Hail to the Saint! Hail to she who burrows, crawls, rips drags, digs and digs and digs down into the world! Blessed is the grave-maker, most glorious and pious of the Saints, her body and Soul pledged to Godsfall, that even those justly slain from their unjust heavens might find themselves with a place in which to lie! Peace upon all upon the back of her toil, lain to rest as the world's turning slows! Peace upon all on the back of our Deaths, risen up as the world's horizon grows!

Long have we prayed, long shall we pray. Preach, that we may listen! Dig, that we may have succor! Upturn the soil and bless the dark below, that the world might find a true and greater resting place from which to bloom! We thank you, Burrowing One, for the burden of your pain, for the joy of your task, for the world to come that you make ready for us! Ia! Ia! Glory Be!

-Prayers in the Cathedral of the Burrowing Saint, repeated at exact intervals thirteen times in a cycle, unbroken for the last seven hundred years.

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And so, everything comes full circle.

Raika is fucking itchy again.

Casting off the preconceived notions she held about herself, about her current form, allows her to use her flesh in ways she hasn't dared to since she "died". Held in stasis, suspended as partially-alive, kept in that pristine state of the moment her heart stopped beating, her body was useless, just a shell to walk around in. When viewed as a corpse, she becomes much more… versatile.

She is in a place where people make all kinds of things out of corpses, after all.

Several projects still need time. The Gu jars will likely have to remain sealed for at least another week, for one thing, at least according to her calculations about the movements of the celestial patterns and winds of death. And boy, isn't that a fucking sentence. All kinds of nuances to the Qi flows and concepts floating around which she can no longer grab by the throat, and has to approach as slowly and as mathematically as everyone else in this place. There's certain ingredients she's still working on, requiring additional fermentation and decay, and there's a decent number of artifacts and spell-scripts she's still working on that won't be complete for a little while. But that doesn't mean that she hasn't made enough progress.

Her left arm, long-established as a symbol of death and destruction and her control over it, is once again black-on-black, obsidian metals tainted with End and home-grown by hers truly. It aches a bit, sharp obsidian angles jutting into dead flesh and decayed socket, but it's functional, and the pain is an important aspect. She has a better grasp on her parasitic companions than before, and they've grown stronger and more adept at helping her create on-the-spot arrays. Centi-croc, previously a pet, has grown large enough to be a serious tool, and has come a long way in acting as a cute little guardian and guide animal. Beyond all of these things is the fact that she's begun to channel her Death as the Clergy of the Fallen Kingdom do, viewing it as something which can be conjured, empowered, and used as a battery rather than just an echo holding itself together.

And, perhaps most importantly, she's gotten additional range.

She stares at herself as she walks back towards the manor, her pace slow and steady alongside the rumbling of Centi-croc's movement. Her other body waves at her original, the vision sent through two pairs of eyes at once.

It's not true multiplicity. There is no brain or additional processor to offload thoughts into, no duplicate organs to keep her consciousness distinct. The ritual she performed was multi-faceted, starting with how it took a piece of her corpse and bonded with it, transmuting local materials into suitable filling for it. If torn apart, this other body will be made mostly of death-soaked dirt, pale grasses, and wriggling worms. The other part was to establish the spell-circuits within the puppet that would govern all of its basic functions, would bind it to Raika's awareness, and would take the majority of the processing requirements of being in two bodies at once off her hands.

It's not many Raika's as one, it's one Raika as two. Not nearly as useful- but useful nonetheless.

Her first additional corpse-self is identical to how she was when she first froze her body's composition, emulating the slow-churning blood and half-alive functions she once held on to. Seven feet tall, well-muscled, bearing only one arm and covered in scars and ritual markings from her original curse. The only difference she's allowed is in the hair- where her own neurology-turned-fashion-statement had to be cast off to preserve her mind before death, and is now kept close to the scalp, her corpse-puppet of herself still has long, flowing locks, their nature as dirt, grass and worm-flesh much more evident than in the rest of the body.

It's not perfect. Given a few more months, she'd probably have been able to use her dead body like she used to use her living one, making a fully flesh-based replica of herself. As it is, improvised spellcraft that's supposed to be about raising simple undead and making mobile effigies will have to do.

It really doesn't feel like anywhere near enough. Doesn't really matter, though. With the completion of the ritual to craft her puppet body and begin her Gu creation process, she's passed the milestone she's placed for herself.

There's a war for the end of the world going on. There are people who she loves and cares about and hates and respects and needs who all rely on her, or who could at least do with her help. She's not going to sit around in fancy undead buildings in fancy undead cities until the sun burns out- she's got better shit to do, and no fancy bunch of churches is going to stop her from doing that.

Of course, if they could be convinced to help…

The silent streets pass by quicker on her way home than they did on the way to the ritual site. They're still unnerving, these echoing and empty buildings aping at real life, shaped around the image of a fallen deity, but the quiet is, in a sense, a comfort. She can sense the Death in the air like she can sense her own, albeit to a much lesser extent, and the way that the evening chill plays across the twenty-five needles that she's anchored herself to is almost enjoyable. It's a haunted place, an empty place, a dying place above all else, whatever the reasoning that the Bishops and their Church might have not to change it, and that's fine. Even in a place like this, there's beauty.

She inhales and exhales as a matter of meditation and habit, and allows herself to enjoy these last few moments of prelude before her conflicts resume.

"Gonna be annoying, having to get back to it," she tells herself.

"Yeah. It will. Chances are we're going to run into a lot of bullshit. Again."

"Mhmm. Almost tempting to let someone else deal with it. See if these church fuckers really do get up off their asses in just the nick of time."

She throws a look at herself through her original body, half-incredulous and half-glare.

She raises her puppet-corpse's hands, laughing a bit. "I'm just saying! I could take another week, maybe. Enough time to get acquainted with this. Maybe see if they have mind-mages around here to check in about… well, again, this."

A snort. "Please. I don't think there's a mind-mage alive that could figure out whatever the fuck is wrong with me."

"Better not to underestimate people. We've gotten in trouble with that before."

A sigh. Again, an affectation, but so is this whole conversation, this pretend back-and-forth with herself. "Fair. But it wouldn't be easy."

"Oh, it would not be easy. But I'm also not what I was. It was stroke of fortune after fortune, chance multiplied by chance, nevermind outright insanity, that got me to what I was in the first place. Took years and some of the craziest decisions I've ever fucking heard of to pull of becoming someone strong enough and versatile enough to try and change the world. I'm not that version of myself anymore. There's no blame in taking a couple more days, figuring out a clearer plan."

She shakes her head. "No. I work best when I'm improvising. Every time I've tried to make some detailed, convoluted plot, something's come up that's knocked it into oblivion. I've met some of the best plotters out there, real specialists, and even he's not doing so well with this shit."

"It's not like I can just win this whole thing on my own."

"That was never the point. I figured that out already. The point is that I can do something, and I want to, so I will. I can change the world. And I have people I trust to change the world in ways that I can't. The plan was never to just take over everything. The plan's to break the fucking Empire and kill a bunch of Fengs and make a place where the people I care about can be."

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"I might not manage any of the above."

She rolls her eyes at herself, staring down her own gaze through the corpse-puppet's eyes. "Sure. But I'm not such a bitch that I won't go down trying."

She smiles through both sets of teeth. "Yeah," says her corpse-puppet. "And I can make some motherfuckers real sorry on the way."

She bumps her own fists against each other, laughing softly at the whole exchange.

Sure, she's mad. But if it works, it works.

Centi-croc turns to nuzzle against her, a head the size of some of the smaller buildings around them bumping her out of step with herself. She chuffs out another laugh.

"Yeah, yeah, alright. We can move a little quicker this time."

She's not totally sure how sapient the big creature is, though his enhanced size and cultivation would indicate at least somewhat, but the massive, canal-sized beast gives off all the joy of a cold and reptilian puppy that's been told it's allowed to play. Between her, Li Shu, and the lingering pieces of her original body the big lug was still digesting, he's grown almost exponentially from the massive hundred-legged crocodile that followed her out of the eastern wilds into something that could carry a manor on its back with ease. The growth spurt hasn't done much to change the creature's mindset, though.

She gingerly pets the tuning fork around her neck at the thought of big, friendly companions. It remains still and silent.

Both her bodies launch themselves off the ground, moved more by Death and Qi than physical strength, and grab hold of some of the spiked bits of reptile growing along the centi-croc's back.

It makes a sound not unlike a bright, high-pitched bird-call, excited to finally do away with all this walking.

A hundred legs the size of trees hunker down against the earth for a moment- and then the spirit beast begins to run.

Back when she first encountered the centipede reptiles, their main strengths were in their pack mentalities, their ambush tactics, and the speed at which they could launch themselves, moving much faster than their prey could track or block.

Her centi-croc has not lost those inbuilt advantages in his growth.

The world blurs. Two bodies, enhanced by Qi saturation and empowered by Death, have to hold on with all the force they can muster to avoid being tossed to the winds. With the echo of splintering stones behind them, Raika's spirit beast companion vanishes over the horizon, breaking the sound barrier with an unnaturally quiet pop.

The Fallen Kingdom becomes a blur of silver, ivory, and obsidian, occasionally tinted by the greyed-out colors of a far-distant sun. The wind whipping past and the ever-approaching horizon become the only constants.

And then, less than a full second after they left, the centipedal reptile lands on the grounds of their assigned manor, a rumble of impact felt but not heard rippling through the grounds.

Raika lets out a huff, patting the spirit beast on the back. "Couldn't even let me set up some wards, could ya? Was it that boring, walking with little old me?"

The primordial, hyper-evolved, ontologically mutated beast gives off a snort before rolling slightly, enough to tip Raika off of his back and then roll into a shuffle on the pale grass. She laughs as she's forced to dismount, wandering away from the wiggling creature.

"Yeah, yeah. Don't worry, you'll get a proper chance to run around soon."

A chuff is the only response she receives as she enters the manor.

In some ways, it remains very much the same. She idly scratches at the itchiness of her symbiotic carriers, at her too-sharp prosthetic, as she wanders the halls, austere and over-decorated at once. Cold marble, walls of silvery, blue-tinted wood that hide a series of corpses buried in behind them, hallways simultaneously preserved and left to rot. The building's architecture has become familiar, with its small windows, rigid angles and gothic carvings, and she barely looks at it all as she passes.

On the other hand, it's also changed quite a bit.

One of Li Shu's puppets waves at Raika as she walks by, its doll-like features of porcelain keratin at odds with the fluidity of its movements. It's currently watering one of many of the plants that have been added to the manse, black wood and snow-white flower petals transformed by yet another of her fellow mad scientist's hybridizations of her and Jin's original experiment. What the puppet is watering with, Raika's not sure- just that it's not water. She waves back with her own corpse-puppet, which seems to please the keratin doll to no end, and pretty soon several others have decided to come work on chores in Raika's vicinity, passing her by and just-so-happening to examine her new creation. Amongst them are several that have begun to "bud", fresh spikes of needle-like growths indicating their existence as one of Li Shu's original twenty nails which has begun to grow additional material, ripe with the concepts that Li Shu has imbued in them.

The hustle and hubbub of the manse is magnified by the interior decorations- there are the plants, sure, but there are also fresh carvings on the walls, made to both blend in and draw attention depending on the viewer. Several small black statues have begun spreading throughout the building, each one carved by hand and unique. Some of them are arranged on the floor at even intervals, while others adorn the pillars and arches of the buildings- right over any point that a body might be found.

There aren't enough for all of them, at least not yet, but the number grows as Raika progresses, heading towards her destination. Pretty soon, there are more of the un-living plants on the walls than old paintings, more carvings and statues than anywhere else, all leading to an ornate and well-appointed door at the end of a long hall.

Raika walks up to it, lets out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, and knocks three times.

Tap tap tap.

"Come in!"

She opens the door and sees her son.

Jin's hit puberty.

Not all the way, obviously- it's only been a few months. But the year or so that he's been with Raika has, at least physically, been good for him- he's grown a few inches, lost the lean and malnourished look that he had when they first met, and his first brush with hormones has started to change him from post-boy into pre-man, step by step. He's yet to get any stubble, that's at least a year out, maybe more, but his jawline has started to shift to match how his shoulders seem just a little broader, filling out more of the ornate yet distinctly practical robes he's taken to wearing.

He looks up, his pale skin and black hair only highlighting the intensity of the blue in his eyes as they meet hers. His smile lights up his features, turning a dour, officious looking young man into the teenager he's only just starting to become.

"Master! You're back! Did it work?"

She just cocks an eyebrow, stepping past herself into the room and giving a low bow.

He blinks, then smiles wider, jumping to his feet and bowing until he's parallel to the floor. "Disciple greets honored Master and honored Master the second!"

She laughs, both her throats synchronizing perfectly with each other. "Oh come on, kid. How many times do I have to tell you? You don't have to sling all that fancy talk around me."

He comes up from the bow, uncupping his fist and still smiling. "It is a disciple's duty to show proper respect for one's Master, especially after such an esteemed breakthrough!"

She can't help but snort at that, extending her senses to confirm what she already knows.

Jin's presence fills the room. The space smells of incense and smoke, of cigarettes and prayer spices, and from every corner there's another whispered conversation, another hinted-at presence. If she squints, accesses her more literal ability to see Death, she knows she would see shadowy figures congregating around her kid, many of them whispering to him or to each other, some lounging or enacting shadow-puppetry of their old lives. His cultivation, in spite of the insistence of the Bishops, still remains just that- cultivation. The Deaths he empowers, while utilizing the principles that the Church of the Fallen Kingdom uses in their methods, remain only bound to him, not from him.

She can feel the pressure coming from out of his Dantian, suffusing the space with his ever-changing and still-growing being.

Late Foundational Realm.

From a mortal to a cultivator, and from a Qi-Gathering Realm cultivator to near the edge of the Foundational Realm in less than a year. There are sects that would bankrupt themselves over a prodigy like him. The Empire would shower him with resources, pets, power and privilege at the sight of him, marking him as second only, perhaps, to the greatest of the six Divine Sects of the second ring or the mysterious talents of the first.

He smiles guilelessly, having spent the last few months enjoying himself and indulging in whatever whim he fancies, guided by the books and voices of the Church's most venerable powers. He's spent most of that time carving little statues out of Blacksteel.

And yet, almost two full Realms in barely a year.

"With a disciple like this one, how can one's Master fail to ascend?" she asks, instead of saying the much sappier, much more delicate things she wants to say. She walks over to him, ruffling his hair with her new prosthetic and scratching his head at the same time. The metal, likely to carve through stone with ease, bends and fails to pierce even the first layer of skin.

He laughs softly, still that weird mix of too-proper and street kid that he's grown up to be. Shaking off her hand, he adjusts his hair, running his hands through it even as she notices that some of the strands move of their own accord, guided by ghostly hands. "I've just been listening. If my growth is worth anything, it's because I've had such good teachers."

"Yeah, that's fair," Raika says from her corpse-puppet. "I suppose Li Shu is a pretty damn good teacher."

He pauses, then pouts a little at that, and she just laughs, finding a seat on a pillow across from the little go board he's been using to carve figurines on. "Lighten up, kid. It's a day for good news and big steps. Let me have a little fun, why don't'cha."

"I feel that I'm always at my most surrounded by horrifying events when you're having fun, Master."

"Now that's not fair- in my defense, I wasn't having fun at multiple of the horrifying events you were present for. Most of the time."

He sits on the other side of the table, rolling his eyes as he picks back up the carving knife and block of half-formed obsidian he was working on. "Of course, master. And you're definitely not here to tell me that a new set of events is about to happen now that you've had your breakthrough."

She grins, shark-toothed and too wide. "Damn, kid. You know me too well. Want to help me beat up a Church?"

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