“Which member of your expedition do you care for the most?”

  The Butcher Bird’s words chilled me with their implication. I lay on the ancient bricks of the temple courtyard, staring up as the bird perched on the outstretched arm of a broken statue.

  “Is that a threat?” I asked

  “Yes,” said the Butcher Bird. “I answered your question. Now, answer mine.”

  Damn. It looked as though small forgivenesses were out. I wasn’t sure why the Butcher Bird was going along with the exchange of questions, but I appreciated that it wasn’t ripping me to shreds in an attempt to get the answers.

  Whichever one I picked would suffer. Whether they suffered more or less than everyone else… only time would tell. I needed to pick someone who could handle being singled out.

  “My master,” I said.

  Dark brown eyes stared out of the black mask, and the air shimmered, impaling me with alien and predatory curiosity.

  “I’m telling the truth,” I said.

  “You are, but which one was your master?”

  I grinned.

  “That’s a different question.”

  The bird blinked before twittering again.

  “I enjoy your company,” it said. “It has been too long since I spoke with a fellow experiment.”

  “I hope you enjoy it enough not to attack anyone.”

  “That was not a question.”

  “No, it was not.”

  We watched each other for a moment, and though the bird was barely a foot tall, it appeared larger than a mountain.

  “I have a question,” I said after a moment. “What was it like when you woke up?”

  The Butcher Bird shivered and spoke slowly as though pulling up a weight on the end of a long rope.

  “It was a long time ago,” it said. “There was a bright light, and my siblings were all crying out. The masters were there, and they fed us, and warmed us, and nurtured us with qi. Those early years passed by quickly. At first, I had no mind at all, and my siblings and I knew only a vast chamber for the sky, and the hidden formations for the sun… I was happy under the care of the masters, and when they gave me my mission, they gave me the sky, and this valley, and I have loved them ever since. You ask what it was like when I woke up? It was a glorious beginning.”

  I tried to imagine what that was like… what any of it was like… but I came up blank.

  “I woke in my cell with only Drippy for company. There were no masters or missions or anything.”

  “Who is Drippy?”

  “He’s my friend, sort of a childhood best friend, though I haven’t seen him in a long time. You would like him, actually. I think everyone would like Drippy. That’s your answer, by the way.”

  “I would like to meet this Drippy,” said the bird. “Which one is your master?”

  “The cabbage,” I said.

  The air twisted around me, and my flesh rippled, but a second later, it was as though it never happened.

  “You’re telling the truth,” said the Butcher Bird. “Fascinating.”

  Most people were a little confused by Cabbagy, but that’s just because he kept his secrets close to his chest.

  “What is your mission?” I asked.

  The Butcher Bird blinked.

  “I snatch and store souls for the great experiment.”

  “What’s the great experiment?”

  “I’m sorry, you’ve run out of questions. Come, there is something I want to show you.”

  The bird fluttered down from the statue and perched on my shoulder. It raised its wings, and a second later, we flashed through the air and appeared inside a cylindrical chamber with a flickering light formation and veins of moss between the ancient, yellow bricks.

  The room felt oddly familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it… probably because I still didn’t have any fingers or toes. When the walls hummed, and I felt a lurch in my stomach, I recognized the chamber as a room between rooms. We were headed down and continued doing so for some time.

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  “This facility must run deep,” I said.

  “The deepest roots are the most hidden,” said the Butcher Bird from where it sat on my shoulder. “My masters were fond of such sayings. While we wait, I would like you to regrow your limbs.”

  “I would like that as well,” I said hesitatingly, still unsure if I should even admit to such an ability.

  “You would not be so casual about such extreme organic damage unless you had experienced it before. Since you walked into my valley unharmed, I must assume that you can regenerate your limbs as easily as you regenerated the rest of your body. I am curious about the process, so please, regrow your limbs.”

  Trying to read the tone and body language of a speaking bird was next to impossible. I glanced around quickly, hoping for someone who could give me a second opinion about how to play this scenario, but all the bricks turned away from me as though I weren’t there.

  Some of them even whistled.

  I was developing an irrational dislike for bricks.

  But, since it was just me, I decided to trust my gut.

  Tapping into my blood reservoir, I charged my regeneration. New flesh bubbled at the severed wounds on my shoulders and hips. Bone slid forth slowly, and muscle wrapped around, providing pathways for veins and purchase for skin. By the time I was done, we had been sitting in the stopped chamber for a few minutes. The doors opened onto a small, tall room lit by pale white light shining from the walls and ceiling.

  “Fascinating,” said the Butcher Bird. “Your healing process is more akin to the persistent form of a post-immortal realm, where the idea of the self is capable of sustaining the self, yet the process is about the crudest thing I’ve ever seen. What is that place that you store your blood?”

  The talks of post-immortal realms felt surreal, as though he were talking about myths. This was my first interaction with something in the Nascent Soul realm, and the Immortal realm was beyond that… to talk beyond the sixth realm of cultivation was something mortals couldn’t do…

  My mind swam, and I focused on the last question the bird asked me.

  “It’s my soul,” I said defensively, even though the Butcher Bird earlier said I didn’t have one.

  “No…” said the Butcher Bird as the air shimmered. “It’s not your soul, and it’s not your dao… but something else. The masters would know what this is, but they are not here right now. You should stay, I think they would be very interested to see you when they get back.”

  That would never happen, I told myself.

  “Of course,” I said with a smile. “But you said my process is crude? Can you elaborate?”

  The Butcher Bird twittered.

  “You are using blood to create flesh and bone, and you are losing a lot of energy as a waste product of the transmutation. That is why your healing is so slow and imprecise.”

  Heat rose in my cheeks as the Butcher Bird’s words stung my pride. I had practised a lot with my regeneration, and I’d never even heard of something that could heal better than me. Still, getting mad would get me torn apart.

  “Do you have any suggestions for improving my regeneration?”

  The Butcher Bird cocked its head and looked at me.

  “Fascinating,” it said. “You really can’t see it, can you? With such poor self-perception, I’m wondering if you weren’t an abandoned experiment. That would explain why the masters weren’t there when you woke. For improvements, you might find it easier to heal flesh and bone when you draw on your flesh and bone reservoirs.”

  “...”

  “Ooooh,” said the bricks. “You didn’t know about that? We did, it’s crazy that you didn’t figure it out, kind of obvious really…”

  “Shut up,” I said quietly to the bricks.

  The Butcher Bird shrieked and flew toward the last brick to speak. It hovered angrily in place as the air shimmered so violently that dust bled from the ancient bricks. The bricks held their breath, and, after a moment, the Butcher Bird flew into the room.

  “Follow me,” it said.

  I stood on my functional limbs, and once more found myself dressed in blood-stained rags. I probed inside my soul and found my two reservoirs. One held blood, and another held qi. My willpower slipped around them, and it was a feeling like reaching into a well or picking up a pearl, and as I spread my spiritual touch wider, I found the rim of two more reservoirs.

  One felt hard and firm, the bones. The other shifted and reacted to my attention, the flesh. How could I have missed these?

  What could I do with them?

  With this knowledge, my abilities were expanded beyond the scope of what they’d been, and I was truly shocked and unsettled. I couldn’t be sure that those two reservoirs were there before the Butcher Bird mentioned them… nor could I be sure what exactly housed these reservoirs since they weren’t in my flesh, and apparently, I didn’t have a soul.

  I thought I had four souls, but now I was finding I only had four reservoirs and something else that wasn’t a soul or a dao… did I have a dao? What was I to the heavens?

  Despite everything the Butcher Bird told me, I only had more questions. So, though I had my reservations, I followed into the room.

  There were a few elaborate wire thrones arranged in the center, and they were connected to dozens of formations in the ground by carvings and wires. It reminded me of the controls and arrays I’d seen in the tube people room of my facility, but the purpose here was far more esoteric and complex.

  “Sit in the chair,” said the Butcher Bird.

  “What will it do?”

  The Butcher Bird fluttered up to perch on the back of one of the chairs.

  “Let this be a surprise,” it said. “As one experiment to another, I wish to show you something.”

  My thoughts brushed over my four reservoirs, and I felt the power that trembled there, as the bone, flesh, and qi were packed to the brim.

  In many ways, I’d never been more powerful.

  And I’d never been closer to answers.

  “Alright,” I said as I sat on the throne. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  The wires bent under my weight and wrapped around me. Drawing on the memories I gained after absorbing the test tube people's stone shards, I gently unspooled some stolen assassin qi and fed it into the wires.

  Formations lit up in blinding spirals, and I recognised some of the designs from my facility, but many more only became apparent as they activated. It was dizzyingly complex, and the formations spread out from the floor to the walls and beyond, no doubt running through the whole facility, and possibly even the entire mountain.

  The air shimmered around us, becoming hazy like shards of glass suspended in the air. There were several such shards, and they floated with strange reflections that swam with color before slowly resolving to the myriad blooms of the flower-infested jungle. It was a scene of the valley, and in that scene, people moved.

  The expedition members.

  “They’re about to reach the first trial,” said the Butcher Bird. “It’s always interesting how the different test subjects react.”

  I nodded absently and pretended to pay attention as my focus darted between the floating images and the sensation of the formations. The energy patterns were still a bit foreign to me, but, if I was reading them correctly, they might hold the key to surviving this valley.

  Partreon.