Book One, Chapter 37 - Fuck Cages, All My Homies Hate Being In Cages

Aaaaaand this makes two! Ya girl is anxious as fuck about what's to come, but hey, that's normal innit? I gotta start working on ads! And more shoutouts! So much shit that I'm not good at! Aaaah!

But! Gonna be done editing soon. And adding more goodies. So. One step at a time, right?

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Ultimately, the worst part of existence is that it all happens at once. Everything is always required. Time, energy, matter, space, all the assorted elements and invisible chains that wrap around us- lose even one, and things just don’t work as they should. You can perform all the changes to your mindset that you need, gather all the ingredients, do all the right actions, and still need things like time for a transformation to occur. You might have infinite time, but then fail to acquire some physical ingredient, or be unable to reach something too high for you to jump to.

Cultivation is the process of removing those chains. Distance ceases to be, because you are where you choose. Time ceases to matter, because you can perform actions a million times faster, or can skip many of the steps another might require. You no longer need to accept time, no longer need help from others, no longer need to move to gain whatever you might have your eyes on.

The only chains we have yet to find a way to budge are a need for Qi and for thought. Everything else can be lightened, broken, or outright removed, given time.

It’s hardly a surprise that the Gods hate us so much. We don’t just mock them by growing into their image- we reject the dream they have made us from. 

To Cultivate is, to some, to become more. In truth, it is an exercise in making yourself, and your place in the world, less, that you might be unbound from it. To do otherwise is to continue to suffer the yoke of the tyrant that is Time. That is Linearity. That is Place.

I refuse.

-”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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Days pass like this. After their conversation in the bath, while Kaena still acts cordially and whenever they speak with Raika, they never seem to pursue an opportunity to do so, and she starts to see them a lot less as time goes on. Taran, what little she sees or hears of the rattling cacophony of guns and metal, seems to spend almost all of his time draped over the most comfortable given position in a room, only occasionally moving as new foods or appealing sunbeams draw their attention.

Yun Ka, despite all her extremely visible interest, seems adamant in holding herself back from any contact at all with Raika. Raika walked towards her once, to ask a question about where all the free towels keep aparating from, and the way the researcher’s eyes (and whole body, posture, energy, etc) all lit up was enough to get her to turn right back around. She assumes that, at least in part, her remarkable composure is Taurus’ fault, and it’s likely the demi-titan and “Researcher” of their “Project” (which seems to be this group’s equivalent of a squadron of soldiers or group of cultivators) told her to give Raika some space. It’s always hard to tell what’s manipulation and what’s genuine kindness when the two so often overlap, but she’s erring on the side of caution and guessing that it’s a way to put her at ease.

Raika is not at ease. As much as they pretend, as kind as they have been and as unbelievably soft as the bedsheets in this place are, she has not lost sight of the fact that she was brought from one cage to a much nicer one, and that she survives on the whim of Imperial interests. She’s heard nothing about an acquittal from her charges, and while no one has stopped her, she’s also had that prickly sensation of being watched increase every time she’s gone out on one of the balconies or walked close to the doors that she thinks are an exit.

Taurus, it would seem, remains content not to limit or interact much with her, even as she sees the minute carvings of his runes decorating nearly every two-dimensional plane in the building. She hasn’t caused trouble, he hasn’t come out to coddle her. She’s seen him, once or twice, each time looking a bit more scruffy and tired than the last, often coming out to take literal pile-high plates of food into his personal quarters, on the opposite side of the room she arrived in and far away from the rooms everyone else inhabits.

That’s one thing she can give this place though; the food is fucking good. Even if she has no idea how it keeps showing up (she hasn’t seen, heard or smelled a servant since she arrived here), it’s just too good to pass up, especially after three weeks of would-be starvation. Another thing that’s changed about her body; she sure as shit can store more food than before. Everything is cooked incredibly, so it’s hard to tell whether the taste is so overwhelmingly good due to enhanced senses or sheer quality, but one most certainly altered thing is that she’s eaten almost her full body weight more than once in the half-week since she’s been here, and outside of feeling like an overstuffed cantaloupe, she’s kept it all down and digested it easily. No more tummy-rumblings when faced with a mix of seafood, heavy cheeses and oversweet fruits, no, she’s got a cast-iron gullet now and is taking advantage of it every chance she gets.

Also, she’s only had to shit once in four days, so that’s nice.

But Raika spends most of the days since arriving at this place doing what her captors and would-be “friends” likely (hopefully) think is just decompressing. Adjusting to the new space. Taking a lot of baths.

And starting to notice disturbing trends in how the palace acts. 

More often than not as she visits the baths, closer versions of the hot tubs have been as hot as the one she had to explore to find that first day awake, equipped with less extra bottles and beauty products but more of the unnamed flowers so flush with Qi and vitality. Every time she leaves the bath, even when she’s made certain she’s brought none in with her, she finds a towel near the door, warm and ready for use. All could be explained by agile and admirable servants, of course, as one would expect to find in an Imperial palace.

Except she still has not seen, heard or smelled a single one. And even in the pained fugues that her “cultivation” drags her into, she is certain she’d notice someone enter the baths to place a towel for her. If they somehow hid from her while doing so, it would take Qi, in either enchantments or one’s personal arts and abilities, but she has smelled nothing.

If not for the nature of the baths as a useful hiding spot from the flak clouds of the unnamed flower and the burning heat (and, later, violent icy cold) of the pools which she uses to help manipulate her circulation, she would not be in here. There is an additional concern, of course; that if she spends less time in the baths, she’ll notice the same small changes in other parts of the palace more clearly, and the thought of desperately trying to track invisible people that fold towels for her sounds a bit closer to madness than she’d like.

So she keeps using the baths, and, on the surface, tries to pretend nothing is wrong.

She’s held back on the intensity of her training, though. She’d rather not be as unconscious as she was the first time. Even if the chances are miniscule, she doesn’t want to be alone and unaware with… whatever else may or may not be in here.

Eventually, even with the slight limitations she’s placed, she starts to feel a difference.

Her method is… clunky, to say the least. Blood and veins don’t naturally just hold Qi, not unless you’re a Body cultivator in the Divergent Paths, and hers is no exception. It’s more like she’s forcibly dragging the energy along in a current, trying to create eddies and flows to accumulate little clusters, which she’s then smacking together like a child with toy blocks.

Her Qi doesn’t seem to mind, and in fact seems to grow a bit with every clash, marking the theory of “any movement + formation cultivates Qi” seem more and more solid, but her body is a bit more opposed to the whole process. If not for how magically the baths seem to clean themselves, in the four days she’s been using them she can imagine they’d have turned pink from the blood she leaves bubbling in the waters. Her eyes tend to bleed the most, and she figures it has more to do with how delicate they are than any specific focus, but just about every orifice (and, once, even her fucking skin) get’s a turn.

Still, there are changes. The more she does it, the easier it becomes as she gets better at ignoring the pain, gets more proficient at controlling her blood flow and tracking what is and isn’t the kind of pain she’s looking for. She’s had to pause to let her sense of balance readjust multiple times, and got a headache once from when her vision felt blurry but was actually sharper than it was before, somehow. The changes are incremental, but they’re present, and whatever the flowers that keep being left wherever she is are, it does wonders to help soothe and heal her after it’s done. It might be a crutch, but considering that her idea of walking is, self-admittedly, some variant of throwing herself off a moving horse, maybe it’s ok to have a crutch here and there.

And, conveniently, going for walks along the palace wing they’re in to help her body adjust lets her take a nice, casual gander about potential escape avenues.

It’s not even that she wants to leave permanently, necessarily. Taurus works fine as a shield against the Purple Fire something-something sect, and she’s far more likely to be able to use Imperial connections to get close to Feng Gui than she is to find him on her own, out in the wilds. And even if he’s studying her, it’s not like she’s trying to keep what she’s done or what she is a secret. Hell, this Division of Altered Cultivation may be one of the best places in the world to find out what she’s becoming and how she can become even more.

But there’s still that itch. Unfinished business, sure, wanting to say goodbyes, yes, wanting to keep anyone vulnerable to future shenanigans from bureaucracy safe, absolutely, but there’s also that damn itch. 

She is herself, and she is her own, and she can feel that truth (and Truth) chafing the more she stays docile beneath the gaze of Taurus’ runes.

So it is that she takes her time, and triple checks, and then finds a bottle of rice wine to celebrate that night when she finds the gap.

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Three weeks of perfect and total isolation, tortured for surviving and fighting back. Another week and a half of wandering gilded halls manned by some sort of ghosts, being managed by strangers seeking to control her. 

One moment of perfect joy and vicious accomplishment as she finds her way free.

There’s a tiny section in one of the side rooms, a lounge area, where there’s a balcony. All of the balconies hold plenty of the runes that decorate and have been carved into so much of their wing of the palace, but even if Taurus is an Empire-acknowledged Runemaster and a Nascent Soul cultivator to boot, he’s not perfect. There’s a set of statues along the wall of the balcony, leading right up to the lip of the railing, at which point there’s a little shadow, a corner of weird, well-sculpted angles, that has nothing carved on it.

There’s nothing she can do about the fact that whatever array systems Taurus and Yun Ka are using will notice her exiting onto the balcony. But, so long as she sticks to a very specific corner and does nothing Qi related (which she can’t do much of anyways), they shouldn’t see her leave that balcony. In theory. Maybe. If, as she assumes, it’s an alarm and detection formation, and not just eyes everywhere from every angle always.

  So she waits, until Lua and Rue are performing their dance, and the night is late, and she’s absolutely certain that the entire palace is dead silent save for the scratching of Taurus’ quill, which has not stopped in hours and, she knows, sometimes does not stop for days.

Then, wrapped in fine black pants, a simple black shirt, and nothing else, Raika leaps off of a balcony atop a stone plateau hundreds of feet off the ground. 

Not to worry; she has a plan.

As she falls, she feels the wind whistle past her, sees the trees and buildings below blur into a mess of lights and shapes, feels the beautiful, cool night air of a pleasant summer whipping past. She sees the moons above, painting the earth as they move, smells the scents of cooking and movement and animals and trees and people, and sees the horizon stretching out all around her even as she falls.

And it feels, in that moment, right.

For a moment, after everything, even as she still knows she’s being hunted by a sect that would execute her and running from a gilded cage, she has enough power to do something.

She lets her heart beat. She only has a few seconds before she lands, maybe ten, max, just enough time for one beat she can control. In that moment, she pulses her blood, gathering the remnants of discordant sharpness and chaotic energy she’s prepared and shooting them into her hand.

Then, fingers hooked into claws, she grabs the stone of the plateau as it falls past.

There’s immediate agony, the friction alone ripping into her skin and making it feel like it’s been set on fire again. A trail of red is left on the stone as she forces her hand against it, no matter how her body or the fall protests. There’s a horrifying instant where she feels she’s going to be pushed away, and then she hooks her fingers harder and, at the price of more than one nail being torn off immediately, slows for a single moment.

Momentum being what it is, slowing down like that lets her swing her body towards the wall, hooking both feet against the wall for added points of contact. It’s not enough to stop her movement, but as she grits her teeth and forces her body to obey, there’s a hissing, crackling sound, and she slows down, moment by moment. Eventually she’s just sliding down the unnaturally smooth rock wall, drifting down a smooth face of the Imperial Palace’s plateau towards the tall, fancy buildings that decorate the base of the monolith at a less lethal pace.

And, she notices, leaving a visible streak of blood and carved stone behind her. It’s not exactly, like, fully carved, but she can see slight indents, as if someone took sandpaper to tiny grooves in the shape of her fingers and palm.

Her hand is a bloody, ruined mess, both feet similarly torn up, but… it’s still pretty badass.

Refocusing, she waits as she falls, letting gravity do its work, until she’s close enough she feels she can make it. Only when she’s sure she’s in range (and still far above any patrolling guards or detection arrays they might have along the bottom of the plateau) does she leap off, bracing her legs and launching herself towards the nearest building.

Like every great plateau, the base of the landmark is surrounded by a vast courtyard, where deliveries can be brought up and down and visitors can approach. Anyone really important comes in from above, obviously, but there’s some folks who don’t have the power of flight on hand that are, in theory, important enough to visit. Unlike the sects, the Imperial Palace’s surroundings are empty and still, as if an abandoned place or somewhere sacred, and while the gates remain open, there are large walls surrounding this empty space in a perfect circle. She has no doubt there are plenty of defenses built in there too, ranging from artifacts to formations to hidden defenders of some kind.

She overshoots all of it wildly. 

She can feel blood flowing through her body, the crackling of discordant Qi always made quieter and forced in line when she stresses her body and moves, and she flies through the air much, much further than she expected. She clears the courtyard, then the outer walls entirely. In one leap, she’s launched herself over a hundred feet away from the wall, falling in an arc towards the ground below just over the edge of the Palace walls. Luckily for her, there’s a large amount of open space outside of that, several manors and noble houses taking up the space closer to the Palace and possessing gardens, pools, rivers of their own. She rolls, slamming into the edge of a garden wall hard enough to shatter tiles (and some ribs), bleeding momentum out in a flailing tumble that eventually dumps her in a decorative pond. 

There’s a distant sound of alarm, of people moving and responding, but she’s already out of the water, shedding a lotus flower and a koi fish off as she runs. There’s pain, yes, but she’s used to it, it’s not enough to stop her, and the garden wall is short enough that she leaps over it in a single bound (it’s almost ten feet tall).

And then she’s running. Free. Cobblestones against her bare, bloody feet, the wind brushing through her hair, the night blurring past her as she moves almost as fast as she could as a cultivator. As the houses get smaller and closer together, businesses becoming more frequent, she leaps up and onto the roofing of one of them, tumbling and cursing and getting her feet back beneath her. A moment later, she’s gone, maintaining momentum and vanishing before someone comes to find out what that sound was and discovers it was a case of “flailing woman meeting ceramic tiles”.

And then she’s off, into the night, dancing across rooftops barefoot under the light of sibling moons, bloody and free and on fire with intent.

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Beneath a set of ornate braziers, burning bright and illuminating the skulls that stand in place of fuel within them, a map begins to glow. 

A single point of light begins to smolder, then catch flame, never growing past a fingertip in width and tracking a trail of burnt lines behind itself as it moves through the drawing of a city. 

Orders are given. Things begin to move. A major mobilization begins.

In turn, other defenses are illuminated, triggering arrays of intricate sword-statues and whirling pools of unmelting snowflakes. 

The Imperial Palace, in turn, sees all from out of eyes that are more real than anything else in the city, and informs a lone figure atop a throne.

The night begins to roil as power calls to power, and action calls to consequence.

For just a few more moments, Raika runs free.