It's getting to the point where she can feel it too. She barely needs to squint to see the way that Death lives in the world to come, the lands ahead. Like a horizon full of maggots, except maggots are alive too, aren't they? Tied to death, forever and ever, fed by it and alive because of it, but in the end, alive.

What's to come, what's they're stepping towards, step by step, is not alive. But it moves. But it breathes. But it lives.

And she can smell it more than she can see it. Incense and ash. Funerary rites and mortuary stone. The frankincense and myrrh that anoint the dead, before they are buried with all rites.

And beneath it all, creeping around its edges and across its form, is the death. The cold, callous smell, of meat that has no blood, of hearts that do not beat, of the shadow behind the eyes where life used to be.

But no rot. That stands out- there's no rot. Or… very little? For a place that lives and is themed around death, there's no smell of decay, none of the fermenting mess that stands inevitable as the fate of the fallen, whether they are buried, planted, eaten or burnt.

But then, that's not all the Fallen Kingdom is, is it? It's not just death. If it was, they wouldn't have moved at the sign of the Cold Sun's imminent arrival. Or… they would have moved differently? Hard to know for sure, especially without context, but they're as much the use of death, the preservation in the face of it, as they are anything else.

At least that's the impression she gets, as she sneezes for the fourth time in as many minutes.

"As your doctor, I don't think it's particularly good to smoke, even with enhanced biology," Li Shu reiterates for the fourth time in as many hours.

"Well I don't think it's particularly good to blow out my nostrils every few minutes because of how much the place stinks!"

Li Shu looks at her, frowning. And then breaks eye contact to look around, instead, her Sacrifice hovering and acting as satellites, expanding her Qi senses out much further than she can normally do.

"It is… stifling."

"See! Even the kid's going to get a migraine out of this mess, and he's made for it!"

"Actually, I'm-"

"Shush!" she says, pointing at him. "You're going to get a migraine! Because it's overwhelming! So there!"

He rolls his eyes, but doesn't say anything this time. She pretends not to notice the look he gives Li Shu behind her back, though.

"I still think your smoke is terrible and annoying and not good for the lungs of mere weaklings like ourselves. And it smells bad."

"It smells like caves and-"

"And blood, Raika! It smells like cold moss and blood, and it's a heavy smoke, and it's annoying, and it's bad for your lungs, and-"

"Fine! Fine, you're both so annoying, I swear! You can handle an incoming kingdom of the dead just fine, but not a cigarette, geez."

Li Shu shoots one of her Sacrifices at the back of Raika's head, the edge blunted, but still enough of an impact to poke her.

Raika snorts, and clicks her tongue once, flicking her fingers to the left, towards Li Shu.

Rather than jump on her, like she just told it to, the centicroc just turns to stare at her, its eyes widening and tongue lolling out as it tip-taps its little feet, waiting for a treat.

"I don't think you're training it right, master."

"Wha- I swear, all you two do is criticize me! Rude! I'll have you know that for a first time trainer of a magical beast, I'm doing excellent. He already knows command prompts and everything!"

Jin gives her a Look, the one he rarely gives her, and she can't help but smile as a little bit of smarm peeks through.

"Master, I'm pretty sure Beetle is better at commanding that thing than you. And Beetle's a beetle."

Beetle stamps on her shoulder, hard enough to make a slap sound against her skin, and squares up towards Jin. Mandibles and forelegs wave aggressively, as if to challenge the criticism of its master.

Jin sticks his tongue out and wrinkles his nose at it, and just keeps walking.

"There there, Beetle, you are a very good commander," she says, patting the little creature on the head. Its skin is sleek and glossy, much shinier and harder than it was back when they met, and it's actually large enough now that she has to use more than a fingertip to pet it. Centicroc hasn't had quite as much of a "glow-up" as Beetle, or the worms, which are a whole separate situation, but has also improved- its eyes are brighter, its gaze more aware. Plus, she's pretty sure it's gotten a few new legs, though she hasn't actually been keeping track.

The training, however, as implied by her disloyal young student, has not been going very well.

It obeys Beetle quickly and easily, following a series of small bursts of Intent and click-clacks of Beetle's feet. Using Intent makes it almost too easy to communicate, though, and Intent isn't… subtle? Just as you can't lie with it, it's hard to hide it. It changes the context of every part of what you're doing, of what you are, into the meaning of what you intend- hiding that is possible, but difficult. And having to "yell" commands at her allies to get them to follow is an easy way for others to be able to predict things. She needs to train the little bastards to obey other signals, like words, or clicking, or hand signs!

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Centicroc, unfortunately, has mostly been using the training as an opportunity to get a shitload of meaty treats.

She sighs and keeps walking.

Always walking, nowadays. Aaaaalways walking. Going forward, at least, so that's something.

The Overgrowth has become sparser, turning from dense, overgrown jungles and complex biomes into wider fields and more spread-out environments. They started walking through less tropical woodlands yesterday, and then through wide grasslands and fields for a time after that, and now, trek through something like a prairie once again.

Unlike before, though, there's no ongoing effect of Qi and Dao affecting them, nothing saturating the air and transforming things according to its nature. If anything, it's very quiet, as if the blinding, overwhelming density of Qi that has so characterized most of the fourth ring has been muted or muffled.

Behind them, for hours of walking, there is grass. Ahead of them, there is grass. The further out from the center they go, from the domain of the Many-Mouths and the tribes of the Many and All, the lower it gets, until grasses that were ten or more feet high have fallen to shoulder height, and then fallen further down to one's waist, allowing them to see clearly.

Ahead of them, as the forest-turned-grasslands-turned-prairie diminishes, she can see the edge of the Kingdom.

It is, first and foremost, villages.

Off in the distance, arrayed on hills, she can see cultivated fields, organized into squares that cross and dot the terrain, and beyond them, in clusters, she sees…

Graveyards.

Not like she's used to. There aren't as many shrines, for one thing, and it doesn't seem like there's any sort of barricades between the graveyards and the villages they surround. Each cluster of graves, of simple stone markers interspersed with more ornate tombs, is marked by a series of buildings at its center, intersected by roads, all of them single story.

At the edge of the madness of ever-growing and ever-changing life, full of beasts and gods and hunger, there are… towns.

And graves.

And it stinks.

She clicks at Centicroc, trying to get it to pounce (without biting! She was very clear on that part!) on Jin for his traitorous commentary. The equally traitorous reptile stares up at her, mouth lolling open, ready to be rewarded and "trained" with fresh meat.

"Fucking- ugh. Fine."

She tosses the little shit a fresh tendon, which he eagerly and greedily snaps up.

She's making them smaller! It's not her fault that he's really quite fucking cute actually. It's fine. Totally fine.

And then Beetle gets some as well, obviously. Can't give a treat to one cute little thing without the other, and Beetle's earned it, obviously.

"We still haven't actually decided the plan, Raika," Li Shu says, smiling softly at the treats she definitely didn't give them for no reason. "What's the approach?"

"The whole thing with pretending to just be part of a healer's entourage didn't go so well last time. I'm thinking that this time, we be honest. They'll be able to track where we came from, we haven't hidden that, and any three "humans" coming out of the Overgrowth are going to get some attention, no? So, we talk."

"And… we think that'll go well?"

She snorts, shrugging. "No way to know. We're not exactly coming into this well-informed, are we? They're an isolated culture, and all the Pack and Many-Mouths seemed to care about is the fact that they're fighting actively for the first time in who knows how long, and on their side. The ones you saw seemed to use Craft as well, but we don't know how common it is exactly. So, considering we have so little information, we just don't know if it'll go well or not."

"I'm surprised you'd admit that, considering. You don't think it's a risk? With… the way you are now?"

Raika shrugs. "It is. If things go badly enough, I have some backups plans ready. I won't let anything happen to either of you. But I still think this is the best place for Jin, and, if they really are Craft users, for you too. We can all gain something from this place, I think, and considering we're all fighting together against the Empire, it's best we learn more about them now than mid-war.

"Yes, there's risk to it, but… I'd rather we do this openly, as 'diplomats', than as spies. We're strong enough that we don't need to do that anymore, and we don't have the time to do it another way. So… yup. We keep walking, and we see if one of these villages-"

"Master?" Jin says from up ahead.

A flavor to the sound. Not panic, but alertness. A moment of anxiety.

She turns, expanding her senses, accessing her larger Body's processing power and the brains within for the synesthesia.

There. In the dirt. Trembling. Quiet, but there. Little pulses beneath the ground, colored dark grey and orange by the way they sound.

Something coming closer. From the direction of the villages, or beyond them.

She squints, pushes further, trying to access the way that Jin sees things, the way he's shown her. The shadows of them, and-

It's large. Large and incoming, moving swiftly through the world, and where reality is made up of pale, ethereal flesh and the shadows of dead things, those same things pull and push and direct the movement of whatever is coming.

"Jin, get behind me. Li Shu-"

"I feel it," she says, her Sacrifice already coming back from where she had it orbiting, needles and calipers and scalpels arranging themselves in a sort of formation in front of her. "Want me to-"

"Not yet. Hold back."

Raika steps forward, in front of her companions, her body writhing with the ways that she forms and transforms the swirls and shapes and runes inside her, malformed and useless but itchy…

And she waits.

The world bends as the ripple in the earth moves closer. It's like the tension, the strength and force and weight of the dead and writhing shadows are becoming more real as they approach, their presence too large to conventionally fit inside the space they're occupying. They pull the tangled knot at their center forward, the shape obscured by the earth it hides beneath, and she can feel it rumbling and churning in the floor below them, under the grass-

The ground pulls apart. Literally pulled, hands that are half-visible reaching up out of the earth and digging themselves out, just as selectively able to touch as they are to see. Quickly, a hole is dug into the earth, rectangular and a few times the size of a human- and from the depths, something emerges.

Four walls, carved in ornate, pitch-black oak, filigreed with gold in the shapes of faces, singing and crying and whispering. There are strange vistas and ghostly landscapes drawn in perfect golden thread all along its surfaces, and facing the front of the coffin-shaped structure, there is a window.

And then one side of it unfolds, and there is a door.

The world feels heavier as the strange vehicles burden emerges, and bows politely.

It is a skeleton. Golden as the metal, and dripping with some kind of wax, which floats back up to its body before touching the grass or the ground.

It rises, and despite having no lips or skin to speak of, and no eyes to emote with, it smiles.

"Raika the Broken. Li Shu, Healer and Wielder of the Craft. Rai Jin, blessed child of the End. I, Bishop Lu Karai, greet you on behalf of the Fallen Kingdom."

Raika can't help it- she grins.

"See?" she asks Li Shu, still grinning. "A flawless plan. Already working out."

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