As they walk, Kaena listens.
It’s not a skill they’re particularly proud of cultivating. It’s traditional to those who raised them, traditional to those who made Kaena what they are now, and that alone is enough to make it borderline abhorrent to the well-dressed figure they have now become, but more than that, there’s an element of purpose to it that’s… frustrating.
Since the dawn of mankind and all the beasts that came before, one thing has always been true and available to those willing to pay the price to obtain it: people like to talk.
They particularly like to talk after they’ve fucked.
No one’s fault. It’s a natural behavior after that sort of conclusion. A release of pent up stress, an enjoyable moment, intimacy to at least some degree, it all wraps around to a much freer mindset after an encounter of the private sort. Even those who find themselves inevitably collapsed after the fact often tend to speak more freely come the next morning.
And if they don’t spill their secrets on that first touching moment, or during the next, or the one after, it just means that whoever is milking them for information needs to do a better job.
Kaena, much to their chagrin, is capable of doing an excellent job. In fact, they don’t even need to be in the room to find out what spills forth from one’s mouth after they’re done spilling from their loins. They just need to leave a drop of Qi behind.
They know how a normal cultivator’s body works. They have to know, intimately, precisely, to a medical degree. It’s part of what they had to learn to be allowed into the world, out of the Tree and the Garden beneath it. So they know precisely how abnormal the cultivation that they and all their cousins and brothers and sisters have been taught is.
Almost half of Kaena’s meridians don’t grow in the proper cycles inside one’s body. They grow out to the skin. As Kaena’s dantian fills, the scented, perfumed, altered Qi flows back out, taking that Qi signature out through their meridians, cultivating the body of a child of the Garden even as it is pumped out of their body.
Those who survive the first few months of coddling have a chance to try and control this movement. Those who manage to survive past the coddling get a chance to prove their control. Those who manage to control the Qi outside themselves as if it were in their bodies, rather than those who learn to block off those meridians, get to grow to be more.
Kaena can feel the flow of energy moving, leaving trails of it behind themself. It emanates from them, carrying nothing but a slight hint of calm, a slight touch of warmth and sweetness, a cultivated impression of comfort and indulgence, all in one, unnameable mix together. Old, old techniques, made to soften and cajole and, despite all Kaena’s best efforts, weaken and allow weakness, but as always… they make do.
Just a drop is enough. A thin, minute droplet, left behind, connected by long, thin trails of their aura, connected to their ears and eyes when it needs to be.
Kaena hears the soldiers laughing, talking about old victories, new hopes and dreams, their winnings and losses in betting, the strangeness (and sometimes attractiveness) of Kaena’s friends and allies. They hear the servants, unknown and unseen, barely there but an old, familiar comfort from the Garden and other palaces before, scurrying about through impossible corners and changing things from the minute changes in the auras of those they serve, changes that Kaena keeps far from their own aura. Kaena hears their team, the little kitten and her big beastie, whispering every night about fears and wants and hungers, the old corpse and his patchwork family in their homemade tomb, the young fool with her gadgets and machines, both the hidden and the known.
The other team, almost as interesting, just as hurt, though their pains sound much more uniform. The writhing snake-thing, so talented at pretending, at acting like a person. The little crawler, lush and vibrant, trapped inside a shell, unable to bloom. The hulking mass, long since eroded down to nothing but pain.
And, of course, their cousins. The twins. So much lesser, for all the arrogance the two of them bring.
Other voices come and go, nobles and merchants and officers and cultivators all following along to the beastie’s tune as she points them where she wants in a surprising turn of competence. Names to remember, words to whisper. Anyone who knows what Kaena is is on their guard, of course, and Kaena isn’t willing to offer the one thing that so reliably subverts that same guarded mentality… but Kaena’s not alone. That’s what the twins are for.
Whispered words, honeyed visits, dancing to the tune of those who have not earned the luxury of children from the Garden but who get to enjoy them anyways. All and more spiral and flow, day after day, as the tournament draws ever closer to a reality.
And it does not take long at all.
Kaena is many things, and has been many more. One thing they have never been, and do not ever intend to be, is incompetent.
Still, they’re surprised by how long it takes for the first of the twins to break.
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They’d been going strong for weeks, even after being cooped up in their room, kept still, kept quiet. Frankly, Kaena had started to wonder if they’d made a mistake in their estimation of the two, and wondered if perhaps they might make it the entire way through this particular plot before snapping.
Not quite the case, but a surprisingly grounded dream considering how long they lasted. It’s Kiri that snaps first, their sibling Kara almost matching them, sensing through their shared connection when their brother starts to snap. Luckily, it’s not during a crucial moment, lying in someone’s bed; a simple visit, draped over some rich idiot’s lap as the beastie and one of her toys makes another show, feeding their would-be benefactor grapes and wine. He manages to spasm once. He manages to inhale a bit more harshly than decorum would encourage, breaking the illusion of servile pleasure for less than an instant.
And then Kaena is there, and they hold his hands still. They keep him smiling. They keep him bantering, playful and whispered and full of suggestion, just like the Garden taught them all. And when an opportunity arises, when the woman in question makes a bad bet and loses a bit of face as a result, Kaena takes Kiri away.
They let go of their control only when he is safely enclosed in his room again, just in time to let him fall to pieces without breaking him entirely.
“Please,” he begs. “Please. I can’t anymore. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry, honored sibling. I never meant to disrespect you. I was a fool. Please. I- I can’t.”
Kaena, six rooms away and enjoying a very pleasant meal of pheasant and a light rose, smiles softly, and whispers in his ear.
“You wouldn’t want to be disloyal to our purpose, would you?” they ask the weeping courtesan, moving his hand to wipe away the tears and moving his feet so he sits upright in a chair before a mirror, staring in open horror and exhaustion at the voice behind his eyes. “Not like your big sibling. No, I couldn’t possibly be what you aspire to, with my string of ruined suitors. Surely you can do better. Surely you can stay together a little longer, hmm?”
He sobs again, low and quiet. “Please,” he whispers. “I beg of you, honored sibling. Please. No more. I am sorry. I didn’t mean to resist. I didn’t mean to disrespect you.”
“But you did!” Kaena says, their lips unmoving but a smile in their soul as they take another bite of their meal, letting their robe slip just a bit to tempt a glance from one of the nobles in the room. “You did intend it. And you succeeded. You lifted your hand in defiance to me first. You tried to side with Zhoulong, of all people. I know the garden cultivates slavish attitudes, but that was embarrassing. And then, when you knew you’d lost, when it was clear things had turned against you, you turned your aura to my allies. My packmates, for want of a better term. Knowing what our auras can do. And you accuse me of being a snake. At least I have a brain with more than a few thoughts, and walk on my own feet rather than crawl on my belly.”
“I- they did what they had to. They made us to-”
“They made us to suffer,” Kaena interrupts with Kiri’s own voicebox. “They made us to serve. Excellent news. You’re doing wonderfully at both.”
“Kara is going to break,” Kiri begs as they let him use his voice again. “I can feel her. I can feel what you’re- what they’re all doing with her. With me. We feel each other’s- it hurts, honored sibling. Please.”
Kaena laughs. In the central lounge, as nobles come and go, as soldiers mill about, Kaena laughs, and it is a soft, quiet thing, meant to tease and attract the ear even as their looks attract the eye, even as their belly roils in disgust at attracting anything at all from people (from things) like these. In the privacy of the room the twins reside in, as Kiri is puppeteered by his own aura, magnified and taken from him by his elder in the Garden, Kaena cackles, voice hoarse in hateful, hateful joy.
“Beg some more,” Kaena whispers with his voice. “There are some who will pay good money and good favors to hear you whimper.”
“What did we ever do?” Kiri asks, black lines running down his face from the tears and the eyeshadow beneath them. “We were disrespectful? I apologize. We threatened those we should not have? It is a mistake I shall rectify if I must die to do it. Please. Just let my sister go. Please.”
Kaena says nothing for a while. They finish their meal, getting up, enjoying and disgusted by the looks they pull their way as they leave. They walk for a while, until they find the right balcony, with the right view, just so as the sun begins to set towards the horizon past noon, and quickly shifts their aura, that a servant might bring a chair to them.
By this point, Kiri is breathing a bit easier, his sobs gone quiet. Kara is almost done, too. Nothing too strenuous today, not when the older woman she’s with might get worn out or embarrassed. Just enough to keep the client happy, and to showcase one of the benefits of doing what Kaena wants them to do and think, whether the woman knows it or not.
Kaena drinks a bit of the tea they summoned from the servants, smiling as they taste the exceptional lavender and mint combination. A bit unorthodox, but delicious.
“No,” Kiri’s voicebox says against his will.
“No, I’m going to use you until we’re done. Because that’s what we are, all us fruit from the Garden. We’re made to be eaten. We’re made to be enjoyed. We’re made to be planted until we grow and are harvested. And you… well. You’re a bit too much of a reminder of home, for me. Too willing to ignore what we are, what you did to others. What you tried to do to my friends. So when we’re finished here, you’ll get to rest. You’ll get to breathe. You’ll get to pretend you or your sister have any choice in whether or not you help me. And then we'll get moving again.”
He whimpers.
And, in a moment that Kaena can’t help but feel proud of, he drags up what he has left and faces the mirror, face just a drop more composed, and asks what he should have asked weeks ago.
“Is there anything I can do to make you stop hurting us?”
Kaena smiles, this time with their own lips, their own mouth. They laugh a little, softer now, private.
“Of course there is, Kiri dear,” they whisper. “You can make me. You can turn that pretty little self of yours into whatever weapon you can think of and drag yourself across my throat. You can rip and claw and tear yourself apart. You can be useless. You can be poisonous. Turn your soul to mercury and toxin, just to break free. Just like the Snake of the Garden, hmm?”
He doesn’t sob this time. He doesn’t crack again. But it’s a close thing.
Kaena smiles wider, softer. “Attaboy. Now clean yourself up. There’s more work to be done, if we’re going to make this little tournament thing work. I don’t know about you, but there’s ever so much I’d like to do outside this stuffy little palace, hmm?”