The fragility of mortals is kind of funny.

  It’s so…contradictory. They maintain a place of dominance in the world, sitting high on their throne of bones, only surpassed by the GodBeasts. Yet they’re so easy to break, all it takes is a simple application of force and they pop like a cherry.

  A very bloody cherry.

  Tantra leans down and picks up one of Tokir’s eyes, holding it between her fingers as she examines the dull brown of his iris. All it took was one swing, she didn’t even have to think, she just had to act.

  “You made me do this,” she accuses the eye.

  It’s true too, if he hadn’t sent his little mercenaries she would have no cause nor desire to kill him. They could have gone to their normal once she returned, quietly ignoring each other. Is it weird that she wishes she got to know him better? Maybe then he would have at least hesitated before marking her for death.

  The eye doesn’t respond, just…staring at her as she stares back.

  Is it weird she expected this to be more dramatic? Like an opera or theater, where he confesses to his crimes and she struggles with the morality of putting him down. Instead it was just a swing, just one simple swing and a life ended.

  Quick, brutal, and without fanfare.

  So fragile.

  She wonders what she’s supposed to do now, go back to her room and have a servant wash out all the blood? Her gut wound is still leaking but she isn’t really concerned, she’s a cultivator, she’s not fragile. She’ll suffer much worse than a puncture to the abdomen or a bash to the brains before she keels over, comes with the territory.

  “You made me,” she says again to the eye.

  She’s still angry, is that normal? She got her vengeance, delivered it quite brutally even, yet she still can’t help that simmer of rage just below the surface. None of this was necessary, none of it, if Rakan hadn’t died she may have even forgiven him, simply taking the contract to Dozen for him to deal with Tokir.

  But Rakan did die, so she had to.

  She had to.

  She rolls the eye in her palm a few times, sensory nerves that once connected it to his brain wrapped around her fingers as she plays with it. All of this was planned, none of it was spur of the moment, Tantra has officially committed her first murder.

  How cultivatory.

  Friend dies, get vengeance, end of story.

  So simplistic.

  So stupid.

  But she did it anyway, because it was the right thing to do.

  She hears a choked cry from behind her, and turns to see Ral staring at the corpse with tears beading in her eyes.

  “What have you done?”

  -

  She needs something to do.

  She’d go mad if all she did while trapped in her room was stare into the mirror and ponder, so she trains.

  She pulls three threads together into a rope, it’d be laughably easy if she wasn’t gathering at the same time. This is technically her break, gathering Qi after training techniques of intention, but you’d be forgiven for misunderstanding, considering how hard she’s concentrating.

  It works quite nicely for her circumstances, her robe with the arrays is still at the tailors, so any blood that’d stain what remains of her wardrobe would be an absolute pain in the ass to clean so instead she’s multitasking, can’t leave an opportunity for training unrealized after all.

  Her floating ball exercise has been progressing, quite splendidly actually, developing her own unique relationship with reality. It’s strange, her will has become a thing of force, but she doesn’t force reality to do as she says, she’s pretty sure no one can. Instead it’s more like…a stern request? It’s aggressive, but it’s still a relationship, progressing just the same as the standard method is described. She doesn’t know how this will affect more complex concepts, repulsing a ball from her palm is pretty simplistic, but it might not translate well to her theoretical technique.

  She wonders how reality recognizes a concept. Take the concept of the blade for example, the blade wasn’t made until humanities rise so many millennia ago. Does reality interpret something new and assign it a concept? Or is every possibility already mapped out, waiting to be found? She doesn’t know, the only people who bother to research that are mortals, and they don’t tend to get very far beyond conjecture, on account of having no real cultivation.

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  Since, of course, she needs something to do; and since floating a ball isn’t exactly tantalizing entertainment, she’s been going through some of the technique manuals Rakan’s left behind, which has proven interesting, if somewhat useless. It’s either too complex in practice, or she has to translate it to her version of Qi manipulation since she doesn’t have the relevant meridians.

  Still, all she has to do is use her brain, and she’s comfortable enough with that

  The first technique she wants to learn, aptly named Rejuvenation, is technically a healing technique. It essentially uses Qi as fuel to match the body with the soul's interpretation of the body, which requires her to be able to latch onto her soul, connecting it to the body, then making adjustments using Qi based on the inconsistencies. There's a much simpler one called Regeneration which is just using Qi to fuel natural regeneration, but she chose Rejuvenation for a simple reason.

  Theoretically it could heal her scars, if she’s working with the right assumptions, that being that souls don’t scar. There are two major problems though, the first one being connecting to her soul with Qi. She’s always used Qi in the physical, never really considering it could interact directly with the soul.

  Soul Qi comes from, well, the soul, so why not reverse the process?

  It has not been going well, but cultivation is all about long timelines so she’s fine with that.

  The second issue once she solves the first is how in the hells she’s going to mold her body. What’s described is essentially one step down from what happens in integration, the difference being the technique uses the soul as a blueprint while for integration it’s the bricks.

  That might take significantly longer than the first step.

  She’s dabbling with Regeneration of course, she’s not stupid, it’s just…not her main focus.

  Then there’s Scales, which is, to put it simply, a scale mail defensive technique. She chose this one for the sheer challenge it represents for her control if she can get it working for her whole body. It’s meant to be done in segments, in relation to the meridians, but she can’t help but salivate over the idea of more to do, and this is just perfect for that.

  Then, last but not least, is Sensory Overload. This one is simple, boost the brain. That’s it, just boost the brain and see what happens. Well that’s not all it is, but that’s about all that matters. Her organs have reached the point where she doesn’t injure them when boosting, which she found out only recently when she said fuck it and tried it out.

  Sensory Overload, is pretty much exactly what it says it is, all your senses explode with information, so much that it can’t be properly interpreted.

  It’s another training method though, and she’ll take as many as she can of those right now.

  She’s ignoring the elephant in the room, which is kind of a misnomer considering how skinny he is, but Tantra can’t really face Dozen right now, so she continues to thread with her eyes closed as he waits patiently. She heard the door open and close, and only Dozen would wait, maybe one of her mothers, but she has a feeling they don’t want to see her.

  Which is fair.

  She has trouble looking at herself in the mirror these days, but she does it anyway, because she did the right thing.

  She did the right thing.

  She shouldn’t feel guilt, shouldn’t feel remorse, shouldn’t feel regret.

  She shouldn't be afraid.

  Taking a deep breath she opens her eyes and takes in the sight of her brother.

  He somehow looks worse than he normally does, eyes marred by fresh tears as he stares her down, there is betrayal there, and also…fear.

  “Dozen,” she says.

  He nods to her.

  “Did you find it?”

  He nods again.

  “Then you know I acted within my rights to defend myself.”

  He doesn’t nod this time, just giving her a sad stare.

  “Talk to me brother, please.”

  His gaze drops to his hands and he lets out a shaky sigh.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, instead of escalating to this?”

  Tantra looks at him as he refuses to meet her eyes, he’s shaking a little. She’s never seen her brother this… Angry? Scared? Sad? A mix of all three? She doesn’t know

  “Because what you would’ve done to him would be paltry compared to his crimes.”

  “That would have been better!”

  “No,” She snarls, some dormant rage stirring.

  “He was family, we don’t kill family.”

  “You’re right, we don’t.” She replies sharply, leaving the implication to hang in the air.

  Dozen runs a hand through his dishevelled hair, “I let you go through those godsdamned contracts” he says with a hollow voice, “you’ve made me complicit in the murder of my brother.”

  “I would’ve found out anyway,” Tantra says softly, “the cultivator he hired was more than happy to tell us once he lost his arms.”

  Dozen looks at her with tired eyes, up and down like he’s seeing her for the first time.

  “You’ve acclimated to cultivator life easily enough it seems,” he says bitterly.

  “That isn’t fair, he hired assassins to kill me, I only did what was necessary.”

  “It wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t necessary at all.”