Some people, you don't want to fuck with. Generally speaking, I put them into three categories.

First: people with nothing to lose. Most of the time, it's fine, but there's always that one bastard that decides to do a suicide bombing, or otherwise does the most insane unreasonable bullshit you've ever seen. Not a guaranteed issue, but much more of one than someone who you can still put fear into.

Second: people who know more than you. The kind of fuckers where you go bother them and then you find out that they already knew you, already planned that shit, already had your children ready to be slit open in front of you. You can absolutely fuck with people stronger than you if you do it right, but it's damn hard to do it right when someone knows more than you.

Thirdly, and most importantly- crazies. The Gods love crazy motherfuckers, and for that reason alone, I tend to either kill them quick or stay the fuck away. You fight one mad bastard with a Hydra for blood and a kitchen knife, you learn quick to mind your fucking lane around the crazies.

…Issue is, of course, that sometimes you have to fuck with people. In which case, it's important to do your best to be all three of the above.

-Words of wisdom from the Benevolent Saint and Benefactor of the Long Clan, one of the Empire's Enduring Bloodlines, on how he attained his immortality.

Li Shu sighs heavily as they walk. "You have the worst timing. Seriously, always coming up with some new madness the moment I'm close to figuring something out!"

She smiles back at her friend, rolling her eyes from a good foot and a half higher off the ground than her diminutive companion. "Please. Getting to play with some new madness is how you come up with all the crazy shit you come up with. It's not my fault that my personal brand of it is just so flavorful."

The healer pouts, but there's a smile hidden behind it. "So arrogant, Bishop Rai Ka! Perhaps you might do to remember it's my own style of mad that's saved your life so many times, and not the other way around."

Raika laughs. "How could I forget! Where would I be without my most esteemed Healer, my confidant, my supporter, the sole reason for my survival! Perhaps I should bow at your feet and offer far finer insanities to you, laden with flesh and plague!"

Li Shu swats her on the arm. "Don't you dare! We've got enough on our plates without trying to… hmm…"

"Couldn't think of anything?"

She shrugs. "Couldn't think of anything crazier than what we're doing now, at least. That's your job."

Jin just shakes his head, walking a few steps ahead of them and guiding them towards their destination.

It's for show, of course, but so is everything they're doing right now. The three of them walk sedately through the empty, pale streets of the city of Godsfall, cutting through its veins and arteries and back out again to a destination sitting at its heart. The Cathedral shines, sky-bright and ivory against the backdrop of the stars above, casting a cool, calm shadow over the city and its many baroque twists. Some of the shadows seem deeper than they should be, churning ever-so-faintly as if something lies beneath them, digging down below- until one looks closer, and sees that they're just shadows after all.

Probably.

They're taking the slow route for a reason. There's a reason for all of what they're doing now. Raika, her new prosthetic arm prominently displayed, travels in some of the longer, more esoteric robes of the Fallen Kingdom, raided from the closets of their manse and found already pre-modified to her size and specifications. The robes trail nearly to the ground, midnight black and rich, with something almost like a dress beneath them rather than a traditional set of clothes wrapped and folded properly into an outfit. Two long stoles complete the look, draped over her shoulders and covered in the Fallen Kingdom's original runic script. The only allowance she's made for her own personal style (besides the sleeveless nature of her left arm- that just had to go) is a modification to the center of the outfit, showing her waxy, tanned flesh from neck and collarbone down almost to her chest. Not nearly as complex or simple as she prefers, but there's a few steps that need to be undertaken for this to go well.

Li Shu is dressed similarly, though she's kept to the more conservative style of the original fashion of their hosts, and has managed to implement the red and white motifs of her healer's assembly into the outfit. She's dressed simply, bearing no ornate script on her person, but the keratin needles that she's spawned from her growing Sacrifice have gone to work on the fabrics, leaving woven patterns and slight adjustments common throughout the look. Backed by two of her Craft puppets, faceless and porcelain white, she looks both at home and alien to their surroundings, like an inverted mirror of how the Fallen Kingdom dresses and designs itself.

Jin, meanwhile, looks like just the perfect little young master- with the exception of the ropes and strings he's taken to wearing on his person. It makes for an interesting blend, his pristine robes matching Raika's, but far more proper- but he's absolutely festooned with trinkets, jingling gently as he walks. Some are like strings of prayer beads, carved reverently and in minute detail- others are larger, thicker, holding proper little shrines and statues, obsidian slips and figurines. They're mostly quiet, save for the occasional jingle when they're jostled more by their passengers than by Jin's movement.

All three of them are dressed to the nines, or at least the local equivalent of it. Sharply tailored, armed and armored, ready and presentable.

Ready for war, one might say.

"Are you sure they'll go for it, Master?"

She shrugs, the movement audible to Jin's elevated senses. "If we do it right, and I know everything possible, then definitely. If I don't know everything possible, and we don't do it right, then there's a chance. How much of one, I won't bother with."

He looks back at her over his shoulder, framed by the slight mist of ghosts he carries with him wherever he goes. "Not to call you ignorant, Master, but…"

She grins at the jab, reaching forward to ruffle her kid's hair. He bears it stoically, failing entirely to disguise how much he enjoys it. "Your ignorant master has a gambling problem, young disciple. My martial son will have to learn to cope with my bad habits, and do as I say, rather than as I do. And focus on the intentions behind said habits. And also be very prepared to run very fast, and throw up a halfway decent shield when you do."

He snorts as she manages to break his decorum at last. Still, he's holding himself with a proper degree of tension- not fear, which is good, but readiness. She wants him prepared, but an excess of anxiety is a recipe for failure.

This is going to be finicky.

The Cathedral approaches, bright and moon-white against a backdrop of night. Lua and her sister shine bright, silver-white and faintly glowing red orbiting each other, and a hint of their emerald sister flickers behind them, still a star for now, one of the last true stars in the sky.

They walk up the streets in the city of a dead god, towards a shining beacon on a hill.

They made no announcement, but there is a weight in the air, an awareness of attention. They are the most powerful beings, beyond the original Bishops of the city, to walk its streets- it would be foolish to think that the beings which call this place home do not know of their movements. For all their modifications to the manse, for all their learning and growth, Raika is under no illusions about the fact that they are, and have been, watched at every moment they've been here. Now is no exception.

She can feel and taste and see the taste of Death in the air, how it eddies and flows. It is like her Qi sight, and in fact shares many of its patterns and flows, but in the depths of that lone concept is profound meaning and interpretation. Eddies of long-gone souls, imprints of thoughts and minds held after natural failure, Echoes born of the shape left behind when a Soul leaves- all of this and more swirls in recognizable patterns of Intent.

A whirlpool has already landed in the Cathedral, deepening its own abyssal currents. They are awaited.

They walk through empty, echoing streets, whose shadows are darker than darkness, whose pale contours and arcane architecture stand as mausoleums against the End. They walk, the three of them together, up the steps to their shining destination.

The doors are already open. The pews have been emptied, the ever-tortured ever-praying parishioners shifted to somewhere else in anticipation.

A single skeleton stands in the center aisle, beneath the ever-digging statue at the heart of the church. Droplets of molten gold drip skyward, painting an impossible place above what is. Despite having no features, no clothes, no flesh or decoration, the empty skull and shining teeth somehow give off the impression of a smile.

"Bishop Raika. Blessed Child. Healer. To what do the Clergy of the Cathedral of the Burrowing Saint owe the pleasure of your company?"

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The words ring, echoing through reality on winds of Death and Echo. Bishop Lu Karai stands, arms crossed behind him, ready and waiting.

Jin bows politely before the Bishop, stepping off to one side a moment after. Li Shu imitates the act, though her bow is considerably shallower than Jin's, one designed for an honored elder rather than a master.

Raika doesn't bow at all.

"Bishop Lu Karai. This lowly acolyte, fresh-born to the ways of Death and the Church, comes before you with a proposition."

"And what proposition, pray tell, warrants such a show? Your tutelage has not yet ended. The Blessed Mortal's has barely even begun. We have much to do, and much time is still required of you. What demands do you make here, before this acolyte of the Church?"

She steps past her companions, letting them drift behind her, arms spread wide to either side. "How could I betray the kindness of my teachers? How could I make demands of those so far beyond my own power? I wouldn't dare."

She pauses, tilting her head. "Well. I would. But I'm not currently."

The skeleton that is a person that is a death that is a gilded prayer does not laugh, but its smile, unchanging, grows wider somehow. "Oh? If not a demand, then what sort of proposition do you propose?"

"A very easy one, Bishop. One you are well familiar with, and one which has likely not graced these halls in some time. What is tutelage without understanding? What is process without culmination?

"I offer, arrogant and grinning, that you test me."

At last, the thing that is Bishop Lu Karai tilts its head, ever so slightly. "Do you consider yourself a better teacher than I? To narrate and establish when a test should be granted?"

"Of course I do. My disciple deserves nothing but the best, so of course, that must be what I am. I accept nothing less."

"It is the folly of youth, to believe one knows better than one's elders. Tell me, then- do you come to this holy place with a test in mind?"

She raises a finger, her eyes never leaving the lich's. "That, teacher, I leave to you. Because I have, in fact, come with demands."

"Ah. 'Currently' has fallen to the wayside, then. Truly, your arrogance is boundless."

"My arrogance is a mewling little thing. My madness is far more prominent, and makes demands of us all."

The air in the Cathedral thrums. Her senses might be muted now, near-deaf to the details of reality she used to feel moment-to-moment, but it doesn't take supernatural awareness to detect the shifting of the ground beneath her feet. The rumbling of something so far below that it might well be an earthquake, a settling of the earth and nothing more.

The Bishop before her dribbles gold into the world, molten and drip-fed from a thousand coins taken from a thousand eyes. The whirlpool of Death, of concept and Qi and Intent and ritual power, focuses between the two of them, like a quiet current that, if succumbed to, will tear a swimmer to pieces, dragging them down and away into the dark.

"This Bishop is generous. What, pray tell, is the demand you have, on the back of demanding such an examination?"

She continues walking forward, each step slow, measured. Her prosthetic shines in the glow of the candles, lighting the endless skulls and pillars and pews of this holy place. She bows slightly as she walks, adding a flourish to the movement.

"It is quite simple, teacher. My madness and I cannot bear a moment longer with the world as it is. I demand of it what it can be. I demand of myself the force of will to take the steps required for it. I request from you, teacher, a test, of your making, of your judgement, of whatever form you feel will best meet your objectives- and should my request be granted, then I do, in fact, demand something of you."

"Such a build-up, pupil of mine. The anticipation trembles in these old bones."

She laughs, her teeth sharp and not quite part of the smile she's showing. "Test me. When I win, you come with me on my path. You follow me on the road away from here, wherever it might lead, against or alongside whomever I choose."

"Oh?" The skeleton's head slowly leans to the other side, like an animal looking at something curious, or an old uncle teasing a child. "And I suppose that this path of yours will be as reasonable as you yourself. Quite a demand you place on this oh-so-polite 'request' of yours. What do you think could possibly convince something like I to follow something like you?"

She spreads her hands wide again, shrugging theatrically. "You tell me. You're the one making the test."

Some of the humor drains from the corpse before her, the smile-without-smiling turning to just exposed skull. "Such hubris. And you claim your arrogance is a weak thing, unworthy of your madness- I say this true to you, fresh-dead; your arrogance is matched only by your madness. You would treat such a demand as a flippant fancy? A passing jest? I have taken coins from the dead since before your Empire built its little kingdom of mud and walls. I have worn more bodies than anything mortal might attempt, surpassed the divine End, and stand at the precipice of a war greater than you by far- and you think to tell me that I will follow you? A thing not even four full decades old? An infant, yet in her first century? You come to this sanctum and make such bold claims, as if any test will simply be passed, as if your footprints are broad enough to hold the weight of those beyond you."

A pause. A tilt of the head. "And if I refuse, still-warm? If I turn from you, leave you to stew another decade until you learn the face of patience?"

Another shrug, her expression controlled by the perfect stillness of death and the active intention of will. "I'll leave."

The gold dripping from Lu Karai drifts, fluctuating in the currents and eddies of Death that suffuses this place, this moment. From mere droplets, small streams begin to trickle, the only sign of physical change to the skeletal lich.

"Oh?"

"And I'll take the kid with me."

A slight crack echoes, one of the skulls on the many pillars of the Cathedral developing a hairline fracture under the pressure in the room.

"I'm not stupid. He's more than just important to you- he's fucking crucial to something. My connection to the Pack may have allowed me entry to your lands, would-be allies as you are, but I'm not so naive as to think you'd keep me around after I lost myself without good reason. I'm a talent, damn right, but I'm nothing compared to the kid. I've seen how empty your homes are. How quiet these places can be. For all that talk of Death not being the End, you're circling that final rest none the less. I might not know what plans you have for dealing with that, or if you're intending to wait until it's too late and just throw yourselves against the Cold Sun, but I know that he's meaningful to your whole damn Church.

The smile falls from her face, gone like the shadow it was.

"And he isn't yours to keep."

She keeps walking forward, a little faster now, approaching the skeleton that she towers over and which looms beyond her nonetheless. Her eyes remain on its, empty sockets staring into grey pupils.

"He is mine. My disciple. My kid. My son, for though he is not blood to me, blood is water compared to the fact that I would dig my way through every god in the stars and every corpse in the soil to keep him safe. To let him grow. To make sure that he becomes who he can be, who he wants to be, who he would be proud to be, as I am proud of him for surviving, for his kindness, for his caring in the face of a cold fucking world. In spite of who and what I am he has put his trust in me. You can have him over my dead fucking body, and nowadays that bitch bites.

Her steps stop, close enough to Lu Karai that they could reach out and touch each other. Knife-fighting distance.

"My madness demands much of me. Above all else, it demands that I make things different than the current shitshow of a state. I'll do that with or without you. If I have to call the Pack to war to take my boy away from you, that's what will happen. If I have to End this city, cripple your powers for the war to come, that's what will happen. You have sheltered me, and for this I thank you. Now I am able to walk again, I will walk forward. I ask that you see for yourself whether or not I am worth following.

"Test me. Or things get a lot messier for all of us."

Silence sits on the hill, heavy as a final breath, cold as the grave.

A lipless face un-tilts its head at last, facing her eye-to-eye.

"You would threaten me with the End, still-warm? You think I fear what I have already conquered? That I fear the weight of a novice's understanding?"

"No. But you should. It takes a master to make a masterpiece. It takes time, tools, and the simplest novice to make something altogether messier. Surely I wouldn't have spent the moments you missed, the hints you failed to catch, to craft something messy, amateurish, poorly understood… and perhaps dangerous. Unless, perhaps, you think I truly am so arrogant? So… mad?"

The streams of gold glimmer, and a rain of gold coins applauds against the distant roof, ringing like bells.

Bishop Lu Karai smiles from a lipless face, and she feels the Death all around them swell to a wave, to a riptide, to a depthless whirlpool.

"Well spoken, Bishop."

The Cathedral booms with a joyous impact as a body, fifteen feet tall and wrapped in its own skulls, lands behind the skeleton.

"WELL SAID INDEED!"

And then Raika has to block, her prosthetic only barely managing to catch the ghost-white fist that crashes through the streams of gold.

The world cracks as the sound barrier breaks, as the pews to either side shatter, as she is pushed back and sent flying- and it is echoed by a booming laugh.

"Let the testing commence!"

Bishop Seo En-Hyun howls like the end of the world, and Raika screams right back, raw and ragged and joyous and violent and demanding, demanding, demanding.

And then he hits her a second time, and things really get moving.

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