It’s a different scent than before, but that’s not important.

This is the room that she shares with Maen. This is the room that she sleeps in, that should be just as warded as everywhere else, in the Imperial fucking Palace of the city. It shouldn’t have any scent she does not expect, much less the scent of someone similar to the last living person to threaten her. It certainly should not have any scent she couldn’t sense before she entered the room.

Her first thought is, characteristically, violence. Overwhelming, fast, and as efficient as she can make it, crushing the first stranger she sees, and damn the consequences so long as Maen is safe.

Then she smells citrus and sharpened claws and her breath leaves in a huff.

Maen is here, somewhere in the room. The cavernous fucking room full of dead angles and places to hide. She floods her mind, dropping the gates blocking off her senses and letting the information drown her for a moment as she tracks each and every sound in the room, every breath, every heartbeat.

There are four. Two are hers. One is Maen’s, recognizable instantly from how familiar it is. And the last one should not be here, and is standing over Maen’s sleeping form.

The instinct of violence is strangled within her as she forces her mind to focus, to drag systems fully drenched in adrenaline from her additional glands to be still, until the roiling of flesh and bone subsides and she is human again. At least on the surface. Beneath the skin, invisible to the naked eye, she keeps moving, keeps shifting, ribs adjusting, joints flexing and muscle fibers coiling, but on the surface she remains still, as superficially human as she can stomach.

Priority one is making sure Maen is alright. She can’t do that if a fight breaks out, not from here.

“I see the tales of your senses are not exaggerated,” says the figure above Maen.

Maen is on the bed, asleep, exhausted from cultivation, the scent of sweat and exertion and relief tangible in the air. There’s still a bit of sunlight left, but the day is ending, the tail end of the solar body beginning to dissolve against the horizon again, and in the shadow of that stands a woman and a staff.

She doesn’t look like a cultivator. She doesn’t smell like a cultivator. But the reek of foreign Qi in the room is almost overpowering, nonetheless.

It’s… strange. Raika can smell that same underground scent, the still waters beneath dark shadow, but the woman has her own, distinct impression, something… bright? It’s like the Qi is a cloud around her, altering the world with its weight but not actually born of her, even as it clouds her impression.

“I hadn’t realized there were tales about me,” Raika says, letting her natural voice through. It rumbles, like the air itself is vibrating in tune with it, and she can hear Dink reacting in its own way, letting a small ringing sound begin to fill the room. “I’m under the impression that I’m no one special, really.”

“No one special?” the woman asks, still cloaked in shadow, reeking of dark waters (and beneath them, something powerful and bright). “I have it on good authority that the three men you met were near the best I had to offer on the stealth front. Imagine my disappointment to hear you unveiled them seemingly without effort. To ask for a smoke, no less.”

She holds a hand out from the shadows, letting the light outline it. Said hand is the only part of her that seems real, that stands out from the shadows and gains any definition from them. Held between two fingers is a small rolled cigarette, the leaves crushed in it a bright blue.

“This one would find herself happy to share with you a gift, made to your liking.”

Raika stays still for a moment. Then, slowly, she walks across the room to take the cigarette.

The whole time she feels watched, like there’s eyes all around the room. She can see the arm, see the silhouette of the woman standing next to the bed, even smell her, but somehow the scent of the dark waters fills the room, blocking out any perfume, any sweat, any scent at all that she expects from something material, something human. There is just that bright, roiling thing at the center of her, and the scent of the alien energy that surrounds it.

Her skin is cool and vaguely dry as Raika takes the cigarette.

Immediately the woman rolls her wrist, snapping, the sound small but sharp and traveling up her long, slender fingers to ignite as a small flame at the end of it. White and gold-hued fire. Just like Raika’s.

Her biology pumping blood all through her, riling up clusters of her Qi, muscles locked and ready to leap and transform… Raika accepts the light, and takes a long, slow drag of the smoke.

It’s…

There’s a moment where it travels past her lips, slow and sinuous down her throat. It fills her lungs and dances in their strange altered space, like incense through a temple. The smoke is of a dark purple color, and it slithers and rolls as it floats from the tip of the cigarette, as it coils and dances out from her mouth. She can’t identify half of the things in it, but it smells like something floral, long dried, with a hint of decay and… meat? Like the scent of freshly cut steak, just touching against hot coals. On the exhale, it roils, like ash and deep, hidden things made to dance and roil and writhe.

It’s the best smoke she’s ever had, made all the better because for just a moment it overwhelms her other senses. For just a second, without needing to put up her walls or compartmentalize, all she can feel is the smoke, the heat contrasted with the coolness of the air, the taste and the scent. No hypersensitive skin, no dizzying visual detail, no overwhelming sound. Just her, and the smoke, and the moment of ignition between the two.

She takes a second pull, letting the smoke out in a long, slow breath. It’s heavy enough that it roils about her before drifting off, like a fog all her own before it dissipates.

“Shit,” she says. “That’s…”

The woman shrugs. “I’m good with plants.”

“Mmh.”

Raika takes another drag of the cigarette, watching as its tip lights up indigo-bright for a moment before fading again, standing out as the sun dips darker and darker against the edge of the world.

“Alright. You haven’t hurt my people. I’m not dead. What do you want?”

The woman smiles, teeth glinting in the shadows.

“I wanted to meet you, of course. It took a while to find out anything about you. Weeks, cooped up in here, behind all these wards. But you… you just smell too damn good to leave alone without at least saying hello. I wanted to know what something like your kind is doing working for people like these.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Define ‘my kind’, if you would.”

The smile grows wider.

“Well I’m not sure what the Imperials call you,” she admits, “but among my kind, those like you have a few names. Uruk-Bal. One of the Hungering. Black Sheep. One of the Big Red Wolves. That one’s my favorite, for obvious reasons. But for an Imperial… perhaps the term ‘Flesh Witch’ may be more obvious.”

“Obvious how?” Raika asks. “Witches are a myth.”

The woman’s smile fades. It is only now, halfway into their conversation, that Raika realizes, even with her enhanced sight, that she cannot see this woman’s eyes. The thought falls into place like it was always there, like something was keeping her from noticing that they were never there.

“Oh. Oh no, my love. No no no. You shouldn’t say such rude things to a guest.”

Raika smiles, letting her blacksteel maw emerge just enough to add weight to its meaning. She snorts. “So you’re a witch? Eager to snatch children away into the night, secretly old and dying? One of the hags of the wilds?” The smile widens, obsidian teeth overtaking the white and hissing slightly as they come into contact with the smoke. “I hear your kind whispered of alongside monsters long gone, stranger. If that is what you’re implying.”

All around, from every direction, from every shadow, from every possible angle and corner, There are eyes.

All black. All pupil, save for the slightest sliver of white around their edges. All looking at Raika very, very intently. She stays still as her senses tell her of the moisture of them, of the shape of them, of the sounds they make as they move, even as she maintains the facade of confidence and quiet danger. The eyes are real. If they’re an illusion, they’re one that even her enhanced senses can’t peek through.

And then they blink shut.

“It does you no favors to be rude, love,” the woman whispers.

“It does you no favors to threaten those under my protection,” Raika whispers right back.

They stare at each other in the growing dark for a little while, the cigarette burning trails of smoke between them.

The witch backs down first.

“I apologize. Didn’t mean to offend, but I’m hardly so simple I’d start this conversation without at least implied leverage. I’d never hurt the poor thing. Your kitten is safe.”

“So she is,” Raika agrees, taking another inhale of smoke. “I don’t think I have answers you’ll like, witch. Not really. Got crippled, got better, got caught. Whatever you’re looking for, it’s not here.”

The woman sighs. “And what a wonder that answer is, pet,” she whispers. “I dared to hope when I first caught your scent, but I couldn’t be sure. A Big Red Wolf I thought, off its leash, no master to guide its flesh, left to grow wild, and yet somehow impossibly tame. So strange, yet so familiar. They’ve used my kind before, taken inspiration, but one like you… no, I doubt they could make something like you if they tried. I doubt I could. It’s been so long since I’ve seen one like you out and about. Or sane, for that matter. Usually the pain drives you all mad.”

Raika says nothing, keeping the mask intact over her feelings. “Who says it didn’t?”

The woman laughs softly. “Who’s to say. Consider this an introduction, then. One abomination to another. The Empire doesn’t have a monopoly on all of us quite yet.”

“You keep speaking as if you know exactly who I am, what I’m turning into,” Raika interrupts. “How? I’ve never heard of a cripple regaining their cultivation like I have. It’s not even cultivation, not really. But you’re telling me the Empire has more like me?”

“No, love. Not like you. But my kind have made beauties of flesh and violence before, and your Empire has tried their hand at poor imitation. Never many, not when they can build their formations, weaponize their Dao and chain their devils, but a few. I can recognize the roots, even if the flower is a new bloom.”

The witch pauses, tilting the silhouette of her head as she looks at Raika. Eventually, she sighs.

“As a favor to you, for the nostalgic madness you’ve brought me, I’ll offer you a drop. Let it water your growth as it can, and guide you back to me, should you ever wish to grow more.”

“Cultivation, as you call it, is not the only way that a soul can change itself. The very Division they hold you in is proof of that. This world is vast, and there have been those who came before or outside the grip of the sects and the Empire. Some of us yet live, in the stranger places of the world and beyond the walls, looking in. In older times, my siblings and I would accept sacrifices, those willing to forsake themselves to aid us, and would feed them Anima and blood, honey and milk, wine and sharp stones. Those who survived would find their flesh changed, their forms reflecting the blood they were fed, their relation to Anima forever crippled so they could only gain more through their sharpened teeth and aching bellies. In madness and chaos, drowned by sensation and hunger, they made for beautiful things, our Red Wolves, eager to rip and tear. Some lived to be titans, nigh unkillable, but… most never made it past the battles they were bred for.

Though… only some ever relearned speech. It is rare to see the wool of a Black Sheep on something that still looks so much like a person. I can’t help but wonder how it is that you’ve managed this. I’d almost think that one of my siblings made you, but I can't smell their signatures in you. You’re something… else. But you should be more than careful, nonetheless.”

“Why?” Raika asks.

“Because your kind all go mad,” the woman whispers. “Sometimes in ways most useful, other times in ways where a leash and chain is all that stands between your end and your continued utility.”

She pauses, and slowly a string of those eyes emerge again, like a spiral around her head, leading down into more blinking, black eyes in place of a face. She smiles again.

“I see you’re already on the way there. Getting closer. The overwhelming sensation, the whispering of voices not your own. The mind of mortals can’t survive long in conditions of abject inhumanity, not without changing, and the most common change is to break beneath the voices of the consumed and the weight of the world on your skin, in your eyes, down your throat.”

Raika takes a long, slow pull of the cigarette and says nothing.

“If it’s any consolation, you’re doing better than most. Perhaps its a facet of… whatever you are, or however you’ve done this. You’ve yet to leave this place to hunt among my people, and the Palace hasn’t taken more than its usual share of lives from the city. I’m not sure which is more unbelievable- that you’re not eating, or that you are and are somehow still capable of thought. Either way, I can see why the Empire might take an interest. You’re distinct from most of the abominations they’ve spawned by aping our methods. You impress me, to be sane now, even as the world scrapes against you.”

“These others,” Raika interrupts; “you say I’m different than they were. How? If you are a witch, whatever that means, you’re the first I’ve met, and I had to practically kill myself to even start turning to this.”

She laughs, a soft sound that skitters through the shadows on many legs. “And aren’t you marvelous for that fact, dear. The roots are there, the potential connection, but you’re right. You’re not quite the rabid dog those teeth might indicate, hmm? I’ve yet to meet a witch proud enough or good enough to make something like you.”

“So I’m better, then?” Raika asks, genuinely curious.

The witch laughs. “So brash! So forward! Perhaps. Who’s to say? Every journey is singular, every pathway and evolution unique. My kind once made hungry, hateful things from flesh above all, and here you stand, your flesh on the path to transcendence above all else you hold, born from methods outside the Imperial merit.”

“But I think that’s enough for a drop, dear. Perhaps the change will destroy and unmake you like it did the Wolves of my family, perhaps you will find a way to master or go beyond it. An embrace of flesh and horror has never been particularly common, even now that the Empire has so mastered both for convenience and power. If you ever get a chance, I’d love to see you again, as host this time rather than guest. Perhaps you could come for a visit. It would do these old bones good to see if you make it. Look for She Beneath Still Waters, and the name will guide you to me. Until then… it was nice to meet you, love. You brought me back some memories I’m happy to have found again.”

She curtsies, every movement precise, dipping low, her form impossible to define but graceful nonetheless.

“Best of luck with your growth, not-Wolf. May your hunger ever serve you, and may you find your way free of the paths placed before you, full of pitfalls and bad ends.”

The shadows begin to coil, to move, even as she senses nothing from the woman’s own Qi. She steps forward, her hand shooting out fast enough to blur even to her vision, trying to grab something, trying to demand answers, solutions-

She’s gone. Like she was never there. The Qi scent she brought with her vanishes slower, dissipating, but without even an ounce of Qi, or any runes she could see, the woman just… vanishes. There’s… there’s a ripple, not dissimilar to what Raika feels when she sees another use their Truth, but it’s subtly different, quieter and more organic almost.

And then she is alone. Maen, softly snoring in bed, doesn’t even stir. In the cold and dark of night finally fallen, there’s a moment where it feels like it could almost have been a dream.

Except for the smell of rotting, living smoke, and a small metallic case, open to a dozen cigarettes, sitting on her nightstand.

“Fuck.”