Book One, Chapter 11 - Sweet Sweet Suffering (And, Impossibly, Kindness)

Alright! Another edited chapter! I'm not managing to go fully back to a chapter a day just yet, but doing something per day is progress. This one went through a lot of edits in the first half, and I like them all, so I guess I'm doing something right!

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It is difficult to articulate what it takes to become powerful. There are many ingredients, many possible interpretations and directions one can take, but the fundamental reality of what is absolutely essential is almost impossible to describe. 

If you practice wielding a sword, you become better at wielding a sword. Manipulate a person, and you become a better manipulator. Learn something, and your knowledge and perception grow and change. Grab hold of everything your hands can reach and hold tight, or be capable of letting go. Embody an element and the tenets within it, devour resources by the mountain-full, embrace skills and face challenges head-on and subvert what’s expected, or do none of the above.

Not a single one of these things is the key to becoming powerful. 

To be powerful is, explicitly, to see what is, and decide what it will be. It is the sword-swing that takes a life. It is the whispered word that breaks a mind or makes a kingdom. Some would argue that this is merely a matter of scale, of the degrees of experience and understanding and strength one possesses, and to a certain point, they’re right. At the edge of that point is where one finds the above-average, the self-possessed, the brave and the smart, those who have embarked on meaningful journeys and may even complete them.

Power is beyond and above and beside and below that point. It surrounds it and supplants it and is what all other things are built off of- or not.  

Power is the ability to face down strife and consume it. To suffer and remake yourself in the face of the impossible and possible alike. 

Power comes from madness. Madness is the flame which lies below any other aspect, beneath any ingredient or recipe or flavor. It takes madness to look at the world, at your fellows, and see that you know better- and make of your will and self what is. 

-”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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She still can’t feel Qi. There is every chance that she will be as ruined today as on her last breath, and that in all that time, she will never again feel the Qi of the world, drawn into her being and suffusing her from within. The memory of it is… hard to touch, and harder still to articulate to herself. Like feeling an idea that is a cold drink of water that is a burning hot stream of power slip from out of the world into her being, infinitely mutable and yet impossibly solid. The thoughts feel almost distant now, their truth factual but the feelings behind them fading; it’s like reminding oneself what it’s like to eat a steak, rare and dripping with butter and salt, when one has no teeth, no tongue, and has not had them for many months. She remembers what it was like to grasp at it, to feel her physical self fade away as she delved into that trance that spiritual organs help one develop, shaping the blood of all that is through will and intent, by patience and technique. 

But the feeling is fading. The actual experience of it, beyond what she did, how she acted, the words she put to things, is dimming.

She may very well die without feeling it even once more.

She might also die without getting laid again, and the similarities between the two thoughts, while one is an order of magnitude lesser than the other, is almost enough to make her laugh. 

It’s almost enough to make her cry.

Luckily, neither one is particularly what she’d like to do at the moment, so she lets herself ignore both impulses completely.

It’s one thing to… hmm. Metaphor… what metaphor would fit… it’s perhaps better to remember that food exists, and can be eaten, even without teeth or tongue. The factual existence of things changes only in one’s experience of them, she thinks.

It’s pretty much insane, to do as she’s been doing, to constantly leave herself feeling nauseous and feverish and pained by her meditations, all while living amongst cold alleyways and actively suffering from starvation. Still, madness aside (or perhaps included), she can hold herself to certain core truths.

One: Qi still exists. Her inability to see it or feel it or- her inability to experience it doesn’t change that fact.

Two: Qi exists in her, because Qi exists in all things, even things without spiritual organs, even dead things or things that have never been alive. 

Three: She is influencing it. Somehow.

Her thoughts circle back around to the idea of natural formations again. While she was always a very… direct sort of power-wielder, learning about the ways other people can use Qi and techniques is and always will be quintessential to surviving them. While cultivation can manifest as, she’s pretty sure, anything, the styles of it are more… quantifiable.

One can infuse Qi into one’s body, highlighting selected features or empowering oneself with the energies and types of Qi that one has absorbed.

One can infuse Qi into their techniques, manifesting unique attacks, alterations to the world, etc.

One can infuse Qi into their knowledge, and form new patterns with it.

Pull back far enough and all effects and ideas overlap, sure, but that’s not the point. The point is, a “formation” is a word used for when Qi is placed into a pattern that generates an effect. Simple enough. Technically, the way one moves Qi through their meridians is a “formation”, whose effect is “cultivation”. The term is usually reserved for more complex patterns, though- specifically, manipulating Qi in a way that causes an effect without requiring the user’s own Qi pool or direct control. Runic arrays to summon fire, complex talismans to manifest shields and jade soldiers, things that, when activated, cause the effect carved into them.

Now, a natural formation is similar, save that they don’t require spell-craft or complex runes. Through natural occurrences, such as the changing of the seasons, the movement of a river, the growing of plants in advantageous patterns, Qi begins to flow in a circuit, growing and causing any variety of effects, from infusion of elemental properties to the creation of minor spirits. Energy is influenced by the shape of a river, or the random order of rocks nearby, or a tree growing just so as the wind passes through it, and begins to feed into itself and change the environment. Some consider it a blessing of Heaven’s will, others a simpler matter of the wonders and intricacies of Qi and all its forms, but in the end the truth is the same; Qi, touching only naturally occurring formations and minor curiosities, does things. It is influenced by its environment, and influences it in turn.

Now, excavated of her own organs, Raika is as natural as Heaven could intend. A dying, fleshy thing, which exists barely higher than an animal, and lower than most- just as the gods would keep all mortals, were it not for cultivation.

And if she squints really hard (and uses some of those tasty little nuggets of madness she’s been holding back for a rainy day), aren’t her insides an environment? Just as natural as rocks and rivers and trees, but… messier?

She’s not a medical specialist, but parasites can live in her, and her blood flows like rivers, her organs like lakes, her bones like stones, her breath like wind. It’s a stretch, but it’s true enough that it must be (is, has to be, can only be) true. 

She just needs to get the patterns to do… something. Anything.

Dink helps. What she’s figured out helps more.

Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Bo-boom. Boom-boom.

Again and again, always and forever until she is no longer there to listen to it. Each and every moment, that beat pumps blood through her body, from ruined leg to ruined ribs and up to barely-sane mind and back down again, every inch and place and moment of her touched by it. It beats unevenly, pressured by wounds and scar tissue and poorly healed bone, and every time it does, her existence is prolonged just a bit more.

She’s decided to stop letting it freeload and waste her time.

Like with Dink, she starts to meditate, letting her imagination run wild and then viciously leashing it to her purpose. She pictures the mist again, flowing unimpeded through the environment and her flesh, neither absorbed nor maintained, only the bits of it floating in her of any use. She feels her heart pulse, and with each beat, she focuses on her skin, feels it vibrate and ripple, feels her the sound of her life tremble through it, and pictures the mist beginning to swirl, pictures it responding to the physical influence. Outside of her it flutters away, pushed aside by the movement, the minor vibration just barely enough to move something lighter than air out, and on the other side of that barrier, keep it in. 

She holds the image. It’s not an image- it’s what is. She knows it. To do less than know it would mean it isn’t true. 

The flow of power thus limited, she pictures it fluttering, becoming a breeze, moved and trembling in tune with her heart.

Focus.

Dink, goes her companion, adding its measured rhythm to her meditation.

My skin is mine. My body is mine. It’s under my control, and I’m under its. 

She might not have the proper organs for Qi manipulation anymore, but those selfsame spiritual organs don’t work without willpower and focus.

Dink.

She pictures it. Her blood, holding material it’s unwilling to absorb. Her bones, saturated with vital energy and flavoring the Qi around it, attuning it to life, to her life. Her skin, a barrier that breathes alongside her, pulling in what is useful, over and over, and vibrating in tune with her heart and Dink to keep it in.

She remembers her teeth around a throat. The sensation of pulling in rivers of reality, feeding her own meaning. The sensation of her flesh being torn and shattered. Her teeth around a throat. 

Her teeth around a throat.

Hot, pulsing blood. Alive, flowing down her gullet, feeding her, part of her, just as the rest of what’s inside is part of her. 

She stops seeing the mist. Stops seeing the droplets of nothing she’s been picturing.

It’s blood.

It’s living. It’s inside her. It beats in time to her heart.

It’s… it’s almost there. She can picture it so, so clearly. If she can just-

Dink.

Agony.

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Raika spends a week in some of the worst pain she’s ever felt.

It’s like razor blades under her skin, like burning embers through her veins, the agony of pins and needles touching every part of her. She feels parts of herself she does not know, has never felt before, screaming and wriggling and trying to do something, so much that she is squirming and writhing whenever she can move because even the cold is better than the constant background screaming and scratching and poking and burning. She vomits even with her belly empty, barely able to hold down melted snow, breath hitching like she has hiccups and a cough and a blockage in her throat all at once for days. Her heart stutters and hurts in her chest and flutters with that same pins and needles sensation and she catches herself bleeding from her eyes twice (turns out the inside of her skull doesn’t hurt! Just every other part of it!), spitting up red and bile and blowing a nose runny with snot and crimson.

It’s the best feeling in the world.

It means that it worked.

Every single moment she feels the full-body ruin and the impossible, pervasive feeling of something she does not understand, she feels like she could laugh, like she could scream at the heavens, could roar in victory. She wants to pin someone down and bite or hit or grind or just hug their flesh to pulp, she wants to scream until her voice breaks, she wants to scratch and claw and hit something because she was right. It is the worst week of her life and it is her fault and what a joy that is. 

Something she does not understand ravages what’s left of her, and she trembles from joyous adrenaline because she is what has caused it. Her will, her imagination, her idea and her heartbeat brought this about somehow, whatever the fuck it may be, and when she survives it, she’s going to do it all again, because it’s better than nothing.

And then she’s going to find a way to pay back JiaJia, because she owes that kid.

He comes back two days later. She thinks he says something about having trouble finding his way back, or maybe something about not being able to come earlier (plenty of guys would be jealous, she thinks, and maybe says, and as distasteful as the joke is, it makes her giggle instead of cry for a bit). She wasn’t exactly in the best state to receive visitors, even compared to normal, but… he came back again after. 

When she couldn’t speak, her companion came to her rescue once more. For yes, one Dink. For no, two. He brought her some scraps, mostly old bread and some fish on the edge of going bad, and clean water every now and then. 

He helped her go to the restroom. A stranger, a ruined nobody in the street. Fuck, the kid’s life must suck.

Still, she stops going at all after day four; no food to shit and mostly just blood all around, dribbles here and there. In her delirium, memory twinges of old stories, of how cultivators in the olden days before the Empire had to mutilate themselves to remove impurities as they cultivated, before proper methods and the grace of the Emperor were instituted.

The comparison makes her smile.

Eventually, the week does end. The pain starts to subside. Her body remains both numb and as hypersensitive as a newborn, every move making her tremble and wince, but it no longer screams bloody murder at the fact that it exists. She feels weaker than since before she met Dink, and nearly as hungry as when she bought it.

She exhales, tasting crimson in the back of her throat. She inhales, tasting the freezing cold of the air around her, feeling how it makes organs ache and lungs sting.

Inhale. 

Exhale.

She needs food. The kid’s helped, kept her alive, but it’s been a week of bare scraps for a body already starving, and for all that she owes him, for all that he’s helped, he’s no healer, and not nearly so close as to stay by her side. He visits, is likely to visit today, even, but… she refuses to rely on him alone.

Inhale.

Exhale.

She places her hand on the wall.

And she gets up.

One hand. Not her full body leaning against it. Not an agonizing, inch-by-inch crawl up the brick and wood.

She places her hand on the stone, places her left leg beneath her, and then she is standing.

She turns her head at the sound of crackling snow and footfalls, hearing someone come around the corner of her little cluster of alleyways.

JiaJia looks genuinely terrified as he turns the corner at just the right time to see the smile on her face.

She considers schooling her expression, explaining herself, but… fuck it. Instead, putting more weight on her right leg than she’s been able to for months, she gives him a bow. As close to a proper one as she can, making it most of the way to the 90 degree angle of utmost respect, back as straight as she can hold it.

“Thank you,” she says simply.

Jiajia gulps audibly, but… he does calm down again. He rubs the back of his head, seemingly more embarrassed at the genuine thanks than at helping her piss. “Well it’s… it’s fine, old hag. I didn’t-”

She glares at him so hard he immediately apologizes again. “It’s- not that it’s not- thank you too?”

She sighs. The kid’s an idiot.

She grabs her crutch, leaning against it again but marveling at how much lighter it feels. It’s less a cudgel she’s wielding (it was never a cudgel, the damn thing weighs less than four pounds), more something like its intended purpose, something easier to move than ruined limbs. She smiles again, softer for the kid’s benefit, but the joy, as savage and wild and hungry as it’s ever been, is right there, bright and loud in her mind.

“Come on, brat,” she rasps. “There’s trash I haven’t dug through in days, and I’m starved.”

JiaJia nods, then realizes what she says and laughs. “Well, sorry my fine cuisine isn’t enough to satisfy this strange old wall lady I found,” he says with a cheeky grin. “I suppose if one wishes for a return to normal fare, this one won’t stand in the way!”

“Yeah, yeah,” she rasps, hitting him in the forehead with Dink as she walks by. “How’re the whores? Happy enough to keep you around?”

He shrugs, catching up as she starts to shuffle, both of them outlined by the stark white of fresh snow which has barely stopped in weeks. He walks a bit ahead of her, cutting a bit of a path through some of it, and she marks it down in her mind as another thing she’ll pay the brat back for. “They like me enough, I guess,” he says. “Said I ain’t tough enough to act as the security, like you suggested, but I still know the books better than anybody but the boss.” He shrugs again. “Dunno why, but it’s good for me.”

“Lazy people make for sloppy work,” Raika rasps. “Probably got used to you and let her effort fall apart. Idiots are as they are, and no more.”

He seems a bit uncomfortable at calling his boss an idiot, but he doesn’t refute her, so at least he’s smart enough for that. “Well, either way, I still have a place. Some of my elder sisters are even acting nice to me now, so I guess you were right about how bad he was too.”

“Don’t feign ignorance,” she snarls. “Don’t pretend. He hit you and he did it easy. Means he did worse before.”

He goes to say something, some heat coming to his cheeks, but then he does actually stop and think. The kid’s got brains, even if he is an idiot; lords know it’s rare for someone to listen when they should.

Eventually, he nods. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I don’t think anybody’s sad he’s gone, but… he was like an uncle, I think. Never had one before, but he’d let me hang around him sometimes. He used to give me some of the crispy bits whenever we had a better meal. Didn’t start hitting me till a few years back. Just hurts, I guess. Makes it easier but… also harder? Easy and hard if I think of him like my uncle, easy and harder if he was just… bad.”

“Few things worth much are easy,” she rasps. “Find out how it makes it harder. Understand it. Use it, if you can, and make sure whatever comes next is something you will allow.”

He looks at her. “You talk a lot more now, huh?”

She gives another shark grin. “Yes.”

“Well… sure, why not,” he mumbles. “Just don’t go acting like you’re all wise, granny hag. I’ve had to watch you piss way too many times to take any “old sage” crap from you.”

The brat has the cheek to dodge when she swings Dink at his head, but he doesn’t quite manage to dodge the crutch to the forehead smack that comes right after.

“Respect your elders, shithead!” Raika rasps, half-smiling as she does. “I’m not even thirty, either!”

He laughs as she hobbles after him, doing a terrible job of disproving the granny-ness of her age, but she feels so good she’ll probably let him get away with it. Little brat helped her survive whatever the fuck she just did to herself, he’s earned some leeway.

Especially since she’s definitely going to do that again.