Chapter 209 - Off To War We Go (Patreon)

Hello! We're back! Chapter 210 coming soon, and by 211 I'm planning to have shit kicking off properly. Let's boogie babyyyy~

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They do, in fact, force her through a second round of testing, and a cursory examination by a medical officer when she performs just as outrageously as the first time. Between her curse-skin blocking Qi and the fact she has no “true” cultivation to speak of, she mostly just annoys him, too.

By the time she gets out, she can tell that Li Shu and Jin have been waiting a while. Not as long as she expected, going by the scents in the room and their heart-rates, but still a while.

Jin smiles wide at seeing her, hopping up to his feet. “Finally! I thought you got into some kind of fight with how long that took.”

“No, they just made me do double the work because I was too impressive for them to comprehend. Should be all clear now.”

“Did they give you a merit badge?” Li Shu asks.

Raika holds up the little plaque they gave her, its edges trimmed with gold and with her name on it. “I’m hoping you impressed the Hells out of them, or they’re probably going to transfer me someplace directly, and we do not need that sort of headache.”

Li Shu grins and holds up a badge of her own, equally shiny and with her name carved into the front. 

“The main examiner’s eyes almost bugged out of his head when he saw my needles. I thought he was going to kick me out right then for not using metal, but when I told him it was an artifact set and showed off a bit, he was practically tripping over himself trying to recruit me. Honestly the most fun I’ve had in a while.”

Raika shrugs. “I’ve told you before, but your telekinesis is anything but normal. Most people don’t use telekinesis without a technique until the Core Formation realm.”

She snorts. “Oh yeah, and you would know. Don’t tell me you ever managed it.”

“Me? No, absolutely not. Even now I’m a dud when it comes to understanding techniques.”

This time Li Shu frowns, and Raika actually feels her scent shift into notes of genuine displeasure. “Bullshit you are. You’re a lot more intelligent than you give yourself credit for. If not for your insights, there are things I might never have even realized.”

Raika rolls her eyes, but she makes sure to do so only politely. “Improvements don’t change original truths. I’m not very smart, I just try really hard. And, admittedly, sometimes I fuck up badly enough that I end up learning important lessons.”

“...alright. That’s better, at least.”

“Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence,” Jin says, eyebrow raised.

She frowns, flicking the kid on the nose. “You know better. Talent might be something you’re born with, but hard work is something anyone can do. I might not be all that talented, but I’ve done things that the talented cultivator’s I’ve known would say simply can’t be done.”

Jin frowns, massaging his nose. She leaves him to stew on it for a while. If nothing else, the kid’s own “talents” lie more in how hard he works at things than at his natural cultivation. Luck and hard work define him, as much as they do her.

Ugh. A few tragedies and some years and here she is, thinking like some boring old sage.

She shakes her head, turning back to Li Shu. “So, you know where we go next?”

“Yes. We’re taking a train, underground. Since we’ve volunteered, we can’t leave for a while, but we can decide on which of the frontline support areas we want to go to since I tested high. I’m thinking the northwest front? Keep heading north a bit?”

Raika nods. “As good a direction as any. Anywhere we go in the fourth is going to have dangers, and if bullboy is half as smart as he thinks he is, chances are it’ll show up no matter where we end up.”

Li Shu’s eyes dart around them, as if looking for listening arrays or devices, but Raika shakes her head, quick and sharp. Vague language is still best, but she can sense through the walls around them, and there’s nothing to indicate that there’s any listening devices here. The flow of Qi is stable and structured in the shape of the walls around them, letting her know that they’re likely enchanted, but none of it smells like someone paying attention to them. It feels like… it could? Maybe? It feels different than the Imperial Palaces she’s been in, but there’s plenty of things she probably missed before that she could see now, with her senses improved.

“I’ll signal if and when someone’s listening. Click my nails together. In the meantime, we should be fine, they have more important matters to deal with than some unknown volunteers they can borrow.”

“Maybe. Good to be on alert, though.”

“Agreed. Jin, that means you, don’t say stupid shit.”

Jin looks at her and raises an eyebrow. “Between all of us, I do not hold the record for saying crazy or stupid things.”

“Keep making comments like that and you’ll catch up quick, brat.”

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The train ride is a particularly novel experience.

It’s one thing to travel in a flying artifact, that’s at least a little believable. Plenty of stories and tales are told about them, and the impossible things that Qi and arrays can do are well noted.

But stepping onto the machine-leviathan is an entirely different experience. Synesthesia (still only working intermittently) and her tremor-sense tell her about the thousands, tens of thousands of moving pieces, all connecting and integrating into each other like a living body of metal. The scent of Imperial Qi, as Raika’s come to understand it, fills veins and array-formations spread throughout the leviathan construct, using remarkably little Qi for such a colossal beast, and the clicking, clunking, ratcheting sounds respond to the flow of power all through it. 

And for all that, its interior is no slouch either.

Gold, jade, and gunmetal colors make up the majority of its design, with wood and padding present all along the interior. For all that it’s a machine clearly meant to work, there’s a remarkable amount of space inside its walls, a hint of spatial dilation making for room-sized cars full of seats.

And every one of the seats are full.

The claustrophobia of her senses presses in again, though not as violently as in the crowded city streets. Some people, clearly other volunteers, wear simple robes, civilian outfits or clothing reminiscent of servants from different sects and merchant groups, but most of the train is uniform, literally. Black and grey clothing and simple armors, with badges of jade and different materials the only differentiation, make up over 90% of the train’s occupants. Most of them sit staring straight forward, but some of them whisper and talk quietly to each other. Some of them hold prayer beads, statues of the Imperial Seal or their own rank badges, their heads bowed. They’re barely mumbling, but with Raika’s senses…

“Please divine lords, let me be of some service unto you. May you escort me to thy battlefields with security and bring me home victorious, whole and alive-”

“Gods beyond, I beseech thy blessings, that the Hells keep their grips from my soul and the Emperor’s Judges find me worthy of their grace-”

“Let me be strong. Let me be brave. Let me face the enemies ahead as my own, and find them wanting. Let me find my way back once the killing is done.”

And off to one side of the car, quieter, muffled by even the speaker’s own heartbeat, she hears one that lands a bit heavier.

“I hope I see them again. I hope I make it home. I hope they don’t miss me much. Sādhu.”

She’s heard these prayers before. A long time ago. It’s not in a cultivator’s nature to pray, for the most part. Every rule has exceptions, but to cultivate is to defy the heavens, to challenge the gods that you would stand alongside them. But those who don’t seek cultivation as its own entity, who seek power for other purposes, and mortals especially, all pray.

She heard the prayers on her first battlefield. Where she first earned her nickname, through mockery and panic and the blood-soaked fists she brought back to camp that day, stained with the lives of farmers and “rebels”. These are soldier’s prayers. Prayers to come home. 

Prayers that the deaths to come are not their own.

The fortress cities are vast. They stretch to the horizon in each direction from their center, and here, well behind the lines of battle, the city part is dominant, a place of constant bazaars, improvised homes and interesting architecture.

But the fourth ring is not known for being peaceful.

It is “conquered”. Those coming to assault the Empire’s walls are beasts and dissidents, rebels and monsters, not enemy factions. Not according to what the Empire might claim, anyways. Who is to say otherwise?

Not the sects, though every year, even in a small place like the Hungering Roots sect, the fourth ring draws its tributes of flesh and skill.

Not the people, who live in fear of what’s beyond the wall and ignorance of the ugliness behind it.

And not the Empire. Surely not.

Raika sits down on one of the available seats, a bit too small even with generous spacing for a human baseline. Bodies cluster in on one side of her as she blocks off the press from Jin and Li Shu on the other side, all three of them sitting together and squeezed in amidst the massive yet utterly packed traincar. While Li Shu seems a bit uncomfortable with the amount of people all around, she’s used to working in a crowded clinic; the smell of fear and panic isn’t new to her, and she holds herself well. The robes help too, a healer’s colors earning her respect and extra space for herself.

Jin, on the other hand, seems tense. Uncomfortable. He’s got room, both Raika and Li Shu blocking off the armors and press of bodies on either side of him, but he still looks… almost afraid.

She looks down at him, turning on her synesthesia to check and make sure he’s alright. Claustrophobia is a true and genuine concern, as packed in as they are, but she can take him into the walkways and balance as the train moves against one of the more open walls. 

But it’s his Qi. It roils, disturbed, the smoke disrupted by louder voices and the sounds of people… walking?

“What’s wrong?”

He looks up at her and blinks, like he’s surprised to see her there. He takes a breath, steadying himself.

“It’s… a lot of people. Not used to crowds.”

“You weren’t this bothered in the city. Is it the train? Sitting down?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s just…”

He looks around himself, his eyes darting as if avoiding looking at something when he moves his head. He takes another breath slow and quiet, as if preparing himself for a sprint.

“They’re all looking at me,” he whispers.

She looks around. Some of the soldiers looked at her or Li Shu, but at Jin? Maybe a pitying glance, once or twice. But now they’re all seated, and the train is beginning to depart, its engines howling and the clicking bones and digits within it stretching and pulling at each other… no one is giving him a second glance.

“Who?”

Jin deflates a little. Like he was scared of that answer.

“The dead ones.”

Immediately, she pushes her synesthesia back to full effect. It’s been on break long enough, and if she’s missing full-on wraiths, she needs to adjust faster to it.

The black and grey of the cars turn vibrant, her eyes assigning them textures and her nose assigning smells to the movements of the gears. Every living thing around her becomes a series of myriad colors, recognizably human only by her knowing what they are. Faces become partially obscured and partially highlighted, like painted masks, each movement exaggerated, each emotion and hormone lighting up a scent or sound, until everything around her is an intricately balanced kaleidoscope.

If not for how patterns form in the chains of bodily reactions and physical movements around her, it’s easy to get lost in it.

Her sensory-suite sub-brain and the logic-minds beneath her frontal lobe all kick back into overdrive, pushing her mind past the human threshold to interpret information beyond human senses.

And she sees nothing.

No ghosts or ghouls, no scents that remind her of the Cold Sun. There’s a slight smell of rot that she can filter for, but it’s just background stuff- hair and nails, little bits of food being digested, some of the darker emotions here and there. It’s not nothing, but it’s not a specter.

But Jin isn’t a liar, and it’s not a good habit for orphans to show fear.

“Where?” she asks.

“...All around. There’s some on almost everybody.”

“They’re… on people. Ok. Point me to a specific one.”

Jin hesitates, but eventually his hand comes up to point. There’s a slight tremble in it, but he keeps it small, and he points directly above the head of the soldier sitting in front of him.

“It’s looking over his head. It’s staring right at me.”

“What does it look like?”

“Like a man. Like a soldier. It’s also wearing a uniform, I think. It’s really see-through, mostly mist, but it still has eyes.”

She turns her senses to the soldier in question.

The train is moving at this point, the scenery past its windows blurring. It travels fast enough that she’d be hard pressed to keep up with it at a dead sprint, and in an endurance contest she outpaces most cultivators near her level. The world blurs, the engine rumbles, and the sound of bodies and the smell of flesh and feelings fills the container with a mix of wonder, dread, excitement, fear, and hope.

And she filters it out.

She focuses her eyes as hard as she can right over the head of the soldier before them.

She can’t just shut off her senses, since she doesn’t know what she needs. She could see wraiths, even touch and taste them, during the night of the Cold Sun, but she’s noticed little ghostly… bits? Bits, before. If there’s something there, and her apprentice says there is, then she should be able to see it. Her minds shunt out anything and everything that isn’t at least partially dead-smelling, that doesn’t look person-shaped, that doesn’t orbit the head of the soldier in front of her.

The world greys out to her senses, bit by bit, as she focuses on only one piece of it.

Idly, as she often does when she’s focusing, she touches Dink, hanging around her neck. It vibrates, hums ever so quietly.

Deep inside, wrapped tight in fractal patterns around her reactor, her Blacksteel shivers, just a bit.

And something turns to look at her.

It’s barely there. It’s like… the shadow of a shadow, like the lingering impression of the shape of a person on a foggy night. Less real than even someone’s reflection, because that, at least, looks real, looks a certain way.

She blinks, and its gone. Just a vague sort of space where she’s looking that maybe, kinda sorta, has just a bit more of a bloody, cold smell than the rest of the soldier’s aura.

“It… it went away,” Jin says, his voice quiet.

“Are the others still looking?” she asks.

He nods quietly.

“Good. Point them to me. I need to practice.”