Chapter 377 - Practicalities of Revelation

Welp! It's late, but I did do it, and it'll be an earlier bedtime than usual for me. Turns out, this actually wasn't the chapter I had mostly-done; I banged this one out over the last few hours instead of finishing that one, so I've got 1.9k already prepped for tomorrow's three-beat. Wish me luck, as I am... scared and also very sure that I gotta change things, and thus step forward a little further. Expect an update soon!

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People forget, but we were the first. New Inquisum was the birthplace of the Church, or vice-versa. It was we who found the First Among The Dead, who spoke to it first, who began to understand its deeper truths. The world is a story, or a puzzle, or a paradox, and it was we, first faithful of the Church and its greatest congregation, who found the thread we have all learned to pull apart and reweave. So many other cities and towns, graveyards and manors, all throughout this once-great land, owe their continued existence to the truth that was bound to our own Scripture, penned in blood and suffering.

But people forget. They wield their tools, ape their fellows, pray at altars to lesser divinities, and see themselves as superior. They are not. It is with us that the Holiest of Holies resides, with New Inquisum, the city which died entire and was reborn anew. It was our Silent Monks, our Scriveners, our Inquisitoria that found the truth of the End, that found the oncoming dark and has built the steps with which we shall ascend and vanquish it, and be reborn everlasting. 

It is only through our halls that the wisdom of Death flows. But people forget.

Sometimes we must remind them.

-Letter of intent from Inquisitoria Sla Kal, written to their fellow Bishops on the eve of a grand change.

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No one interrupts as they head back towards their manor. For the first time in days, the battlefield doesn’t echo with the sounds of bombardment, digging, and tearing bone and metal. The only sound is that of wind, stirred up by the cataclysm of the battle’s end, whistling strangely over the fields of pure, flattened glass.

Everything northeast of the city, a whole cardinal direction, is black glass now. No more rolling fields of strange un-life, of evolved plants and half-living animals- just the quiet and the stillness of aftermath. 

Raika wonders just how many of the Dirt-Turners she met are gone now, wiped away forever. She wonders if Su Mar made it to safety, and how much of the possibility that they didn’t is her fault.

A lot, she decides.

Jin sleeps the entire way back. Breakthroughs are like that. He’s exhausted, and in spite of the fact that he barely seemed to be pushing through anything at all, the weight of the Qi inside him explains what’s happened easily enough. Not just a breakthrough, either- she saw the way his body forced out impurities from itself, though she didn’t have nearly so much of a reaction to it as Li Shu did. It smelled a bit bad, but even through corpse-senses (which, with her new self-awareness, feel even harder to mantle and use, more distant than ever before) they’re just… mild. 

Through her esoteric perception, it came off as something else. 

It was like… like he sweated out impressions of himself. Half-glimpsed fragments of sense, little scenes or moments or thoughts pushed out of his body as he refined himself to a new stage. Again, without even trying. The kid is flying through the Foundational realm, and making it look easy as he does. 

He knows himself. He’s gone through trial after trial, opportunity after opportunity, and he knows himself. 

There is a part of Raika that feels comforted, however bitter-sweetly, by the thought that even if she is someday truly gone, he’ll be alright. Or at least he’ll keep growing. 

Raika carries him in one of her avatars / dolls / puppets / whatever her corpse and its clone are, landing in the central courtyard of the manor. Behind its bluish-black walls and the small weed-garden of Li Shu’s experimental flora, colored bright white against the gloomy decor, at least she lets herself relax, just a bit. 

It’s not safety, and she knows that, still maintains her guard- but it’s familiar, and it’s a place to operate from and not towards. It’s better than the outside, for now.

And there’s a bed for the kid here.

Her anchored avatar carries him to his room as Li Shu follows, keeping an eye on the kid. Raika can tell that there’s some sort of Death to him, now that she’s let go of some of the pieces of herself that don’t serve her, but it’s a faint thing. She may not need to squint to see it anymore, but beyond the Deaths he has absorbed and wields and… protects(?) inside himself, there is something around him. Like an… imprint, or a strange horizon, half-real behind him. It is far, far away, still shapeless. He’ll be fine. On the other hand, their local Healer has the ability to actually, like, understand what’s happening and study it, so there’s that. Raika’s sure that the Fallen Kingdom must have some way of accessing people’s meridians, or whatever they call spiritual organs here, and she’s sure Li Shu’s probably found it and dissected the whole thing by now, but… she’s never gone and looked into it. 

Now, she might. The kid is growing fast, and she’d… well, she’d like to make sure that he’s growing well, even if there’s not much doubt of that.

Her other corpse is standing in front of the doorway to Jin’s room, waiting patiently. While there aren’t any needles attached to this one (something she’ll probably change soon), it is still wearing Dink around its neck, with Beetle riding proudly on its shoulder and the long, slender blade she’s built worn on her hip.

She’ll have to see if there’s anything left of the Gun made of Pain she made, but either way, the techniques learned and realized from its creation process have paid off in other ways already. The blade hums, and hurts to look at, even through her new embrace of more arcane senses. 

It’s like looking at powdered glass, blowing towards you in the wind.

Her other corpse-puppet opens the door, letting her carry Jin to the bed. She takes a step back right after, letting Li Shu have her space around him.

Her eyes glow with energy as she hones her sight on their shared ward, the Sacrifice she cast swimming through the air. Once again, Raika’s newfound dive into her “real” senses highlights the power of it- she can’t see Li Shu’s death clearly on the horizon, but it exists, just beyond her if one turns to look. A horizon with edges shaped like stitched-together flesh and strange, shifting liquids, which are not water nor blood but born of one to tend to the other. 

A horizon of medical ruin, far, far off in an impossible direction. Staring at Li Shu, Raika notices that it’s actually sort of hard to tell, in a way she hasn’t seen with other Craft users, that she seems… whole. Not like a person wrapped by their own organs and power, but a single, amorphous organism, existing as itself both in and out of a body.

That… bears some resemblance to Raika’s current “self”. Also means it bears some thinking about. Later.

Li Shu’s instruments pull away from where Jin rests, a faint glow of power and medical concepts fading back into them and her. “He’s fine,” she says, turning to where Raika stands, leaning against a wall. “Just worn out, I think. He’ll probably wake up feeling pretty great, but considering how easy the breakthrough was, I’m thinking his collapse has more to do with frequency than intensity. So many breakthrough in such a short period might be straining him a bit.”

“Do you think it will hurt him?” Raika asks, not bothering to move her mouth. Her teeth stand exposed, her lips having receded in a rictus grin and leaving just the shark-like enamel behind. “Should we be teaching him to hold it back until he’s ready?”

“Normally I’d say yes, but you’ve seen how he does this. It’s practically unintentional. Learning more control would be good, how to feel it coming and hold other breakthroughs if needed, but that’s what the Foundational Realm is for. Plus, the theory only holds weight because he’s unconscious right now- the breakthrough was smooth as I’ve ever seen, probably as easy as I’ve ever heard of, and neither his Dantian nor meridians seem any worse for wear.”

Raika smiles, the shift in positioning exposing more or less teeth as needed, though never none. “His body’s just catching up with his spirit, I suppose?”

Li Shu nods. “Something like that. I’ll make sure to take proper notes when we’re done talking.”

“Right. I did ask about those plans you’ve been working on. Do you want to-”

Li Shu shakes her head, raising a hand. “Soon. They’re great, and I would really love your input on them and your help implementing some, but that’s not important. I’m glad you had your breakthrough, though yours was more on every level. Jin had some insights that I… probably should have noticed, but didn’t see. He’s a perceptive kid, and I’m glad he was there to help you for that. I might not have his gentle young-sage enlightenment thing going on, but I’ve got some things we should discuss too. More on the practical side.”

The old feeling of wanting to exhale is still there, but now it’s only conscious, not supported by habit or biology. Jin was right, and a lot more right than she realized. Subconscious processing is a very versatile thing, and she… well, there are things that happen without active, moment-to-moment decision making, off in the background, but it’s different. Without looking away from what she’s doing so as to keep pushing forward, she can feel how she was splitting her own attention, half-heartedly doing things by hand without letting herself really know that fact. The old feeling appears, and the part of her she’d left more-or-less in charge of those subconscious patterns just… isn’t around anymore. It passes.

Instead, she just nods. 

“Fair. You alright to guide the conversation? I’d rather answer your questions before I start introducing new ideas for us to discuss.”

“Gratitude, senior sister.”

This time, the desire to roll her eyes arrives, and she follows through intentionally. It’s not easy with flowers in place of gelatin and pupils, but she manages to get the energy of it across.

Li Shu just giggles lightly. “It’s harder to read you like this, but I’m glad that I can still get a reaction out of you.”

“Fair enough. I’ll try to keep that in mind, junior sister.”

Shaking her head, she turns her body away from Jin on his bed, facing entirely towards Raika, and looks up at her. 

“So, first things first. Symptoms and triage. That knife.”

“Under control, for now.”

“How?”

Raika shifts, lifting a hand to the hole carved into her upper ribcage. It’s still present, even if the conceptual blade has vanished from it, retreating back. 

But that’s not really accurate, really. It didn’t retreat. She advanced.

“I… accepted that I’m dead. More than before, I mean. Not that I’m a corpse, but that I’m Dead. The Raika-that-was… having her memories, her motivations, it doesn’t mean that I’m her. It doesn’t not mean I’m her, maybe, but… at the core of me, I’m powering myself with that collapse, that Echo of myself. Except I’m the Echo. I’m her… but I’m also me. She died. Her story ended. A new story began.”

“But you’re still… you?”

“Yes. I still identify as Raika, that’s fine, but it’s… I’m no more that Raika than that Raika was a child huddled in a cold cabin, or a cultivator of the Hungering Roots sect. It’s… Death is Change. They’re one and the same, and I have touched on the ur-concept of CHANGE.”

She waits a moment for the thrumming of reality to dissipate, for the wood-grain of the room to stop changing patterns, for the air to still. 

“I think we’re always dying. Every moment, a version of us dies. I’m the Echo of one of those Deaths, not a new Raika born. Except the necromancy makes that sort of… wibbly-wobbly. My Truths make up for the rest, and the kid’s insights. I’ve changed from who I was. I’m still changing. I’m believing new things, thinking new thoughts, and I’m of that original Raika, even if I’m… more of an offshoot than a continuation. We’re the same, and we’re not.”

Li Shu nods. “As Above, So Below.”

“Maybe for you. For me, it’s… I Am Me, I Am Mine. Doesn’t say I have to be the same me- especially since I Can Change. I just… you and the kid pointed out some stuff I’ve been neglecting. Thoughts I’ve been having and haven’t questioned. Letting go of those is a process, but it’s started and it’s moving. So I… moved forward. And the blade stayed still. I pulled away from it.”

“But it’s still there, isn’t it.”

Not a question, of course. The answer’s too obvious for that.

“Yeah. It’s lost track of me, maybe permanently, maybe not. I think accessing that old version of myself, getting too close to who that Raika was, back in the fight, was what led it to me. Now, it’s… somewhere back in the space of the dead-and-not-dead original me. Still a threat, sure, but I… reached in. Found something to eat. Myself, to be specific. The Echo of Raika’s Death, the thing that I am- I became it, rather than just kind of being part of it, wrapped around a fragment of myself. That’s why the flower-eyes and all the other shit.”

“It’s a… rather striking look.”

“That’s me, sister. Striking.”

A laugh at that. “Perfectly true, madwoman. But- even if the knife isn’t ‘here’, it’s still there. Which means that the one who wields it knows that you’re here.”

Raika nods again, long locks of echo-limbs swaying from her head in the movement. “I can’t imagine that he wasn’t already aware that something’s going on, but whatever he knew before, yeah, he knows that I’m… well, that me and Raika which is and is-not me are more active. Capable of, if we go the right way, return to what we were. I’m moving away for, well, health reasons, as you pointed out, but also to stay ahead.”

“Right. Do you think he’ll be coming here?”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure. When I reconnected to who I was, back in the battle, it… I felt things. I already knew that other parts survived- if anything, I’m behind the curve. Plenty of pieces of me moved on from who we were, without needing to die or blow themselves up a bunch first, but we’re still connected. That’s why the knife is still around. I felt some of that connection. I think, whoever the Feng bastard is, he’s doing something back in Morae. I didn’t get the impression that he’s hunting parts of me, more that he’s… building something, maybe? I think he wants to draw us back there, or reconnect us so his Soul can finish the job it started.”

Li Shu blinks. “That… the knife is his Soul? But it’s…”

“Shaped to me specifically, yeah. And made of the End, at least in part. No clue how, but the world is full of plenty of mysteries and strangeness. A thousand more years and we won’t get to see all of it, nevermind understand it all.”

“Well, speak for yourself. I’m learning fast.”

“Yeah, but you’re making new things. Your senior sister thinks that you’ll be too busy adding to all that strangeness to go back for historical surveys.”

A snort, dramatically loud for Li Shu’s dainty little nose. “Maybe. I suppose I have my hands at least half-full coming up with things to keep you occupied and figure out all the mess you stumble into.”

“That’s the spirit.”

A moment of silence passes. Companionable silence, the kind they haven’t shared in a while, even with Raika’s push to continue. She’s… not sure if she’ll keep that up. It’s a way of acquiring and consuming more Death, sure, but deeply inefficient, only made viable by her Truth. And… she’s dead.

It’s… mmh. Easy to see how the Bishops get so alien so fast, in spite of all their mannerisms and behaviors. Easy to neglect the things you don’t need. Though she supposes it’s not so different from cultivation in general in that regard.

“Alright then,” Li Shu says, interrupting Raika’s philosophizing. “Most immediate issue shelved for now, then. You won’t be getting unmade right this moment, not unless something drastic changes?”

“Not unless something drastic changes.”

“Right. Almost guaranteed, but not immediately, so the point stands. Next, then- the plan is working. How are we pushing forward?”

Being expressionless and even more corpse-like than she was earlier that morning, Raika still has a large, loud urge to smile at that. The immediate acceptance of the plan, in spite of its flaws, of her own. That use of “we”.

She really doesn’t deserve such good friends. She’s happy she has them anyways. 

“Right. You mentioned ideas you had. I think… maybe I step back a bit. Start acting less like a front-liner, at least for now. We can work together on ideas you have, I can figure out where they’ll cause the most disruption, or you’ll let me know what you see, whatever the case may be. We’ll work more closely with the Bishops we have. Say what you will about their allegiances, I think we’re just too interesting to pass up. Jin’s point about the undead not having a subconscious, of falling into patterns, is likely an issue for them too, and we can add some variety to that mix. Meanwhile… we push forward. We walk differently, but forward.”

“Either way, the way is forward.”

Raika blinks (another thing that’s surprisingly awkward with flowers for eyes). “...Yeah. Well phrased, actually. I might use that.”

“Nope. Not allowed. I’m afraid I’ll have to keep it permanently for myself alone.”

Inhale, exhale- not a centering technique, not a way to make her feel even slightly alive, just a way to make a sighing sound as dramatically as possible.

“Very well. I guess I’ll have to settle for whatever crazy idea you have for my stuff.”

Li Shu grins wide, nodding. “Yup! I think you’re going to love what I’m doing with puppetry right now. If it’s alright, I’d like to examine your… corpse-puppets? There’s some theories I’d like confirmed, or new ideas I’d like to dig for, and you’re the perfect specimen to study. We can do some research together as we review how we can cooperate. I’ll compile my notes on Jin’s impurities later, see if they fit a hypothesis I have- but once that’s done, I think I’d like to come along to speak to that Bishop, see what they can offer and just how weird we can be. The more unpredictable and asymmetrical our abilities, the better off we’ll be against a superior force.”

Raika smiles, pulling at the energies holding her corpse-avatar together to make its fangs all the longer against dried gums. “Alright then. Either way, the way is forward.”

“Hey!”

“It’s a really good line, junior sister. As your senior and superior madwoman, I simply have no choice but to steal it.”