Chapter 383 - Oh Shit, Them's Vampires They Is

Alright! Sorry about that for yesterday- been tough finding the time / energy to get things properly schmooving. Hoping that being "early" today gets me the ability to push forward into some more gifts and joys, hee hee hoo hoo. Don't worry though- I've got no intention to keep arc 9 going longer than it should. The conflict with the Church and their recruitment shouldn't be too many more chapters overall- gonna try and average 2-4 each as we see how Raika's hitting that exponential curve again, and so we can get back to the Pack, Morae, and the war proper. Goly gee, I gots so much goin on!

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War is a common act of culture. Just as culture is the social and personal complexities of those who live within it, so too does it lead to war, just as individuals find themselves led to violence. Whether it is a moral culture or not is irrelevant (and beyond impossible to define)- moral people can be as violent as anyone else. Sometimes more. Sometimes a lot more. Besides- morality lies behind ideals, which lies behind practicality, which lies behind self-control. 

Self control is a rare thing in this world. 

People think that self control and power are tied hand in hand. They’re wrong. Self control is to master the self. Power is to master the world. They overlap, sure- but less than you might expect. The powerful often have the least self control, because they allowed themselves the freedom to pursue it in the first place. And the powerful often exert that power, and through this, both create and determine much of culture. 

And so, no self control. And so, violence, independent of practicality or morality, springs forth, and when it springs forth from culture, we call it war.

And so war is a common act of culture.

The only thing culture has that’s older than killing other people is taking care of those we decide to take care of. 

People are interesting that way.

I try to keep such thoughts in mind as I sit here. Normally I prefer to write while on my feet (force of habit), but I have enough pieces of metal in me that that isn’t really viable at the moment. Which is impressive. I am very hard to stab.

These people have been enacting war for thousands of years. Against beasts, against other nations, against Death itself, apparently- and most of all against each other. They are siblings, writ large on the scale of landscapes and nation-states, and their familiar violence manifests in the violent murder of so, so many people.

I thought I could do better. I thought I was strong enough to change things. 

But war is a common act of culture, and thus, exceedingly difficult to stop from re-occurring.

They’re coming over the ridge. Bye. Write later. Or not. Either way, it’s nothing new.

War. Again and again. So many forms, so many styles, so many participants- culture and individual alike.

War. Again and again.

-”Path Of The Deathless”, primer on Cultivation of all forms, written by Sun “Murder The Heavens And Eat Their Thrones” Dailou, Burning Ambitions Made Flesh, The Screaming Sunlight Turned Sweet And Savory. Redacted by official Imperial Decree, held in perpetuity amongst the Divine Vaults.

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Ever since her son beat the everloving piss out of Mortaria’s surprise “ambush” against Godsfall and imprisoned Bishop Anaya, the trial she set for herself changed. Launching an attack onto her and her allies “home turf” removed a major piece from the table and made everyone very aware that doing so again might lead to a repeat performance- so, for the moment, they haven’t. Any big moves, of course, would lead to retaliation, and there’s a whole dance to the movement of armies and such that Godsfall is both ill-suited for and unready for. 

But capitalising on opportunity is essential in any good fight, and in spite of the messiness of her plans and all, she is most certainly good at taking hold of opportunity. Losing out on momentum, unless it’s intentional, is a good way to lose. 

If it were up to her, she’d have launched an offensive directly. Weaponized the remnants of Mortaria’s assault, made a few brand new bombs, started throwing them around a bit, see what happens. Cause some chaos, then find more opportunity to cause more chaos, keep moving forward.

However. She did, in fact, very very much promise two people she loves very very much that she would a) try to do better and b) would listen to them more. So she’s doing that. 

It’s been working pretty well so far.

Li Shu’s operations with her puppetworks gave the idea. Jin’s desire to see the other cities, his advocacy for a little less self-destruction, led to the shape of it. Raika, ever the disruptive maniac and proud of it, finished out the rest. 

Because that is, in fact, the word of the day- disruption. 

A thousand bodies being operated by a thousand different symbiotic fusions of her own weirdness and the masterworks of her loved ones. Li Shu’s puppetry and biological specimens,  magically bound to / growing from Death, mixed with Jin’s insights and intuition. Once they got the method for infusing Raika’s Echo into pre-prepared and resonant pieces of her, it got easier. 

She’s not piloting each body directly, nor is she seeing out of each body. It’s not a hive-mind or cohesive whole like before- even if that were possible, she learned her lesson. But she’s dead. She’s an Echo. 

Echoes can… well, echo. If you use them right.

The shape of her is the shape of Raika’s death. The fuel for that shape is further Death. Press a shape in just right and it leaves an imprint, ready to be empowered.

So- they went on the offensive in a new way.

Making it into the city was an adventure in and of itself. Going to Mortaria was out of the question- too expected, too basic an idea, too easy to escalate, considering their recent assault. She was strongly warned against going to New Inquisum, and against her better nature, decided to heed said warning. So Viviae it is- and what a place it is. With Lu Karai’s help, they traveled through shadows in his strange stagecoach, illusion arrays working to conceal them for the last stretch, Jin’s own learning and cultivation making it additionally effective. 

Going from the serene yet distressingly still landscapes around Godsfall to the chaotic mess of Viviae is a hell of an experience. Further east and south of Godsfall, closer to the edge of the Overgrowth and taking advantage of its properties to some degree, the landscape begins to grow swampy, murky, marshy. Still water mixes with slow currents, bogs preserve fallen flesh even as leftover prey floats to the surface and rots. Fallow mulch makes for ever-spawning maggots, flies and lizards, which in turn feed their deaths to the predators that thrive in the wet, soft trees above. After days of travel through that mess, they started to find the fungus.

Viviae itself exists on an island of ever-farmed fungi, with a dizzying number of varieties all spawning at varying heights and feeding off of each other in complex ways. The soft flesh makes for strange flooring, with several outcroppings of bone and blackened flesh poking through to hint at greater and more terrible things beneath. It’s a series of hills and valleys that lead to a shining beacon of light and smoke and life, born of decay. 

It was long, and slow, and boring, making it in through the wards and barriers, closely and carefully- but uneventful. The real fun started after they made it in. 

From within one of her many duplicates, connected yet distinct, she stares up at the beating, inverted heart of the city-state. 

Massive spires of opulence, of light, of colors and displays of spirit and community sit at the center of the city, from which every other district flows. And yet, blood doesn’t flow out. The heart beats, and the arteries pull the flow in, drawing it down into a whirlpool of spires of artful bone and gilded designs. The source from which the city grew, which anchors it in the cultivated chaos around it, is also where it falls into. 

There are three clans of clergy that rule the city. 

The Valdir line. Weirdly, they have their clan name behind their official name, evidenced by the one she’s met- Kai Valdir, otherwise known as Kai. Crimson eyes, usually, and those that belong to their clan tend to have a Death energy that speaks to life actively falling into decay alone, rotting purely from its own disconnection from Life. 

The Drayus line- the same as the woman she encountered yesterday on her little fireworks jaunt. Transmutation from Death- decay turned a rich, dark purple, turned lively, fermented into something new. She’s yet to get a proper grasp on them, really, but they seem to be generally on good terms with the Valdir clan.

The Eneru clan. Last of the big three. They each have descendants, branch-families and such, but they make up the last of the three main groups- Life from Death. Exemplifying the very same marshlands of the lands beyond the city’s edges, their eyes are a strange sort of green, a profound emerald coloration. 

Three families, three clans, almost like cultivator clans, dominating the entirety of the Church’s presence in the city. Get good at necromancy- you join a clan. No real alternatives, as far as she’s heard. Hell of a monopoly. 

But the city lives. In a dead land, in the Fallen Kingdom, it lives. Ingrained into its land, living in a complex cycle, dying in a complex cycle. 

It’s still dying, though. She’s aware of that. She can feel it. A stagnation. The city isn’t allowed to change, not profoundly, not in a way where its center and the heart that drinks from it won’t continue to be right where they are. There’s still a… stink. In spite of the livelihood, in spite of the way that the city is more alive than any other, it’s still… Still. Less than the others, but…

She sighs. Same cycles. A same sort of proof that things need to CHANGE. 

Ugh. Again, that word, with all its weight. Too deep, deep enough to make something at the depths of her shiver. Feels weird to feel anything that deep, when she feels so shallow. 

She sighs- that same old habit coming back around yet again. So much to feel, so much to think, so much to feel, and so much to do. It’s hard not to feel tired sometimes, no matter how fulfilling or energizing this new way of doing things is.

She pulls a large nail out from inside her ribcage, impaling it into the joint of the building she’s on, right where fungal flesh meets bone. Another one down. Only so many times each puppet can generate those, so it’s not quite exponential, but every time she gets the opportunity, she sneaks another one into the city. The clans find a good number of them, sure, but a few always slip past, her own array-work and that of her family improving in time with their detection methods.

The nail finishes sinking into the building, ready to germinate and generate more of her, and she moves on to another disruption.

On the opposite side of the city, she leaps over the tops of structures both grown and excavated, dodging past fungal goblinoids and beastkin and corpse alike, tossing bits of Death-empowered detritus behind herself as she’s chased. In spite of the clan’s authority and power, there’s only so many times that they can warn people away from free money and power, and only so much that people will listen after a solid few weeks of hurting almost no one. She cackles as she runs, making a show of it, throwing flecks of herself all around and getting people to scramble for them as the powers-that-be hunt her down.

On the northern end of the residential districts, she strolls peacefully through a narrow street, paying handsomely for street vendor’s goods and making a show of herself, discarding all illusion to walk with her signature emanating through the ether. 

Down below, three of her dig their way into and throughout the fungal underbelly of the city, through its sewer infrastructure and bones, leaving a solid chunk of the city without running water and a larger chunk of the central districts full of sewage. One of them makes sure to leave little traps behind herself as she goes, making a proper mess of the unprepared ones that follow, while the other two are actively looking to tunnel through the city’s underbelly and sink parts of the grounds above. 

All across the city, Raika makes a mess of things, and has fun doing it.

That isn’t to say that there’s a purpose for it, of course. 

Pulling her focus back into “herself”, the Echo with eyes of ebony flowers takes a sip of tea from the table in front of her, marveling at the fact that she can taste it. 

“My compliments to whoever steeped this,” she says to the man across from her. “I haven’t really gotten a chance to really enjoy the delicacies of your nation in the time I’ve been here. Did some cooking myself, but I bow to the experts.”

“Oh?” asks the crimson-eyed figure, holding a cup of his own. “You, bowing to someone? To think, all it took was good food. Perhaps someone should have challenged you to a cooking contest a long time ago, rather than wasting time trying to kill you.”

She magnanimously ignores Jin’s snort of laughter in the background of the room.

“Well, if it was a competition, obviously I’d be unbeatable.”

“I suppose I have heard good things about your cooking. Perhaps you might have victories of your own on the way.”

“Hey- I said I’d be unbeatable, not that I’d win. I’d just burn down the kitchen or something. Become ungovernable. Impose consequences for everyone else.”

Kai Valdir smiles, his teeth too sharp, his skin like a porcelain that shifts far too similarly to silk. “Ever the anarchist, I suppose. Chaos at all costs, is it?”

“CHANGE, at a very specific cost.”

The room shivers, echoing with the weight of the word. 

“You have got to stop doing that!” Li Shu yells from across the room. “I swear, every time you do that-”

“Fixed it already!” Raika replies, dissipating some of the worms summoned to modify the array formation around them. “Gotta say it with my whole chest, though. Doesn’t feel right otherwise.”

“Ah, yes. Representing your… affinity, I suppose.”

She smiles, cold and sharp. “You could say that. More of an ideal.”

Kai Valdir takes a sip of his drink, the red liquid in the cup kept heated by the enchantments inlaid into it. “I suppose it could be described like that. It’s a hard path to travel. I would love an account of your journey through that particular philosophy, should you be so inclined.”

She smiles. “That could be arranged. If you could provide something in recompense.”

The blood-drinker raises an eyebrow, looking around at their surroundings. 

Raika, Li Shu, Rai Jin and Kai are all standing, sitting and working in one of the central spires of Viviae, surrounded by all the beauty and art and living power of a city beating to a twisted heart. 

Which helps to explain why it was quite so uneventful to sneak in. 

The room has been completely coated in the monochrome vines that Li Shu’s developed, dozens of variations of the flora starting to bloom through careful cultivation. The chamber is a vast space, a section of a complex mansion interwoven within the spires of the Valdir clan’s section of the central district of the city. Each part of it has been carved, lovingly, from semi-living material, unliving cancers and always-dying bloodflow used to shape bubbles of luxury that have since been decorated with artworks, sculptures, furniture and other forms of luxury. 

Jin sits at one side of the chamber, an open area that’s been reassembled to hold a few hand-carved desks and a series of scrolls and papers. He’s looking tired but focused, carefully scrawling kanji and some of the Fallen Kingdom’s strange runes into exercises designed for just such practice. Li Shu, meanwhile, has a room to herself, close enough to yell back at the room but far enough that her experiments only spread when they’re supposed to.

Kai Valdir smiles softly. “Surely such a trifling could be arranged between friends, no? After all, what else could we be called, after all of the ways we have bound ourselves together? Have I not granted you favors aplenty, Bishop Rai Ka?”

She smiles back, a bit harsher. “Not without expectation, you haven’t.”

He laughs at that- but she catches how his gaze starts to, and then stops, before it can flicker towards where Jin sits, studying. 

Another hungering thing, looking for the Blessed Mortal. 

She’s felt hunger aplenty. She knows what it looks like. Whatever the nuances, the clergy of Viviae are just as much of Death as those of Godsfall, and she can imagine that their rituals, whatever they may be, would be just as well-attuned to the first death of such a person. 

Kai Valdir is not their friend,- but he’s tempted enough by Jin that the Life-drinker still decided to throw his lot in with the upstarts rather than the establishment. 

“Besides,” she says, “we haven’t even started on the hard part yet.”

“It’s one thing to be an annoyance, another entirely to gain the concessions you require,” he agrees. “And I suppose that you’re going to maintain your little modus operandi?”

“Something like that, senior. A little chaos is a prelude, a promise. It’s good for them to see me coming, understand the limitations of their choices.. A lot of chaos is an ultimatum. A demand.”

“I’m curious to see how you’ll do it, dear. So long as we remain on good terms… I suppose that some additional gifts might be arranged for your sake. I am quite bound to you, after all- it wouldn’t do to have you stumble for lack of my generosity.”

She takes another sip, enjoying the tea-ghosts infused into the beverage. She really should consider going back to cooking when she gets a chance. Maybe after the next city’s fall.

This one’s pretty much wrapped up. It’ll be fun when people realize just how badly.