SpiralingSilverandEyes
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Book One, Chapter 45 - Friends, Enemies, and Things Yet to Come
🕑 Added 2025-11-01 06:25:09 +0000 UTCAnd with that... we're done.
Happy halloween babes. It's good to be alive.
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Division of Divination, Oracular Pools, Third Ring, North-Northeast Division, Priority Response Required:
Something’s gone wrong. I have no other way to describe it. I don’t know why, but our metrics for the district have gone haywire. Deviations are up 1.054% in the last two weeks alone. We haven’t seen numbers like that since the last major push from the north down into the Wall. We’re going way past standard slips or minor branches- we have whole Oracular Pools disagreeing. It’s only on the finer details for now, but an escalation this extreme this fast is… difficult to predict.
We’ve yet to determine the source, in spite of it being the main focus of investigation at the moment. Please advice on next steps.
-Division Of Divination Priority Response Record, Established due to Unforseen Branching. —-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Qen Hou rests on the doorframe, a sort of forced casualness about him as he watches her. She’s still annoyed by him, but… she remembers well what happened the day that the monster arrived, that that burning heat invaded everything and warped the very space around her. She shudders a bit, the memory still fresh, still tied to the older memory of watching Raika getting burned in the arena and being powerless to help. And he helped. So she doesn’t mention how he looks ridiculous doing that as politely as she can.
She has gotten very tired of being powerless.
“Are you sure about this?” he asks. “Once you do it, there’s no coming back. The things you’d need to offer the sect for them to let you back in their doors, much less into their ranks, would have to be massive.”
“I don’t plan on offering them a gosh-darn thing,” she retorts, gripping one of her bags, pinning it with a foot and forcing the fabric open just a smidge further so she can stuff in another book. “If I ever come back here, it will be because I’m grander than they could ever be, and I’m rubbing their faces in it. Or to tell Elder Ren how terrible and stupid he is at healing.”
She almost slips and crashes as the tension of the bag finally relents, letting her slip in just one more text. She’s already got three journals, a month’s worth of writing supplies, and six of the openly-available medical texts the sect didn’t confiscate (mostly because she hid them), and a fresh batch of paper stuffed into it, and the fabric is almost groaning at holding it all in. Not everyone has a gods-damned spatial ring to fit things in, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t take at least this much. It’s basically the minimum! Well, that and the other two bags. One is stuffed full of stolen foodstuffs, hard biscuits and jerky and the like. The other is camping supplies, bedrolls, flint, extra clothing, some cooking tools, a knife-
“I’m serious,” Qen Hou says quietly. “Even with everything that’s happened, there’s still a lot that a sect can offer you. There’s too much mess around you for them to interfere with you again so soon, and you’ve been cleared, somehow, of excessive wrongdoing. Even if you get a higher cultivation wandering the woods, you’ll lose all of the texts and wisdom here.”
“There’s no wisdom here,” she growls. “Just arrogance and old texts, and I can find those anywhere in this world. I’m leaving, Qen Hou. That’s final.”
She turns to look at him, mildly bedraggled from the speed at which she’s been packing. “Besides, no one here will even care. Since the Empire came in and the sects went to war, no one cares about me anymore. Besides, you’ve gone mad if you think they’ll even want to renew my apprenticeship. I don’t want them to renew it either, because not a healer here holds a candle to my master, and not a cultivator here gives a crap about honor and righteousness.”
Qen Hou cocks an eyebrow. “Not one?”
“Yes, yes, you’re so very honorable,” she grumbles, turning around to try and balance the multiple bags on her hips and shoulders and back. “I’ve thanked you enough already, any more and that big head of yours will float off the ground.”
“Tsk,” he says, shaking his head. “It would seem your ritual-monster’s acid tongue has infected you with a bit of its bite.”
She rolls her eyes. “Due to a mix of doctor-patient confidentiality and the fact that she’s not a monster, I’m afraid I must deny any such allegation, honored senior.”
He laughs, and she hears him come forward and turns to see what he’s doing, but he’s moved into the room and right up into her personal space before she can react, especially unbalanced and laden down as she is.
“Well,” he says, ever so casually plucking one of her bags off of her shoulder, “I believe that you should do what most feeds your cultivation. And I shall simply do the same.”
She blinks at him as he stands there, bag on over one shoulder. “What does that mean?” she asks.
“It means I’ll be coming with you,” he replies with a shallow bow. “I’m afraid I can’t allow my junior sister and honored healer wandering the wilds on her lonesome. How could this one show his face, much less honor himself before the heavens, if you were to stumble into another mess ten times larger than it looks on the surface?”
She blinks, looking at him. And then she smiles, and swings her other two bags at him fast enough that he “oofs” as he catches them.
“Far be it from this one to dishonor her new and most loyal traveling companion by leaving him so little to do, then!” She grins. “This Li Shu is honored you’ve so eagerly volunteered to assist.”
He frowns at her, face partially obscured by the two massive bags he’s struggling to balance, but she’s already past him, beaming a smile back at him.
“Come on, then!” She yells back. “There’s much to learn, and only so much time to do it! We’d best be off if we’re to make it to a good camping spot by sundown!”
And she’s off, hearing Qen Hou curse and try to juggle both the bags and his dignity as he follows along behind.
Her first and most troublesome patient requires treatment, and Li Shu is not yet able to match said patient’s needs and her own skills. It is time, then, to confront the strange, vibrant, deadly world out there, and change that reality to something acceptable.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Something is wrong with him.
It started with her. With that thing. Demonic cultivator or secret weapon, hidden agent or dormant mutant, it doesn’t matter. It all started with her.
Rai Ka.
His Qi feels… wrong. Like something in it has gone off. He doesn’t know what it is, but he’s been trying closed door cultivation for a week and something is wrong with him.
It’s not even that he can’t cultivate. That part was a success, more than a success, letting him draw in energy like he never has before, every breath in feeling like his body and soul were starving for Qi and pulling it in like the weight of a receding wave. He’s never felt this strong, physically, and the sheer pleasure of that, that he’s been able to break through his limits as he always has and pursue power ever greater, sings in him like little else.
But the flames have gone wrong.
He’s circulating Qi, even now, standing and awake, and the pattern just does not feel right anymore, like something in him has shifted, some eddie or current or bump in his body or form or cultivation that has altered things. When he tries to empower himself, he moves explosively, fast enough he has to hold back to avoid self-harm. When he tries to impress his will upon the world, to move his Qi into the proper forms and techniques and truths of the Purple Flame, it bursts forth, unbelievably potent.
But it burns him now.
It should not be able to. Unless performed incorrectly, unless intentionally harmful or inherently dangerous to use, one’s cultivation shouldn’t be able to harm them, much less start to do so suddenly, after decades of the loving, nurturing warmth of flame.
He’s tried to show the elders, but they look at him now like he’s a fool. Perhaps he cannot even blame them, with how his rage allowed the other sects of the city an excuse to strike at them, how he raged at the Imperial soldiers who came to ask what had occurred on that dark night. He was out of control, blinded by emotion, and his actions helped no one, least of all his sect.
Still, he’s tried to show his teachers, his mentors, even another core disciple, a childhood friend long grown distant. Each one assured him that it’s nothing; a stumbling block at most, something he will laugh about once his talent eclipses this challenge, as it most surely will. He even asked them about the color, about how its edges no longer seem quite the same hue of violet, and they chuckled and nodded politely and simply offered that perhaps he would experience a tribulation soon, or experience an evolution in his understanding.
One even offered that it might be the first step in comprehending some new form of Dao, either that of flame, or of color, or of the Purple Flame itself, the fire of mysteries and transformation, or lightning consumed. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to put his entire fist through the old man’s face and out the other side.
Something is wrong with him, and he doesn’t know what. It aches at him, gnawing in the back of his mind, the fact that for all his talent and growth and skill and triumphs, something in him has twisted and gone wrong off of two encounters, both so minor he should have crushed them with ease.
He’s been meditating on it. Unfortunately, his thoughts seem to wander outwards more than in.
To the Imperials.
The soldiers had appeared fast. It would be their role to check in on anything occurring in “their” city, especially after reinforcements had been called after the attack on the Festival of the Cold Sun. Still, did it not stretch the bounds of propriety for them to come so quickly? Did it not cause the sect to lose face, for Imperial soldiers to demonstrate their self-proclaimed superiority- when it was their own Division which held the source of the disruption! When they were the ones who had stopped the justice of the sect, had let that beast escape.
They must have planned it. Coordinated it amongst themselves, whether with subtlety or outright open hostility against the true caretakers of the land. In the same way that an Imperial Judge ordained that the monster not be killed off-hand by the elders, had maneuvered them into being forced to give face and build a much more performative execution, so too did an Imperial official of some kind, a mutant no less, arrive so shortly after and demand that they hand over that charred, ruinous beast. Oh, it may well have negotiated, spoken softly and with respect, but at no point was Shin Ren fooled; it was all show, just an effort not to steal as much respect as it could from under them by even further undermining their authority.
And now, the very thing they were supposed to have taken away returns, and their soldiers appear at the sect’s doorstep in such a short time? Had they lost control of her? Had they sent her out, then blocked his pursuit on purpose when she failed? She’s far too dangerous to leave alive, far too alien and monstrous, and if the Empire itself wishes to try and weaponize her, well, is it not the duty of all worthwhile sects to hold the Empire in check?
He thinks of telling the elders his thoughts. Thinks that he should speak aloud what he’s slowly coming to think of as inherent truth. But… then he remembers how they’ve treated him. First a show pony to dance about at their request, then as an embarrassment when the impossible and unpredictable occurred, and now as a fool for demanding what is his by right and due, for asserting the truth of what he saw that night.
No. The elders have lost faith in him, and he in them. The sect is not all in the world. He knew this before the Academy, and he knows it now, and if the sect cannot rectify his honor, if it will not support him in his pursuit of Truth and justice, then perhaps it is time to leave it behind once again. His family is here, it’s true, but many are cultivators, so a journey of a few years won’t matter all that much in the end. And he doesn’t kid himself, it will take years, possibly many, to achieve his goal.
But he can feel that something is wrong, with himself (with the world?), and where he sees this glaring injustice, un-corrected by the Heavens and Emperor, his cultivator’s soul and virtuous heart cry out for him to rectify it.
Shin Ren barely notices the scorch marks he has left in his room by the time he is done grabbing his spear and tossing some clothes and pills into his spatial ring.
Something is wrong. And he will make it right with blood that has so earned its end.
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Maen is cold all the time, now. Ever since that alley.
She’s seen death before. She’s felt pressure, and Qi that towered in the heavens above her.
But that had not been death. That had been wiping a bad chalk-mark off of a board, or brushing away a wisp of smoke on a clear day. That boy, who had smiled so bright at seeing Raika, who seemed genuinely happy to see her, who’d teased her and made her laugh in a way Maen had never seen, was simply there one moment and gone entirely the next.
And then there had been that pressure.
She couldn’t feel the end of it. In an instant, it was like she had been cast beneath an ocean, been struck everywhere at once by the weight of a sea crashing down around her until she was buried. Every instinct had told her to run, muscles and thoughts and feelings she didn’t know she had spasming to life just in time to scream at her to move right at the moment she was the most paralyzed she’d ever been.
He’d barely even looked at her. A massive, towering beastblood, like a plateau fit to hold a city, like a mound of muscle and sinew and fur and horn that could scrape the sky.
She’d pissed herself by the time he’d looked. It hadn’t even been in fear; she could feel her mouth drooling, her eyes, ears and nose bleeding, her entire body crushed against the ground like a child’s toy ball until she couldn’t even breathe, just choke and foam at the mouth from the spittle frothing in an invisible wave of power. She’d seen him look, though. She’d been aware enough still to feel the fear somehow spike further as she saw those cold, black eyes turn to examine her.
Maen had lived her whole life up with the understanding that she would never scrape the heavens. That her family had never had a powerful cultivator in all their memory, and that those with bestial blood like her were fated for little in the grand scheme of things without luck or talent that she doesn’t have.
And then she’d met a cripple. She’d never seen one before. They were supposed to be cursed by Heavens and hells both, severed from the very blood of reality, less blessed than even a simple earthworm or common grass. And yet here one stood, awake when everyone else slept, working harder than the next three servants, taking on every challenge and ridicule and humiliation placed before her and… seemingly not even caring. Simply walking a chosen path as if she knew exactly where she’d end up, and that wherever it was it would be a place with more than who she’d been made to be.
So when she came back, proven right in horrifying and impossible ways, somehow still sane enough to speak after being burned alive and taken prisoner for surviving her trial, Maen couldn’t help but wonder. She just couldn’t help but think that maybe there would be something more.
And, after a harrowing, impossible escape, she’d thought she’d chosen right.
And then she’d felt that thing’s eyes on her, unmaking her, peeling her back layer by layer until she was nothing, until she was splayed out into a million million pieces that he could look over and judge.
And she had lived.
She’d been judged, by a thing which had just proven how willing it was to eradicate something that might trouble it, and she had lived. She’d been taken to a Palace. She’d been given a choice. A poor choice, surely; care for her chosen fate, for the madwoman and impossibility she’d chained herself to so willingly, or go to sleep, and never wake up again, with the promise and an official signed document affirming that her family would receive half her weight in gold, jade, silver, or acres of good, farmable land.
She had hesitated at that.
But she did not want to die.
So she buried the shame of wanting to live and chose it anyway.
Now she is here, and she is afraid and cold all the time because something in her can feel that horned abomination, that impossible champion of a cultivator wherever she goes. She can physically feel that she is in his territory, and it is terrifying. Her one charge, her sole responsibility, to be the consolation prize for an impossible woman, has been rendered maddeningly impossible.
But she has survived this long, and she is in too deep to back out now.
And Taurus, the beast of her end, has told her that Raika actually left her room! That she went to the baths! If that isn’t a sign, after weeks of near catatonia, that she might be getting better, might be a shield or an aid or even just someone to trust in this mad place, she doesn’t know what is.
Raika turns her head when Maen walks into her bath, skin covered in blisters, face scarred with bloody eye-holes and punctured ears.
“Hey Maen!” She says with a smile that is fucking hauntingly happy-looking. “I’m glad to see you’re alright! Don’t worry about the eyes and all, totally intentional, I promise.”
Maen gives the longest, loudest, most frustrated scream she’s ever given, chucks a bottle of soap at Raika’s head, and marches back to her room to scream some more.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Events are progressing.
The first wave was disappointing. Even with the alterations to the core mechanisms, the weapon hadn’t lasted more than a few moments in most fights. Either a slaughter, followed by annihilation, an early and thorough-enough destruction of the outer shell that the inner mechanisms never deployed, or, on the occasions it went correctly, only minor gains against the intended targets.
The second wave would be better.
Someplace hidden, someplace obscured, protected by arrays and long, winding tunnels and hidden traps and waiting, hungry maws, the weapon-smith ticks away at another tool. They need replacing more often now, but it’s worth it; the enhancements to each model, and the increased efficiency that they generate in how the tools move about and follow orders, is more than enough to make up for the need to find new base materials to work with. The weapon-smith can’t help but admire the improvements, the way that each tool now moves, the jerkiness of earlier models almost entirely replaced by smooth, animated muscle and metal, eager to obey commands.
They wipe this particular tool’s face off again. It kept trying to squirm, so inevitably, they had to strap it down. It’s rare that they use the operating room proper, nowadays; since they advanced their cultivation, it’s usually been easy enough to just cut, access the relevant system, and sew it back shut again, but this one kept malfunctioning, and there’s not much value in a malfunctioning tool. And besides, there’s artistic pride to be considered in the whole thing.
Even with some of its functions properly disconnected and excess materials drained for efficiency, this one still needs almost constant wiping lest it leave fluids on the work table. They drop a scalpel and release a small, fluttering whisper of Qi back into their body, ready to be brought back out as needed, and wipes the tool’s face again. It keeps leaking from its eyes. If not for the fact that the eyes are necessary for proper navigation, the weapon-smith would be tempted to do away with them entirely for this one.
“Please…” a broken, weak little sound whimpers.
Ah. They’d left the voicebox intact. Disappointing. They really are getting complacent as their focus turns to deeper modifications.
They pat the tool on the top of the head. “Thank you for speaking up,” they say, incapable of seeing the brief glimmer of hope the words elicit. “”I really appreciate it. It’s things like this that remind us there’s never an excuse to neglect one’s fundamentals.”
The flesh of the tool shifts into a new, fascinating configuration. The weapon-smith makes sure to jot down to try and recreate that later.
“Don’t worry,” they reassure their precious asset. “You’ll be fixed properly in no time, and we’ll be able to get right back to work.”
The shifting, fluttering thing inside them blossoms, enough to let a bit of itself flow to the weapon-smith’s hand, and as they pick up the scalpel again, they marvel at just how many beautiful lessons the world is able to teach, if only one decides to listen.
They hum as they work, pausing to wipe off the tool’s face here and there. Yes, still so much more to learn. The next time they send out some of their babies, they’ll be much more effective. The weapon-smith is sure of it.
