Chapter 141 - Come Into My Parlor (Patreon)

I am using writing for catharsis. Sue me. We'll see some pushback from Raika and some action again come next chappie, but for now... enjoy more realpolitik. The seeds planted with the sects and the old myths earlier come to harvest.

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The dark goes down forever. It feels like falling to an abyss, down the gullet of some vast, impossible thing. Rather appropriately, actually. The tunnel slowly gets wider, wider, and this time, the gravity of the space doesn’t shift, keeping them falling down, deeper, deeper. 

The rushing wind precludes conversation, but it doesn’t block sight. Shapefixit is clutched, panicked, to ‘Taran’s coat, pressed tight and seemingly very unhappy with the whole “falling” situation. The leather-clad undead, on the other hand, seems rather at ease, defaulting to a semi-familiar way of moving she recognizes, where only the most essential movements occur at all. It’s more than enough to keep them from hitting the walls of the tunnel at least, but Raika still shifts her fall to make sure she’s just under them, ready to try and cushion their landing.

She feels a change in the air pressure, a slight shift, and retracts as much of her new thorns and claws as she can. It’s a bit awkward, the new transformation harder to manage than just regular flesh and bone, but not impossible. The blacksteel is hers, part of her body in an intrinsic way, and her Truths work on it fine, if a bit slower than the rest of her.

She wonders at that. She’s not entirely sure that would be the case a few months prior, or even a few days ago. From how damaged her Truths were, it’s a bit surprising how quickly they’ve changed… but then, the manifestation of her Truths in the first place was a semi-spontaneous thing. Rather than meditating or trying to form them, they simply came to be, developing as she came to specific conclusions or realizations. As she is now… she is actively changing. She is actively empowering herself, operating under no one’s orders but her own, free of the parasite in her soul.

I Am Me, I Am Mine. I Can Change. Both incredibly versatile, and she knew she’d barely touched their depths. There’s more to explore, there, but a change in depth that allows her to now form and maintain integrity in contact with the vorpal edges of blacksteel is a big damn improvement.

The air shifts again, indicating proximity to the ground even with the dark ahead, and she expends what little Qi she has. Her body drinks deep of the flesh she ate from the fallen cultivators and what little remains of the hard-to-digest divine beast meat, and she reinforces and grows additional springs in her legs, thickening muscle groups and adding additional padding along her knees, thighs, and spine.

‘Taran’, noticing the changes, allows her to use two of her arms to secure them and Shapefixit to her torso, holding them tight. The whiplash is going to a bitch, but they’re cultivators- not immune to fall damage, but well on the way.

She lands, and despite her changes she still feels tendons tearing, the stone beneath her cracking and her hips and back screaming in pain for a few brief seconds. But they live.

“Well,” the dark whispers. “I admit. I’m disappointed. I had hoped you’d be alone. That we could have a nice, proper conversation, just us girls. Just us witchy things.”

The place they’re in is an absolute and perfect pitch dark, but Raika’s hearing should be letting her get a feel for the space. Instead, her instincts scream that the cavern is both massive and minute. The dark presses in, and despite her enhanced perception it sings to her that she is so deep, so far into the dark and the wet and the oppressive, writhing stone that it cannot be anything but close, all around.

‘Taran’ steps lightly down onto the stone… and promptly goes still. She sees them wink, very slightly, before they sort of slump, feigning weakness, conserving as much energy as possible. Shapefixit, on the other hand, stays clutched to Raika, doing everything in her power not to touch the stone all around.

“Still, I suppose I owe you some kind of reward for getting this far. Or surviving, really. Usually, when both the government and the beasts of the world come for you at once, it doesn’t end so neatly. I should know. Come closer. You can even bring your little pet, and I promise not to eat that corpse you brought unless it causes trouble. We should chat.”

Raika says nothing. The Mask can’t really track many facial features or smell any biology to help make predictions, and until something changes, silence is her best choice. She steps forward, into the dark. They’re on a sloping incline, as if the tunnel grew organically rather than forming from natural water erosion, and it leads her down into a wider area, where she can no longer see the walls. A few more steps, and she can no longer see the hill, either. 

The shadows part in front of her, very slightly. Not much, but enough to change the constant, sense-obscuring oblivion all around into sense-obscuring oblivion in all but one direction. With no other way forward, and the Witch apparently eager for confrontation, she decides to follow it, one arm holding Shapefixit close, the other three all slowly regrowing the sharpened spikes and razor blades of blacksteel she retracted.

“So quiet. I suppose it is a bit of an oppressive atmosphere. I had limits to work within, unfortunately. Wasn’t always so gloomy down here, but… ah, you don’t really know how the Craft works, do you? Well, come, come closer. Let me show you.”

A few steps later, and the shadows come apart at last.

They establish a perfectly circular perimeter, around which they are an oppressive, constant presence. At their center, however, are three small candles. They flicker, their wax worn down nearly to the ground, but they are lit nonetheless, and in their presence the shadows are magnified.

They illuminate very, very little. Maybe ten feet in each direction. A circle of light just barely enough to hold Raika, her cargo… and the Witch.

She sits, her legs crossed, in a meditative pose, beneath a pulsing, shuddering heart.

The Witch might once have looked like a normal woman. Thin, but not emaciated. Average height, average build, with olive skin and a simple black robe, almost like a toga, wrapping about her in a pattern imitating a dress and obscuring much of her lower body. Her nails are long, but neat, painted a dark black, and her face… well. That is where the normalcy ends.

She’s not ugly. Far from it, she holds a sort of timeless beauty, sharp cheekbones and a slender jawline matched by an almost cute nose. But the appeal is somewhat offset by the raw, gaping wounds where her eyes should be.

The holes bleed shadow rather than blood, but the wounds remain open. They weep black tears down her cheeks, letting them drip freely from her jaw and onto her collarbones, and flowing from there down, down into her robes and onto the floor in rivers of shadow around her. Her hair, too, shows signs of that same darkness, though in a very different way. It’s harder to see, so obscured is it by the dark, but her hair is not simply missing- she has been scalped. The exposed bone and flesh beneath where skin and hair can most often be found bleeds that same black, shadow-rich blood, and the ghosts of hair wind from it, traveling up where her tears fall down, such that a strange, glowing halo of black frames her head and the violence it shows.

And behind her is the heart.

It grows from out of the stone itself. Raised up on a platform, it must weigh over a hundred pounds, a massive, grotesque mimicry of a human organ, and at its base the grayish flesh transitions directly into the stone of its pedestal. It does not beat, but instead lies still, and in the seven visible valves Raika can see, shadowy fluid and black strings flow, in and out, writhing through it in place of a pulse.  As she stares at it, it shudders, as if attempting to move as it “should”, but the shadows writhe a bit faster, pulling taut in some places and thickening in others until the movement is still.

“Gorgeous, aren’t I?” the Witch asks, using her real voice. The same voice Raika heard weeks ago, standing over Maen as she slept. “Did you like my gift? I apologize, but I’m afraid I have no more to give. It has been a bit of a hectic time, and I have not had the chance to act as hostess in… well. A while.”

Shapefixit hasn’t moved, hasn’t breathed, but is staring at the heart with a trembling intensity that Raika can feel. She tightens her grip just a bit, a comfort and a way to keep the goblin pinned if she decides to leap towards it or something.

The Witch smiles. “It is good to see your kind still recognize a Core like this. I had feared you all driven out into the wilds, perhaps. Tell me, have your tribes been well, so far from home?”

Shapefixit says nothing. She just keeps staring at the strange organ, her own heart beating furiously with what smells like a mixture of panic and sadness.

The Witch tilts her head. “Am I truly so frightening, little one? I had hoped my bond to a Core might endear me to one of your kind, but perhaps not.”

“Abomination,” Shapefixit whispers, the sound like the hiss of escaping steam. “Corruptor.”

The Witch nods. “Definitely not, then. Fair enough. I don’t suppose I can convince you, at least, to take a seat? It’s ever so rare I get to speak face to face, as it were.”

Raika sits. It’s a little awkward with the new tail, but a few adjustments allow it easily enough.

The Witch smiles again, the look almost dazed, dreamy. “I’m glad. Been a long time, as I said. Old customs bind me, you see, and here, now, I find you my guest. I offer you bread from my table, and a place to rest your feet.”

Raika tilts her head at that. “I don’t see any bread.”

She actually flinches at that, tilting her head back as if struck. “Mmh. Indeed. I never said I was a particularly good host.”

“Why did you attack the arena?”

“Oh, Wolf. Always so delightfully to the point. I admire that about you. It does make it easier, not having to bother with the insults of politeness.

“I attacked the arena because had the beast and the Imperial been left unchecked much longer, that dome wouldn’t have held up. The devastation would have been far, far worse, especially if the Scion ended up involved in the struggle. Despite my current accommodations, I do actually quite like the city above us. There’s people in it I’d rather not see slaughtered.”

“All for altruism, then?” The Mask asks. “Pure hearted and noble pursuits alone, is it?”

“Hardly. I’m not one for altruism, but I admit I’ve been watching over this city a long, long time. I’m… shall we say invested.”

The Mask tilts her head. “No. That’s not all. There’s more.”

The Witch… shrugs. “I admit, there was, perhaps, a bit of spite involved. It’s rare to see a Scion outside its palace walls, speaking its lie-speech. A good opportunity to strike is rarely presented, and with how time can warp down here, I felt the chance to strike at them too rare to pass up. And besides… I managed to acquire a few advantages in the struggle.”

The shadows bend, warping all around until they pull back, further and further past the beating ‘Core’ and out towards the distant cavern walls… and exposing a lake. 

Without her enhanced vision, she would see nothing but a different flavor of dark, but with the flickering candlelight she glimpses the stillness of a pool of perfect black. It stretches on, and on, and on… and in it, she sees a spiraling maw, writhing, somehow failing to disturb the perfect stillness of the waters as it tries in vain to lift itself.

She sees hints, glimpses of light… but the shadows overtake them, oil-slick rainbow light blotted out by inky dark as the Not Tiger writhes and swims through the waters. There are strings there, and long, clumped clusters of hair, and even as she watches, as the beast rears up, clusters of eyes blink on its flanks, like abscesses growing from out of festering wounds.

And there, tied to its front, wrapped and distended and warped into its mouth and limbs and bones, is the body of Feng Gao. Robes torn, weeping, clusters of green eyes blossoming from flesh that looks half-necrotic.

Neither of them look whole, but while the beast still struggles, there is a shape forming around them, the darkness and the hair and the eyes slowly taking on the silhouette of flesh and joints, of organs and structure. They look for all the world like they’re being parasitized and infested and grown from, all at once.

“It’s been a long time since I had anything this powerful,” the Witch says, smiling softly. She turns her head and sightless pits to look out at the lake, as if admiring a newborn or source of soft joy. “I couldn’t have taken them had they been at their full strength. Wounded, weakened, in the midst of critical techniques… frankly, I’m still stunned I managed to grab them both.

“I think they’ll make wonderful experiments for something new of mine. It’s inspired by you, actually. I thought to myself, if my sisters and I could make Red Wolves as we were then, what can I make now? After so long down here? After so much… sacrifice?”

She turns back to Raika. “I’m sorry. I forget myself. Would you like to hear of me? Or simply of what’s to come.”

Raika hesitates, but the Mask decides to engage, leaning herself forward. The Flesh is… recoiling from the thing in the lake, a mixture of revulsion and awe and… a strange sort of attraction or hunger all melding together into an uneasy mess, but the Mask keeps them focused. The more they learn, the more opportunities they can be. She holds back the desire to vomit, or to grow, or to go into the lake and see what the twisted thing in it might taste like.

“Please, go ahead. I know little of witches, and you seem like you like to talk.”

The Witch shrugs unapologetically. “I so rarely get the chance to. Especially to one that, in another life, might have been a sister. Or who might still be.”

The Witch points to herself, letting her hand indicate the wounds on her head and face. “I am not a cultivator, as you know. I am a wielder of the Craft. As Above, So Below. And For All Things, A Cost. Not all who follow the Craft say it quite the same, have those exact Truths, but it is intrinsic to our beliefs, and how we change the world. Ours is a path of power through sacrifice. If you were to look in my soul, you’d see a cultivation perhaps in the Foundational realm, as you call it… but I do not use my soul or my body to wield power.

“I sacrificed my eyes. My hair. And my shadow. Each one is cut from me, turned into a repository for Truth, a reflection of Physiks, and a way to manifest energy into the world. We do not shape ourselves with the world, as a cultivator might; a practitioner of the Craft shapes the world through themselves, by sacrifice and slow assimilation. By sacrificing a part of myself, and rebinding it to me as a manifestation of the abstract, I can enforce it upon the world. I cast no shadow, now, but my shadows can reach far off places, speak in my voice, allow me to manifest through them or shape space with them. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the power, most often. Through what is sacrificed, the properties of one thing become that of another, until both, and the will that binds them, are the same.”

“All well and good,” the Mask says, “but if it’s so mighty, why are you down here in a cave?”

The Witch smiles. “Because I lost, Wolf. In the same wars that brought about things like you, I tried to defend this land. It is an old, old place, and before it was a city it was a beautiful lake of stillness, and a fertile, growing place. When the Empire came, tearing through beasts and sects, I stood against them… and lost.”

“And now you’re here.”

“And now I’m here. But in my defeat, I found this thing. This Heart. They are rare, nowadays. Your Empire harvested most of them, planted them in their Palaces to act as servile things of matter and architecture, but they were here before. Your little goblin friend could tell you. Cores like these were worshiped as gods once. It’s rumored they created species, made new life spawn wholesale to serve them.”

“Not to serve,” Shapefixit hisses, so quiet that Raika’s certain it’s meant for her, not the Witch. “To protect. To live alongside.”

The Witch smiles toothily at the whispers. “I have found that this one is better suited to serving me.”

She raises her hands, indicating the space around them. “It would have taken dozens of rituals, sacrifices, an entire order of practitioners to grant me power like this, once. I grow under the entire city. My shadows and my stillness reach far beyond the limits of the Empire’s borders and buildings.

“And now, with my Black Wolf,” she whispers, looking fondly back at the horrific amalgamation she is making of the divine beast and the cultivator, “I will at last be ready to strike back.”

“I thought you said you wanted to keep the city safe,” Raika says. “You plan to war against it?”

“Against its masters. Against those who hurt me, who unmade my siblings and relegated my kind into the dark and the forgotten places of history.”

“And what of its people?”

The Witch looks to her then, and for the first time, there is something like regret on her features. “Mmh. I’m… well. I’m not happy about it, Wolf. But enough of them will live. Most of them are mortals. They’d be dead in a few decades anyways. I will crack open the palace and all within it, and some will be lost. That is the way in war.”

“You claim you’re invested. That you’d rather not see them all slaughtered. Why do this? Was there no other way to fight, to try and resist or struggle, that doesn’t kill those trapped between forces they didn’t choose? Something more targeted, or long term?”

The Witch frowns. “This is long term. I’m looking at the big picture, Wolf. Their lives are not worth losing my chance to slaughter the Imperials of this place and drive them back. They will come back, it’s true, but by then I can establish a foothold, call to others, grow in new ways.

“And I’d like you to be part of that.

“I’ve felt how you chafe at your chains. How they’ve hurt you. We might perhaps still be strangers to each other, but I will not abide one so like my sisters to be a slave to them. Join me. I can break your bonds. We can find those they have taken from you and take them back. We can drive off the Empire from this place, make them bleed, make them have to come to the table to get this land’s resources back. And you can be free.”