Chapter 132 - A Nice Little Vacation Is All (Patreon)

Alright, we're back. Took a day off for recovery yesterday, but the itch came back strong, lol.

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Raika trots through the darkness beneath the city, careful not to make much noise. She shifts padding out in favor of bone, keeping the clicking of claws muted even as she struggles a bit with balance from the change. The awareness that the Witch is watching, passively at least, is enough to leave her on edge; the plan was always to find her, and she still has an idea where her lair might be, but otherwise it’s hard to know how deep her power extends and how thorough her awareness is. While she may have been lying, the knowledge that her friends are trapped down here, under all this Qi pressure and isolated, pushes her onward. Members of an Imperial group (willing or not), surrounded by independent and sect-based cultivators while their ally went on a murderous spree… it’s not a very stable political platform, and while she doesn’t doubt Kaena will find a way to use it eventually, the distrust will likely be… difficult.

Her system cycles newly digested flesh, pushing her healing forward by hours in minutes. Most of the dead possessed little Qi, only what they held in their bodies and didn’t take with their souls on death, but even that much is enough to offer little boosts here and there. It brings up an issue, however, one that has been on Raika’s mind, in some small way, for a while.

She’s limited. Her body is her greatest tool, and the True Flame her blacksteel fangs and Qi can generate, while useful, is both dangerously capable of raging out of control in larger fights and costly to produce. Her ability to heal and transform herself has been invaluable, and there’s plenty more to be learned about how Qi is shaping her biology over time, but compared to most cultivators, she has no real artifacts, special techniques or unique powers. She needs more, to be complete.

Hmm. Uncharacteristic thought, that. Maybe some dividends from deeper within, maybe a new conclusion.

Either way, independently of everything else in the world, one thing is independently true; she needs to become stronger. Every single potential objective can be achieved more easily with a wider range of options and stronger ability to implement them, and at the moment, Raika has precious little of either. Unburdened from fear and guilt, at least for the moment, the solution is clear: the Mask sees the world around it, and decides the best way to accomplish whatever goals the whole eventually decides on is to gain more.

Add it to the list.

Priority one: find her allies.

Priority two: escape the current circumstances.

Priority three: grow stronger.

All three rather abstract, and all three varying in immediacy, but none of that matters as much as the goals in themselves. 

A hint of tangerine-scent wafts out of her perception, touching her and vanishing again.

She turns to it, eyes wide.

The Mask knows that this is not the priority. It shouldn’t bother with this. The Flesh could care less, fed and busy healing and changing as it is.

But the whole of her stirs, and she turns in the direction of the scent, and begins to trot.

It leads mostly in the direction of the footprints, but not entirely. She still proceeds forward down into the canyon, away from the rubble that marks where the city fell into the dark below, away from civilization and the false lie of safety.

It makes some sense, though. Further forward, in theory, should be the mines, where the cultivators likely will be able to make their way back to the surface plenty easily. More reliable than trying to climb up a sheer cliff face towards a collapsed stone ruin up above, more than likely unstable enough to collapse again, and smarter than staying in place and waiting for this impossible Qi presence to wear them down or summon creatures to consume them.

How in the Hells is the Witch doing this? Extending Qi pressure across, what, the entire gorge? Perhaps an Emperor or Titan realm cultivator could do such a thing, but to do it so easily, so comfortably, while still being in hiding? No cultivator would extend their aura to such an extent while trying to remain hidden, and no one at the level of power this should indicate would need to hide in the first place. Has she been cultivating in secret? Are her arts somehow more independent than “normal” cultivation?

The Mask ultimately deems it irrelevant, but the questions remain swimming behind her eyes.

The dark stretches on, deeper and deeper.

When she eventually finds the “bottom” of the valley, she finds herself on what seems to be an entirely new kind of stone. Whether the collapse of the arena brought a mountain’s worth of stone down with it, or there was always a sort of sharp divide between one height and the depths, it is a marked difference, one that feels… uncomfortable. The deeper stone of the Crag seems… grey, almost like compacted ash, or some sort of strangely pure granite. She places a hand / paw on it, gingerly stepping out onto the stone… and starts to feel cold.

Nothing like the Cold Sun’s stone, nothing so intense or blindingly full of its own Dao, but the stone feels hungry. It leeches away from her as she touches it, drawing her body heat down into the stone as she touches it. 

There is a confusion of footprints about the base of where the normal stone ends and the strange, hungry stone begins, but the scent, and the dusty footprints of two dozen cultivators, lead onward. 

So Raika follows.

In this new area, she finds that the walls of the cliffs are no longer sheer. This deep, there are several weird shapes that only with her enhanced eyesight can she see are the entrances to tunnels, strangely organic. It feels… like walking within a living thing, in a sense, the tendrils and veins of it extending out in either direction from the jagged scar that makes up the Crag proper. She can’t help but compare it to the corpse-smith’s mines, but where the tunnels there felt utilitarian, rushed and awkward but clearly dug out of the dirt, here the stone… almost looks like its porous, the size of said pores enough that she can picture two of herself abreast walking into them with space to spare.

Her ears, catching echoes off the armored spikes of her new skull, pick up ever-so-slight chittering sounds from one of the tunnels. Minutes pass, and nothing emerges, but the sound does not repeat itself.

She keeps walking.

How far did they go? Shouldn’t the sun be visible by now? Perhaps the parts of the Crag that apparently snaked beneath the city would expect to be covered, but by now surely she should be arriving to the visible edge of it, open to the sky above. Where is the light? Why is it so dark still, with no sign of widening out into the Crag proper?

Making a decision, Raika decides to pick up the pace, bony exterior clacking against the ground as she uses her newly-fed Flesh to move to a trot.

Still, the footsteps go ever onward, ever away from her.

How long was she unconscious? How far could the others have gotten?

Something isn’t right. The facts don’t line up.

Instinct, already on edge, concurs, and pushes her instead towards one of the entrances to the side.

She stops at it, curious what her body’s noticed, and sniffs the air carefully, letting her many noses flare open and drink deep of the air around her.

Hmm. A hint of Qi. Not the Witch’s, but not yet consumed by the walls of this place. She sniffs again, deeper, trying to recall…

The insectile cultivator. The one who made an impressive showing in the lower levels of the tournament, who she remembers trying to fight the divine spirit. It’s vague, barely anything, but now that she knows to look for it she notices small threads of his Qi moving to a half-dozen other tunnels through the space.

Finding no luck progressing blindly forward and curious about the new information, she sneaks into the tunnel, away from the open, broken space of the Crag.

She walks for what feels like perhaps an hour, trotting a little slower now that the tunnel carries echoes so much more clearly. Along the way the tunnel is featureless, its walls strangely smooth and rugged in equal measure, so much that Raika almost feels like she’s moving down a throat, but nothing jumps out, and the path doesn’t branch or have any other entrances. She feels the Witch’s Qi moving through the space, pulled through it like a heavy mist or fluid down a vein, but it seems inert and unaware for now.

At the end of an hour of continuous movement, she finds the source of the insectile cultivator’s Qi. The tunnel ends, abruptly, in a dead end, the very back portion of it more naturally stony than the strangely organic shape of the rest of the tunnel, and resting on the final wall is a small beetle.

It shines bright green, its wings like emeralds in the dark and obfuscating the darker colors of its legs and jaw, but it’s clearly a beetle. It’s even still alive, her hearing picking up a faint heartbeat and chittering from it from a ways back, and it glows to her senses with just a hint of its cultivator’s Qi.

But it’s fading. The walls of this place, the strangely living stone, drink from it in drops, pulling bit by bit, and she can see the little creature struggling to hold onto the wall, its little forelimbs waving weakly as it tries to maintain its grip.

The feeding is incredibly slow, so while she doesn’t know how long ago the bug was left, it might be at least several hours old here. Perhaps the others sent it, and its sibling-beasts, to explore other tunnels and report back to the original cultivator if any make for a viable path, but having found this tunnel’s end, the creature didn’t have enough strength to return.

The Mask smiles to itself, satisfied. Nothing like a useful compass when lost. But if it’s to be so, the creature must live.

Gently, she reaches a clawed hand out to the bug, gently lifting it from the wall. It chitters, its mandibles clicking together and legs waggling in defiance, but ultimately, it’s a big beetle that’s very, very tired. She brings it close, using her forelimbs (arms? Sort of) to hold it close to her face.

The beetle backs up against her fingers, wings flittering and mandible clacking weakly against her. She can imagine herself from its perspective, a massive, chitinous monstrosity, reeking of blood and combat and the very same stone all around it. Hardly anything human to recognize.

Something to address before she meets other cultivators, perhaps. The Mask enacts its namesake, drawing from the Flesh’s slight reserves from her latest meal away from healing and storage to begin to rearrange things. As the beetle watches, trembling slightly and turning about as if looking for some sort of escape, she opens her many-jawed snout open, wider, wider… to reveal a human face, shaped over and around the human lips she made to speak with before.

She says nothing. Neither does the beetle. 

It does poop out some pellets in her hand though.

She’s not as familiar with insect smells as she is with avian or mammalian, but she’s pretty sure she can smell the fear wafting from it. That’s no good; the more afraid it is, the more energy it will waste, and even now they’re both being fed on by the maze. Her body seems to generate enough body heat to keep its effects mostly at bay, but for a little bug with a fraction as much strength and drawing most of its energy from the fresh and spring-filled scent of its master…

A waste for it to die now. Would be a hassle to go down another tunnel to find another. She cups one hand around it, all six armored, clawed fingers making for an excellent cage, and brings a claw from her other hand around to her mouth.

With a small, deft little cut, her tongue opens just enough for a trickle of vibrant crimson to fall onto her palm and the bug within it.

Even here, in the dark, her blood is vibrant. Rather than turning the characteristic black it should when in the dark, it remains visibly red, as if the vitality in it is visible even in absolute lightlessness.

At first the bug retreats, pushing its back against the bars of its impromptu cage- but then it pauses. Another drop of blood lands, and it steps closer, the scent of iron, fuel and flesh all blending in the liquid before it. It laps at the droplets in her palm, and almost immediately she senses its health return, gaining enthusiasm the longer it drinks, its legs clicking faster and wings buzzing lightly. The scent of the bug’s own Qi, mostly buried under its master’s, grows a bit stronger, a sort of clicking hunger underlying the fresh and natural scent of its master. 

She nods, shaping her human face into something like a smile (she needs to practice it again, now she’s so disconnected from the emotion behind it). At the very least, the insect will live. 

Moving gently, she offers the bug her shoulder, and it happily chitters over onto her and out of her palm. It’s nice, making friends so much more easily. Much easier convincing something without much brain to speak of to like her.

Welp, that’s a thought for her inner self to deal with later. For now, she has a lead that might potentially help her sense the others, and a vague direction to follow- towards the source of the bug’s enhanced Qi. 

Moving faster now she knows the tunnel is empty, she makes sure to rearrange some of her spiky exterior to make a little nest for the bug where it won’t be blown away, and runs back out into the Crag.

And then she runs forward.

The trail of Qi leads onward, and she runs, and runs, and runs.

Oxygen explodes through multiple airways, pumping energy into a body adjusting to its new state, healing back from most of its wounds even as she continues to adjust as they move. The Flesh knows what feels best and what feeds their needs, and she reshapes herself along her instincts freely, giving herself permission to change more freely. The Crag begins to blur past, a comfortable burn settling in her body, the physical exercise helping the Qi in her to circulate through pumping blood…

It is a pleasant enough few hours.

It becomes a bit less so when the scent trail abruptly deviates to the side, towards a little alcove from which several of the organic-looking tunnels extend through. Even from far enough away that it’s barely visible, Raika’s senses pick up on the scent of spilled blood, steel and broken flesh mingling to cut past even the stillness of deep waters that pervades the world around her.