Everything is fucking itchy.

The needles in her head are one thing, and she feels like a dog trying to get at some sort of cut despite having a cone around its head. But it's more than that! None of the other divisions of Multiplicity needed a fucking babysitter for things!

She grumbles, deep in her throat, cracking the knuckles on her right hand with her thumb.

"Master?"

She startles, turning to look at Jin.

"Hmm? You alright?"

He nods politely, though from the way he rolls his eyes, it's pretty clear that he's pretty tired of that question.

"Yes, master, I'm fine, but you're fidgeting again. You told me to tell you if you're fidgeting."

"Right. Right. And I can't smoke either, unless…?"

"No, master, you still can't smoke. You told me to tell you that if you want to smoke, it's because you have a bad habit and that to control yourself entirely is the sort of thing that smart, pretentious people tell you is very important."

"Do you think I'm pretentious, Jin?"

"You are very smart, master."

She lets out a faux-gasp, turning to face Li Shu. "Did you hear that? The sass? The back-talk? The sheer disrespect of it all? How will I ever properly establish my student as worthwhile when he can so casually speak such cruelties to his master?"

Li Shu smiles, politely, hiding much more amusement behind it. "Perhaps you should simply pass him in to me, since you're obviously having trouble with the proper care and training of a student."

"Truly I am surrounded on all sides by traitors and charlatans, all-too-willing to gift me betrayal for my kindness. Tell me the truth, doctor, you just want me for my body, don't you?"

She snorts back at Raika. "Surely not. As if I would let something so simple as a revolutionary medical marvel and miracle of biology distract from our friendship. Surely you simply need to reinforce our relationship by gifting me more materials and supplies."

A snort, full-bodied and full of humor. Raika shakes her head, muttering to herself as they walk.

"Traitors. I'm surrounded by traitors."

It's itchy.

The arm.

Or… where the arm isn't. It's itchy.

She formed first out of all of the multiples. Of all the sub-bodies that spawned from the Body, she was first, and so, right of first form was hers. She could have chosen to appear as anyone, to appear as any thing, so long as she never lost the foremost ability for which she made herself / was chosen; her ability to see, and carve, arrays and formations.

But she chose this. With the arm missing.

Of all of her forms, she is the most vulnerable. No hyper-efficient biology to pull her through violence and motion, no Daos to warm or arm herself with, but unlike what she's calling the other "learner" brains, she's out and about, trailing through the world. There are some of her that stayed with the whole, or got launched only close by, and who are even now focused on the basics of alchemy, engineering, mechanics, and she, working with arrays and formations, could have remained with them.

But she's out and about. In the world, walking alongside her student and her most trusted confidant, missing an arm, with a few books inside her, another in her free hand, and as distressingly human as she can force herself to be.

And missing an arm.

Did she choose to do so out of… what, the desire to add more limitations? The perception of herself as limited?

But she's been one-armed before, and it never felt like a limitation, not really. Just a stylistic choice.

Of course, most other versions of her could make or unmake that choice freely. Could hold other weapons and tools within themselves, defenses and mechanisms aplenty. This Raika? She has to work for it, now. Kind of. Sort of.

She sighs, closing the book one-handed and letting her hand rest to one side, where sharp fangs gently pluck it away.

She pats the crocodilian creature on the head, scratching the spirit beast right behind the main head-ridge, where it likes. Three of the hundred or so legs it has kick at the air like a puppy as she scratches, and a low, growly sort of hiss echoes from inside the creature's cavernously long torso.

"See what I have to deal with, crawly? It's shameful it is. All these disloyal hangers-on, just after me for my body and my money. But not you, huh? No, you're a good centi-croc, aintcha? Utterly loyal, no need to even consider payment."

For a centipede, crocodilian spirit beast, which only mostly bears resemblance to either creature, it is surprisingly successful at making puppy-dog eyes up at her.

She laughs, forming a snippet of flesh from out of her palm and tossing it to the creature, who eagerly leaps at the treat and almost knocks over Jin in its happy pursuit.

A sharp click of mandibles, right against her ear, chastises her for giving special attention to an underling before the true follower, the loyal one, the eager and willing and ever-friendly-

"Yeah, yeah, some for you too, lil guy," she says, forming another gobbet for Beetle.

It's a middle ground. She's removed herself from the vast majority of her powers, for now. Fuck, she doesn't even have nanoscales at the moment, barely more durable than either of her humanoid companions. Any good strike could just punch right through all her major organs no problem at all! Not that that hasn't happened plenty of times before, it's just… well now it's easier. Again.

But she's not powerless. Given a few decades of work, maybe she could afford to be, somewhere out on her own as she learns, but here? Now? Not a price that is easy to pay, not one she's willing to pay at all, even without the "expedited timetable" of the incoming end of the world. So… no Dao, no hyper-biology, no morphic transformations, limiting even her Truths for herself in their more literal interpretations. She learns fast, but not that fast, not so fast she can fight at peak level with just arrays and magic formulae. So… compromise.

Pets.

There were more than a few fancy little creatures and beings inside her inner world who were just eating and growing. It seemed about time to let some of them out.

And so, the weakest Raika walks along the tunnels of the Undergrowth alongside a monstrous reptile with a hundred legs, a palm-sized and weirdly conscious Beetle, and a small collection of parasitic, glowing worms that are mostly hiding out under her skin. And Li Shu and Jin, but they don't really count as pets by technical definition.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

She hops down from off the root they're walking on, landing on one beneath that continues to point the way they're going, and instinctively turns around to help Jin come down. She's a half-second too late, though; he's already jumped the ten-foot gap with ease, landing as if it was no more difficult than coming off of a tall step of a stair.

She blinks, and he looks at her, awkwardly, as she's left standing there, her hand upraised to help lift him down.

"Master?"

"...Right. I keep forgetting, you're a proper cultivator, huh?"

He smiles softly, giving a shallow bow. "With your aid, master."

Her first instinct is to snort, roll her eyes, play it off, but…

The memory of him. Quiet and still. Staring at nothing, past her, to the bodies, piled high along the hallway's sides. To when his eyes closed, and he went to sleep, and wouldn't wake up.

"True enough," she says instead.

Li Shu makes it down just as easily- in fact, maybe a little less easily. Both of her cultivator friends aren't specialized for physical modification body enhancement, at least not in the traditional sense, but Li Shu especially is on the more esoteric side of things. Most of her Qi is spread between a full set of spiritual organs, and then a second set, floating along besides her in the form of her Sacrifice, and keeping both active at once takes… not more Qi, necessarily, but more effort, perhaps. Enough to power her Truths constantly, forcing her body, her reality, to reconcile having two sets of metaphysics at once.

As Above, So below.

As Within, So Without.

Both of them the same Truth, neither of them the same Truth. Or… different versions of the same truth, maybe. In the end, though, their existence ties into her third: To All Things, A Cost. For All Things, A Price.

She's similar to Raika in that way. Only by a sequence of multiple Truths, acting in synch, is she able to exist as she does. She pays a price, and with that price, maintains a balance, enforces her Truths without breaking herself, and keeps multiple sets of power, multiple forms of spiritual organs, operating at once. Cultivation and Craft, in sync; and in turn, her Qi runs divided, and less easily through both. So yeah, a teenager who's been cultivating barely less than she has is a bit stronger than her physically.

And, quite frankly, both of them could out-wrestle Raika right now.

Not easily! She'd never allow herself to go down easily, and her size is still an advantage, but in terms of physical prowess, she's got nothing going on beyond what's necessary to traverse the wilds towards their destination.

Three abstract, concept-focused Qi users, wandering through the most dangerous parts of some of the most dangerous places in the world, accompanied by a centicroc and a bug.

Many-Mouths offered closer aid, but that wouldn't help anything. If anything at all, it would harm Raika's purpose here, to get stronger and learn. Still, she's pretty sure that the Apex has gone out of its way to guide them past any of the more outright-lethal territories on their path, or even shifted some of them out of the way. In the week they've been traveling, they've been moving incredibly quickly through the world, and have yet to stumble onto any place like the stone prairie when they first arrived, or the domain of any particularly ornery spirit beasts, the ones that could kill any one of them fairly easily.

That doesn't mean they haven't met anyone on their way, though. The centicroc has eaten well on their trip, and all three of them have managed to get the bare minimum in terms of learning to fight together. Plenty of weaker (and, frankly, stupider or more feral) spirit beasts willing to come out for fisticuffs, and apparently, Many-Mouths doesn't mind losing a few of its weaker constituents to Raika's training regimen.

"Any idea how close we are?" Jin asks, for the third time that day.

It's fine. It's fine! He used to ask three times an hour, so this is way better. Totally not still annoying in a way she finds weirdly endearing.

"Still a few days out, I think" Raika replies, indicating with her chin the path ahead into thick underbrush. Currently, they're walking along root-systems that feed interwoven trees and some sort of coral growths, all of them partially formed of some sort of whispering, airy Qi that manifests as whistles and song as they move. It's beautiful- and, once one is properly desensitized, deeply annoying.

"You're probably better suited to tell than either of us anyways, kid," she tells him. "Why don't you stretch your senses a bit? Give us an estimate."

He nods, going to take a seat out of habit- and blinking when he sees that Raika doesn't stop walking.

"Can't always sit and meditate your way into Qi senses!" she calls over her shoulder. "Walk and talk, oh student of mine."

Li Shu giggles as he blushes, jogging to catch back up to both of their longer strides. She smells the scent of smoke and quiet words as he cycles his Qi beside her, the action a bit awkward but functional. Most of his time cultivating has been spent in… well, never seclusion, but generally speaking, "advantageous" circumstances. The isolated field around their house in the third ring, inside of Raika's strider-form as they travel, in a fortress-city flooded with Death or sleeping through the dead sands beyond. He's still picking up the hang of some of the tricks of the trade, even if he's grown startlingly fast. The kid's knocking on the door of halfway through the Foundational realm after less than a year of cultivating, but that's no excuse to not teach him how to use his powers smartly.

He frowns in concentration, his brow furrowed, but after a few more minutes of walking, he opens them wide, smiling up at her. "I think just one more day! It feels close. The air's getting a lot louder than before."

She nods. Not… quite what she intended.

Hmm.

"Glad to hear it, student. How is it that you learned to manifest synesthesia through your Qi senses so very early?"

"Synesthesee?"

"Synesthesia, my apprentice. Li Shu?"

"Synesthesia: A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color."

"Or as when Qi manifests as sound, rather than abstract, hard-to-describe all-new senses."

"Well, I-"

"Cause if you did, that's fine! It's a fine way to describe things, hearing them. But if, perhaps, my young student were relying on his innate connection to spirits and death, rather than his ability to sense Qi, well, that's a rather different sort of lesson than the point of this one, isn't it?"

He lets out a sigh, frustrated.

"It's not exactly easy out here! It gets louder the closer we get. At this point, I more have to ignore it than look for it."

"All the more reason to tune it out and focus on your Qi. You have an innate talent, that's true, and I think we can all agree it's helping you to develop in a very personal and unique way, more than the average cultivator. That's a good thing. But only if it doesn't hurt you in other ways. Like, say, making you neglect your Qi senses."

He grumbles something, real low, but is too polite to say it. It's kind of sweet, honestly- for a street urchin, he's taken to propriety better than she could have expected, and damn quickly too.

She senses his cultivation pulse and cycle again, his scent becoming a bit clearer as he pushes. It takes more than a few minutes this time- closer to ten. He has to keep stopping and starting whenever he almost trips over debris or is whacked in the face by a low-hanging branch of coral, infused with air and song.

"...Maybe more than a day. Maybe. It's… cycling. Waves. On a far off shoreline."

She nods. "Better. Keep at it for a bit. Try and tune out everything- but focus closer. Around yourself. If you can, try to walk with your eyes closed."

He takes it as an order, or maybe a challenge, and immediately shuts them- at which point she has to grab him by the collar and pull him to one side so he doesn't step off the side of the path."

To his credit, he doesn't open his eyes. Just frowns, and cycles a bit "louder".

He's doing fine. Growing well. She nods to Li Shu, who nods back to her.

As they walk, all three of them work.

Jin cycles, his senses forming, bit by bit. Li Shu weaves, literally, her telekinesis guiding forms of inhuman, unnatural biology in patterns and her Qi forming life out of the concepts imbued in them. Threads of crimson form and are unmade, a tapestry almost like a body, and then gone again.

And Raika carves.

In her skin. Under her muscles. On her bones.

Patterns.

Over and over and over and over, letting the pain pass as the transient guideline that it is.

Pain, and healing, once they become familiar enough, feel like itching.

And it itches. And it itches. And it itches.

It itches worse when they work.

She finds the patterns that itch, and takes back her book to write them down.

Centicroc nuzzles its head under her hand, and Beetle stamps on her shoulder, polite but concerned.

It's ok though. She does what she has to do to learn.

They're low on time. A bit more than a day, but not too much, before they reach their destination.

Whispering on the wind, loud enough that her student has to tune out the noise. Bright enough when she squints that the horizon waves, like pale flesh, twisting around and around itself.

The Fallen Kingdom. Coming closer every day.

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