick together, if we’re to make anything of it.”

She laughs back. “I don’t exactly have anyone else I can tell about how it feels to eat someone. If you show interest, I see no reason not to speak on it.”

He shakes his head, running a hand over his bald scalp. “Ah, what a strange joy it is, to be told of the taste of that man. May he rot in hell, or in your stomach, where he belongs and where you have earned him.”

He sighs, sitting forward and drawing his Qi back into himself at last.

“I don’t know how he might haunt you, necessarily. He never spoke of any technique that might grant sentience or longevity after death, not to me at least, and he tended to speak a lot around me. When you’re not his toy or his enemy, you’re just… part of the background, and even I wasn’t his plaything all the time. I assume, then, that it’s something of yours. You devoured a piece of him, and somehow, he’s been able to hold himself together enough to speak and appear to you. He may not have entered the Divergent Paths yet, but he was close, so perhaps that explains it somewhat.”

“He didn’t have any abilities that might explain this?” she asks. “No way to project his consciousness, or exist as a fragment?”

Jun Vral shrugs, graceful and polite to Raika’s casual. “Not that I knew. If he visited my mind, he tended to do so wholesale, and he always seemed to still when entering the mind of another in view of me. Yes, he had mental techniques like that, but the Empire has hundreds of those, for communication, connection, and more. Although… was he doing anything with his Qi at any point?”

She nods. “Yes. Something like… making it into threads, sort of, and using it to try and hold himself together. I bit through it pretty easily, and it only managed to hold back the black steel for a few seconds, tops.”

“Maybe that’s it, then. Mayhaps he’s used the Qi you consumed to hold together what little of him lies in the piece you ate.”

Zhoulong is suddenly behind Jun Vral again, only now helping her realize that he’d vanished in the intervening moments of their conversation as her focus had shifted.

“Loose lips sink even the hardiest of boats, Jun Vral, my delightful,” he says, low and quiet. “Best to keep quiet, now.”

Jun Vral, of course, hears nothing, but there is a moment where she sees one of the snakes-that-are-him shiver near where Zhoulong stands over him.

“Seems like you might have hit the nail on the head, Jun Vral,” Raika says with a smile. “He’s trying to bluster now. Not doing a very good job of it, either.”

Jun Vral smiles, a cold, dead thing. He does not look relieved, or particularly vindictive. He just seems… tired.

“A pity to hear he can do even that,” he murmurs. “Do me a favor, yes? Next time you kill someone like him, remember to chew before you swallow.”

She huffs. “Not bad advice. We’ll see how well it works here. I suppose getting any sort of proof isn’t that high of a priority for you?”

He shakes his head. “Either the bastard is dead and rotting, or he’s dead and struggling not to be digested. Considering your… state of being, or state of cultivation, I doubt conventional methods of possession would work even if whatever your specter might be had access to them. No, he’s dead either way, and if he truly cannot control you as you claim and I hope, then I don’t care to speak on him ever again if I can.”

She nods, and smiles. “Glad that’s cleared up, then. I suppose my stomach still needs some time to get rid of a meal so dense.”

“You could always kill and eat someone else,” he shrugs. “See if you can’t get a wider… ugh, dataset.”

“Chances are I will at some point,” she admits. “I doubt he’ll be the last person we ever find that needs killing.”

Jun Vral gives her a smile a bit more alive than before, but just as sharp. “No. I doubt he will be.”

She gets up, bows to him, and makes her exit shortly.

“Well that was all well and good,” Zhoulong snarls as she sneaks back down the halls, “but I’m hardly just going to sit here while you digest me, if you even can. I don’t doubt I’ll have little difficulty managing to scramble that mind of yours properly, hmm? Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to add some changes, tweak it while you sleep.”

She smiles a bit, not turning to look at the invisible figure.

“What’s so funny, cripple?”

She turns to him, still smiling, wide and shark-like to his now scowling face.

“I don’t think you can, meat,” she whispers. “You forget. I Am Me, And I Am Mine.”

The world trembles.

Zhoulong quakes.

Cracks appear and disappear, his body stretching like taffy as if blown away from her back down the hall, halfway between the illusion of solidity and the idea of smoke. He does not scream, but it’s not for lack of trying: for a moment, she can’t hear him at all, not even the faint whisper of breathe she sometimes hears him inhale.

And then he snaps back, mouth set into a snarl, fists clenched, eyes closed and focused and his entire body beading with sweat. She thinks, for just a moment, that she can sense something squirming in her belly, and the sensation is a good one.

“See?” she says. “I don’t think there’s much left to you at all. You’re a part of me, or you’re rapidly going that way, and I’m happy to let you suffer in the meantime.”

Zhoulong squints, snarls, grimaces, just as feral as he was under Taurus’ influence… and then calms. And smiles a sinister, slimy grin of his own.

“Maybe so,” he whispers, “but we’ll see how long that Truth of yours lasts. I can feel it in here, wearing away at me, but it’s a dull thing, isn’t it? Made for reshaping flesh and little else. How can it be sharp, left to rust and crack under pressure, under the leash around your neck?”

He leans in close, face inches from hers, illusionary breath hot against her face. “You think you’ve won, but we’ll see how long that Truth of yours lasts, chafing as it is. You’re one good order you don’t want to follow away from snapping it in half, I should think. I have time yet, and there’s plenty for me to do.”

“Who knows? Maybe I’ll spend some time looking for your citrusy little friend in here. I’m sure I can pick up where Researcher Boriah left off.”

She grabs at him, her entire body tense, growing a solid six inches of height as her frame dumps adrenaline and pumps muscle and claws and-

But he’s gone, and she is alone, a haunted machine of flesh and self-loathing trapped in a palace with almost as many ghosts as she has.

It is only when she makes it to her room and smells that same deep, underground-lake scent of the market that she manages to turn herself back into something resembling a human.