Vigor Mortis

Chapter 155: Truce

Somewhat disappointingly, the rest of my squad declines to take the much faster and more efficient travel method of simply riding on top of Ketevan the Worldshaker's back, and we end up trudging through the forest muck like plebeians that don't have tree-felling giants as subjects. I could ride alone, I suppose, but I'm trying to be 'one of the squad' to encourage them not to betray me, and all things considered I don't really mind the walk. I am not and never will be above getting dirty.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure how far it goes to endear me to all of them. The general emotional state of my squad is conflicted at best, with Xavier of all people having the highest opinion of me but even Xavier struggles to get over the fact that I'm wearing the body of her former friend as a suit. She's not terribly put off by the necromancy, the mind control, or even the time I recently slaughtered an army and almost killed her, but Melik's death really seems to get to her. She's a weird girl. Maybe being stuck in the wrong body just helps put the arbitrary nature of the soul into perspective? I don't know, and I'll probably never know unless I sit down and ask her about it. I don't understand her well enough to glean further insight.

Jelisa's next in line in terms of opinions on me, but it's a pretty big jump. She doesn't dislike me, per se, but she doesn't like me either. I've killed too many people she knows for that. But in many ways, she thinks of me the same way she thinks of the people whose lives I have ended: as a victim. And, in many ways, as a failed responsibility. She's in my corner not out of affection, but out of guilt. Which isn't ideal, but I guess it does the trick.

Then there's Lark. Oh, Lark. She's weird, because I think she hates me but if I'm reading her right, she's like, guilty about that? She doesn't want to hate me, she thinks it's a character flaw on her part that she does. Which, y'know, I agree with. Hopefully I can keep helping her fix that, and I think giving her delicious yet guilt-free food is the best way forward on that. Good food is the path to good friendship.

Then there's Bently. Hoo boy, Bently. I think I kinda traumatized him really hard. He doesn't even want to look at me. He doesn't feel dangerous, at least, but he feels I don't know. Sad and helpless. I don't know what to do about that, but I hope Xavier does. They're dating, which is weird because I thought Bently was gay, but whatever. Xavier's presence helps so I just have to trust she'll handle it better than I can.

Finally, of course, there's Harvey, who is currently breathing down my neck and mentally forming a plan of action on how best to kill me if I suddenly flip out and attack everyone. Which on one hand okay, fair, I did flip out and attack everyone back when we were fighting a war against each other, but war makes monsters of us all! I'm just trying to chill out, locate my girlfriend, and then cuddle her happily ever after. Plus, in the meantime, I'm helping everyone save Valka from vrothizo attacks, because why wouldn't I? Is that really so evil?

"For the record," I grumble to Harvey, "my death won't cause any of my undead to be destroyed, be de-mind-controlled, or any other sort of clean, convenient victory. They aren't directly tied to me like that, so you can stop thinking about it."

"Oh, my apologies," Harvey grunts. "I'm being rude, aren't I? I'll try to plan contingencies for your betrayal while you're asleep, so they don't distract you as much."

"That'd be helpful, actually," I admit. "It is pretty annoying to feel you constantly plotting my death. Thanks, Harvey."

He's not quite sure what to say to that and neither is the rest of the squad, so we continue our march towards the vrothizo eggs. I, of course, sense the giant pile of void souls long before we see them, and I don't like what I feel.

"There's something strange about the eggs," I mutter out loud, mostly to myself.

"Strange as in 'they're going to kill us all?'" Xavier asks, ever the sensible one.

"No, I don't think so," I admit. "They're not hatching or anything. At least not yet. There's just something weird about the souls. They're still growing, but they're really different from normal baby souls."

Which makes a certain kind of sense. Normally, baby souls are little more than fragments that slowly flesh out into whatever shape is appropriate for the creature they inhabit as the baby develops. Over the course of the first few months or so, the jagged, fresh shard of Mistwatcher that normally inhabits a baby human will flesh out into the spherical shape all humans have, though it'll remain black, shriveled, and generally uninteresting until it grows a lot bigger. Likewise, baby monsters start with exactly the same sort of shards, but those quickly flesh out into the patterns established by whatever monster species they are. I figured vrothizo would be the same way, but they aren't. Not at all.

The baby vrothizo already have that telltale void, and if anything it's more obvious and pronounced, a hole in the world that hasn't been covered up yet. I feel like, if I stretch my perception far enough, I could go through that hole, deeper and deeper, and maybe even find out what's on the other side. I glance deep into Keero and Ketevan's souls, trying to find the same sort of thing, but those holes are gone. Filled in with blackness, yes, but it's solid, closed down at the time of their death. Lark's soul, however, still lives and the deeper I look into that oppressive void, the more frightened I become. There's definitely something on the other side, but it's far, far beyond the range of my perceptions. Oh no, oh holy shit. Could it be?

"Vita! Hey!" my Captain snaps, causing me to jolt in surprise. Ah, I'd stopped marching again.

"Y-yes? Sorry," I stutter. "What did you say?"

"I asked you how they're different," she says. "But now I'm worried I'm not going to like the answer."

"I don't think you are," I admit. "We're not in in danger or anything. At least I don't think so, it's just I might know what vrothizo are. Lark, can you channel my mana for a second?"

She blinks with surprise, looking confused.

"What?" she asks. "Your mana?"

"Yeah, I'm a demigod or whatever, I produce my own mana," I say, dismissing the question. "I just need you to start channeling while I put my hand on your stomach. Is that okay?"

"I guess?" she allows, and I take off a gauntlet and the glove underneath so I can get skin-to-skin contact with her. Not having my tendrils to inject mana at a distance is annoying. She jolts in surprise as I stick my hand up underneath her silk shirt, but she at least starts channeling as instructed. Yeah, I feel you Lark, skin-to-skin is weird for me too now, but we have shit to do. I start letting myself flow into her soul.

"Vita, hey!" Jelisa snaps. "You need to explain this shit before you just do it. Is this dangerous? What's happening?"

"Shouldn't be dangerous," I reassure her. "I'm just taking a peek into the void. Though I guess if we're really unlucky it might cause a perception event."

"What!?" she and about half the squad shriek, and Lark jumps away from me, but I'm already inside her soul and zipping down into the deep dark of wherever it is that her soul leads. As I suspected, it feels an awful lot like the tunnel my own mana uses to travel to my physical body. This isn't just any old void, it's a route home. I vaguely feel my squad yelling at me and shaking me as my body goes stiff, but my attention is focused on this deep, dark tunnel to infinity that feels so frighteningly familiar. If anything, it's a bit wider than my own, a bit more comfortable. A bit more well-worn. Which I suppose makes sense, if everything Lark ever eats travels down here.

A simple jaunt down an endless corridor later, however, I find the horror on the other side. I am, once again, in the world of my ocean. The small clump of mana I'm focusing on pops into being far, far away from that ocean, however, and between us is an incomprehensible mass of black. It is the very same mass of black that partially borders the rest of my true self, a unique color of mana that ignores and is ignored by me because contact with each other is nothing but mutual annihilation. None of the other colors around me have ever even bothered to move, except to fill up any space I leave empty at my borders. I was clearly wrong to assume that meant they could not.

Around me is an empty pocket, untouched by the black, full of air and blood and flesh. Dead flesh, specifically: meat that has been ripped from the body by jagged teeth or swallowed whole and taken into the realm of mana, where I'd assumed matter couldn't even exist. I spread out, searching, and I find them: Lark's legs, masticated and torn to bite-sized pieces, float among countless whole rats and bits of the various monsters we've been fighting on our journey. And sure enough, the meat ration I gave her is here as well, alongside the fragment of my own soul I put inside it. Incredible. Countless other meals float around here as well, though. Impossibly many. They're no doubt from the who-knows-how-many other vrothizo that are still living and eating to this day. All their stomachs go to the same place.

I separate myself further, searching for the edge of this bubble. It doesn't take long to find; the black mana is everywhere. It's more than an ocean, it's an ocean of oceans, utterly dwarfing me in scale. And it is busy. Souls and meat alike get extracted from the pockets and devoured, little by little. There is some guiding will to this place, at least a certain sort of intelligence and intent that I admit to being rather jealous of, considering my own aimlessness. But unfortunately, as I stop to admire it all, the black notices me. This incomprehensibly large vastness of dark intelligence notices me, and annihilation follows instantly.

Literally instantly. I'm incapable of processing the span of time between being seen and being purged from the being's territory, an equal amount of its own existence traded away to reduce me to oblivion. Of course, the entirety of my ocean still remains, but to my utter terror the blackness at my border stirs as well. Roiling in fury (or perhaps panic?) it sets forward to obliterate me, a task it can quite easily accomplish at least so long as it is willing to destroy a not-insignificant fraction of itself to do so. Unfortunately, I don't see it hesitate before it pushes towards me. I feel a bit of my essence wipe away from existence as I'm too slow to pull away, but pull away I do, rapidly giving ground both to my dark opposition and the other colors surrounding me, hoping they'll try to fill in the new gaps and provide a buffer to make my annihilation that much more costly. It starts to succeed, and the black rushes forward to fill the gap before it can be blocked off by pointlessly costly distractions. But then, the moment it catches me, the moment I think I'm about to be overwhelmed and obliterated on a fundamental level, it stops. It waits. It squirms with meaning.

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Astonishment. Curiosity.

My entire ocean shivers, but responds.

Curiosity, my emotions concur. But also, fear.

Amusement. Delight.

The blackness before me shifts, forming itself into an incomprehensible but clearly purposeful shape. I copy the shape, not sure what else to do, but immediately afterwards I make a shape of my own: an eye with a mouth where the pupil should be.

Delight, the blackness repeats. Peace.

And then it goes still, and I realize Jelisa's mouth is on mine, forcing air into my lungs because I haven't been breathing.

My eyes fly open and I tense up, holding back the urge to deck my captain in the head for being way, way up in my personal space when I come to. All is forgiven, of course, since she's currently saving my life. I gently put my hand on her instead, taking slow, deliberate breaths of my own as my lightheaded body flickers back into awareness.

Jelisa gets off me slowly, a mixture of relief, fury, and utter exasperation tumbling around inside her as I return to respiring unaided. Most of the rest of the squad seems relieved, although Bently, Harvey, and Xavier all have hands on their weapons, probably because I almost killed them all the last time I died. Lark, however, is horrified, since she somehow thinks literally any of this is her fault. Keero and Ketevan are also here, but I don't care.

"G-good news," I manage to choke out, cracking a grin at everyone. "I think I established a truce with the void."

"You're fucking with us," Xavier declares, not really believing her words. "This is an elaborate prank and you're fucking with us."

"I've heard Vita try to tell a joke," Jelisa sighs. "This wasn't that."

"But what the fuck does that even mean?"

"Are we about to get hit by a perception event or not?" Harvey grunts.

"Nah, no chance," I reassure him. "Totally wrong deity."

"And what the fuck does that mean!?" Xavier nearly shrieks.

"It means there's a third watcherkin!" I explain excitedly, nearly headbutting Jelisa with how fast I sit up. "One that uses black mana. We talked, even! Well, kind of. It decided not to kill me, and that's good, since it's way bigger than I am. I think it was surprised that I exist, which y'know, is super fair since I'm really surprised it exists."

"I suspect the rest of us lack the heretical background necessary to understand what you're babbling on about," Harvey answers flatly.

I start to form an automatic answer, but manage to close my mouth and try to actually think about it first. He's right; there's too big a gap between what Melik knew and what I know, and the rest of them are probably operating with Melik's knowledgebase. Melik would be confused and incredulous about anything I try to explain here. I guess I should start with proof? Or, no. Penelope always likes to start by asking questions. Something about conclusions being more powerful when they're drawn by the person you want to convince. I'm not sure I get it, but I'll try to emulate her.

"What do all of you think I am, exactly?" I ask slowly.

"You're the child of Ars Rainier," Harvey answers immediately. "And like him, you are a Lich. A dangerous abomination that we are unable to kill."

"I think you're someone with far too much power and far too little education, care, and trust in your life," Jelisa opines.

"I think you're a terrifying murderer that I find concerningly affable," Xavier chirps, earning her a glower from Harvey. "What? The Lich is funny."

"I think you're the monster I owe my life to," Lark mutters.

"I don't know what to think of you," Bently says quietly.

I blink. Well, uh, hmm.

"That's not quite what I meant," I hedge, not sure whether to be taken aback or pleased with the candidness. "I already know how you feel about me, I'm an empath. I mean what do you think I am?"

"I already answered that," Harvey grunts. "You're a Lich. Like Ars."

"Well you're half right," I smirk at him. "If a Lich is just someone that can inhabit another body after death, I'm obviously a Lich. But I'm nothing like Ars. Ars is a human man, but I'm nothing of the sort. I'm not some copy of that scary bastard. And I'll prove it. Everyone flip your mana sight on and watch me channel."

Hesitantly, they all do so, and I start to channel, preparing to cast the normal way by moving the mana up into my fingers rather than my tentacles.

"You're not doing anything," Xavier points out.

"It looks like that to you, doesn't it?" I agree, and then flick my hands through the motions of a simple light spell, which immediately starts to glow. "And yet!"

"The mana around you didn't move at all," Lark says with surprise. "I've never seen that."

"That's because your spells only see Mistwatcher mana," I explain. "And I don't use Mistwatcher mana. I have my own."

Questions, accusations, and disbelief all erupt from that claim, so I spend most of the rest of the walk elaborating, answering questions, and doing my best to prove that yes, I have my own mana source independent of the Mistwatcher, and yes, it reacts destructively with Mistwatcher mana. It's all so annoying because everyone else wants to focus on the shit that's just normal to me now while I'm still reeling because holy shit there's a third Watcherkin and it was like, happy to see me rather than murderous? I mean, it was murderous at first, but it seemed to be really interested in me once I started doing stuff! It was almost nice! Except well, I mean, if it made the vrothizo, it's probably not that nice, because geez those things are awful. But still, this is incredible! Is it linked to all of them at once? Did it make them, or adapt them? If it's linked to multiple bodies, can I be linked to multiple bodies? What would that do to me? How does it stay sane? No, wait, Lark isn't like a linked mind of vrothizo, she's one person and she doesn't even channel black mana, she uses Watcher mana like everyone else. So she's not like me, she's just a mouth for something like me, basically? Does some other body guide the black mana's intelligence? Or has it learned to think without one? Aaaah, I have so many questions!

But no one else even has the context to understand why this is incredible, and half of them don't even believe it including Lark, which is particularly annoying. No, they all want to talk about me, instead. Which I guess is fair. I want them to trust me, to understand where I'm coming from. Maybe that's Melik talking, but I really do want them to understand. So I shelve the incredible revelations for now and I talk a little about my time in the slums. I talk about what I was doing when I got captured. I talk about why I refused to release the human souls I was protecting. That, of course, gets the most pushback. The idea that the afterlife doesn't exist is anathema to these people, an idea simultaneously too absurd and too terrifying to consider. But as we reach the pile of eggs, I have an excellent idea on what to do next.

"Jelisa," I prompt, "have you ever actually seen the Mistwatcher harvest souls en masse? Did you watch that, after the battle?"

"I was a bit busy at the time," she grumbles, "and you'd eaten all of the souls near us."

"This should be an interesting learning experience, then," I muse. "Let's make Penelope and Theodora proud by doing a little experiment."

"Wait," Lark says. "When you say 'Penelope,' are you talking about First Lady Vesuvius?"

"Well yeah," I confirm. "She's my girlfriend. Anyway, here we are!"

I ignore the sputters of disbelief and various rounds of 'oh shit' that erupt behind me as I step forward to where I sense the unborn vrothizo. Sure enough, we step into a clearing and in front of us is a towering pile of pitch-black eggs, glistening in the light. They seem to have been plopped out entirely haphazardly, no apparent nest having been made.

"Ketevan," I order, "smash half of these, would you?"

I'm not sure if it's the terrifying control my shards have over people or just the raw callousness of the two vrothizo, but neither parent-to-be balks at the idea of slaughtering their own unborn progeny. The massive Revenant steps forward and accomplishes the task with ease and relish, perhaps exacting revenge on the pile for the discomfort no doubt involved in creating it. As expected, the souls inside lose their connection to the black mana when they die, their tunnels collapsing and leaving little more than strangely shaped soulstuff behind. Over a hundred souls are gathered now in one place, and while I yearn to devour them, I need this offering to be accepted by the Mistwatcher. I still have plenty of snacks from the Wight anyway.

"Now I know most of you can't see souls," I narrate, stepping next to Jelisa as we wait for Misty to notice its meal, "But they're actually quite beautiful. Most living things have them, though some living things don't. And if a soul is ever outside the confines of what the Mistwatcher considers to be a 'body,' it reaches its own soul up to retrieve them. Misty itself has a soul too, after all, and for the record it has at least as many tentacles as the physical thing. But instead of eyes, it has mouths. Feel free to record that in your holy books."

"Vita," Jelisa sighs, "can you just get to the point?"

"The point is, your soul sight spell is too shitty to show you the chewing," I tell her. "So I want you to watch the carelessness. I want you to see the utter indifference on display here with your own two eyes, and then tell me there's a divine purpose behind it. Here it comes."

It's a scene I've seen plenty of times before: spiritual tentacles poke up from the ground, swipe through the smorgasbord on display, and leave with tendrilfulls of delicious souls and soul shards. The shattered leftovers remaining start to move towards the corpses of the baby vrothizo, which I make Keero put down so I can focus on Jelisaveta's reaction.

"Most of the souls," she notes, "had pieces left behind. They got broken."

"Exactly," I confirm.

"And you're not making these undead. This is how undead are made naturally."

"By Misty's own leftovers, yep."

She's quiet for a moment.

"There could easily be some purpose we don't understand surrounding the shattering," Jelisaveta says. "Perhaps the ones that were broken were just the mindless ones, for example. These are vrothizo souls after all."

"I thought you might say that," I smirk. "Ketevan! Smash exactly one more."

She does. Eventually, a tendril comes to collect it, whole.

"Smash another one," I order.

And we repeat this over and over, each individual soul being taken whole. None of them get smashed when they're not in a group.

"It has nothing to do with the worth of the individual soul," I explain. "That can't be the case, unless every single worthless soul just happened to be in the first pile. I think shattering happens because the Mistwatcher doesn't notice the difference between a big soul and a group of small souls. Or if it notices, it doesn't care. Either way, the structural integrity of souls isn't important to it."

Jelisa is still, her eyes locked on the most recent vrothizo soul to be freed from its mortal coil. Eventually, the Mistwatcher's tendril comes to claim it as well.

"I've seen enough," Jelisa declares. "Can you get your slaves to smash the rest of them so we can head home?"

I scowl a bit at that.

"What, that's it?" I challenge her. "Just 'I've seen enough' and you're done? I'm trying to shake your whole island here!"

"What exactly were you hoping for here, Vita?" Jelisa fires back. "This is flimsy evidence at best."

"Well it's better evidence than you have!" I snap. "All you have is stories! Shit people made up that you treat as fact! You have nothing to back up the claim that the Mistwatcher is kind, or that the afterlife exists, or any of it! Why won't any of you realize that!?"

Damn it, this'd better not be happening again! Did I push too hard? Not hard enough? What did I say? What should I have said? How did I fuck it up this time?

"...Do you need to be right that badly?" Jelisa asks quietly.

"I do when it's the reason you put me in that fucking torture prison!" I shout back at her. "If it's the difference between being able to live my life and getting attacked by insane zealots everywhere I go, then yes I have to be right!"

"And if I'm not going to attack you?" Jelisa answers evenly. "If I'm not going to put you in prison, or sell you out to anyone that will?"

"You're still wrong," I hiss.

"Maybe so," Jelisa concedes with a nod of her head. "I certainly don't think you're crazy, and I know you can see and do things I'll never be able to. You've survived death for fuck's sake, maybe multiple times. I don't think you're lying, but I don't know if that means you're right, and ultimately? I don't think I care anymore. I'm not here to uncover the secrets of the universe. I have my suspicions, but they're mine. The only thing I'm gonna draw my sword over is to protect the people who need protecting."

"People need protecting," I say evenly, "from the Mistwatcher. But doing that is what got me into this mess."

"I'm not a priest," Jelisa answers. "I'm not a theologian. What I know for a fact is that I don't know."

She glances back at the rest of the squad, her eyes resting on each of them in turn.

"And I don't expect anyone to know. As your Captain it is my job to ensure every one of you is where you need to be to do the most good. As long as that's what you want to do, you're Templars in my eyes. I don't care if you think our Lich here has it right or wrong. I don't care if you're heretics or faithful. I care if you're concerned with righting the wrongs in front of you. Nothing else."

She turns back to me.

"So with that being said it will be Hiverock Night just a day or two after we get back home. Vita, are you willing to assist with the defense of Valka against them? Do you swear you'll fight alongside us to protect our squad and the innocent people we're responsible for, like you have today?"

I scowl at her, but I nod.

"There will be High Templars around," I tell her. "So I can't fight like I did today. But I'll fight as Melik would have. That is, of course, as long as no one gets any bright ideas to betray me when I'm doing a good deed again."

"I think," Jelisaveta answers, turning back to the team, "that Hiverock is bigger than all of us. Like what we did today, it's a greater evil than anything you might think about Vita. And as you've seen, she is an incomparable asset. So as your Captain I believe it is my duty to order your silence about this matter, at least until Hiverock is driven off again. Then, when the crisis is over, you can do whatever you want. Report me to the higher-ups if you think it's the right thing to do. But you will not cause an extra crisis in the middle of the ones we're already suffering from. Does that seem fair to everybody?"

"Ordering us to not report you is a direct violation of code," Lark squeaks quietly.

"True," Jelisa nods. "I can't enforce any of this. So I'd consider it a personal favor if you tell me about any disagreements now."

There's quiet for a while as we all consider that.

"There's some wisdom in this truce," Harvey speaks up first. "But it's not our place to decide. I think you're doing a dangerous thing by breaking the chain of command like this, Captain. But I'll wait to bring it up until after Hiverock."

Jelisa nods.

"That's all I ask. Anyone else?"

"If I die," Bently speaks up, "I want you to leave my soul alone. Can you promise me that, Vita?"

I scowl at that.

"All of you think I'm wrong, huh?" I grumble.

"You have to be," Lark answers quietly.

"And why's that?" I sneer.

"I mean, the things you said were kinda fucking insane," Xavier answers, shrugging. "You're saying there's a whole other universe full of nothing but different kinds of mana, and you are mana, but you're also an intangible eyeball with tentacles, and you're also some kind of demigod? I dunno, man. Or girl, or whatever. I don't even remember half the crazy shit you claimed. It all went over my head."

"You don't understand it, and so that means you won't listen to me?" I snap at her.

"I didn't say that!"

"I'd rather have my soul untampered and end up wrong," Bently answers, "then be taken by you and end up right."

I narrow my eyes at him. Remarkably well-considered, for a puppy. I think it's a load of shit, but I won't act like he hasn't thought hard about it.

"You have to be wrong," Lark says again, "because if you're right, our lives are meaningless. If you're right, there's no plan. Suffering has no purpose. And and I don't have any reason to"

She trails off, taking a deep breath.

"You're wrong," she repeats. "But I don't have a problem fighting alongside you on Hiverock night. And the Captain's right, that's the most important thing."

"Yeah, I got no beef with that plan," Xavier agrees.

"As long as you promise," Bently says.

I grind my teeth a little. Damn it, I thought I could get through to them. But honestly, I guess this isn't the worst thing. If none of them betray me, I can help on Hiverock night and then just leave. Go deal with things in my village. Find Penelope. The part of me I took from Melik doesn't want to leave, but it's not like I don't have other things to do.

"I promise not to save your soul from the Mistwatcher," I tell Bently, barely refraining from spitting the words.

"Thank you," he answers, nodding slightly. "Then I don't have any problems with it."

"It's settled, then," Jelisa declares. "From one crisis straight to the next. Thank you, team. I'm proud to have you."

"Yeah, well, hopefully this'll just be like most Hiverock nights and the High Templars will handle pretty much all of it," Xavier says, stretching. "I'm fucking exhausted."

"Don't count on it," Jelisa grunts. "If we were that lucky, would any of this have happened?"

None of us have an argument against that.