Vigor Mortis

Chapter 118: Stairway to Heaven

Wow, Ars is kind of a dick.

Still, the whole emergency-soul-ejection thing is pretty cool. I wonder where it’s going. Wait, is this why all the Templars have been ardently against killing me despite how much they hate me? Do they think I can dothat?

…Can I do that?

Questions for later, I suppose. It’s not like I want to try it. Manus intends to capture me alive either way, and I’d rather prefer to avoid that. But how the hell do I deal with this guy? If it was just him I could probably rush right at him, nullifying his kineticism talent with my mana, and then either yank his soul or… I dunno, beat the shit out of him with my fists I guess. I’m actually strong enough for that to be a valid strategy, I can probably crush him like a grape. Or Lyn could stab him, though I’m not sure I can protect us both. Unfortunately, there’s also the ice guy. The ice guy is a fucking problem. His frigid barriers are mostly opaque, but only mostly, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Manus could aim his talent through them. Meanwhile, if I try to punch them I will probably lose the skin on my hand… not to mention that if I get close enough to do so I can be surrounded by ice walls outside my mana-disruption range, and then I’m fucked. Ugh, it’s like fighting Capita and Sky all over again! If I just get close these assholes are dead, but both of them are really, really good at keeping people away.

“He got away,” Manus growls. “He fucking got away! Do you have any idea what evil you’ve unleashed?”

“No, not really,” I admit.

The pressure of mana around me eases up. Interesting. Does this mean he wants to talk? Sure, we can talk. I’ve talked with a lot of Templars now, and I’m getting pretty good at it.

“That’s right,” Manus mutters to himself. “You can’t remember him, can you? Fuck. It was you that freed him after you got out, then.”

“Yeah,” I confirm. “Some High Templar was coming down to fuck me up so I figured, ‘Hey I bet the prisoner next door would enjoy killing Templars.’ Lo and behold, he was pretty good at it. Then he claimed to sort of be my dad, complained about stairs a bunch, and stabbed himself in the eye. That’s all I know of the guy. You, on the other hand, I’ve been watching for two years.”

I focus the eye of my soul on him, drinking in every minute fluctuation of his being that betrays his emotions and hints at his thoughts. I’ve always struggled to get people, to see things how others do. Even after I could read emotions directly, I still never figured out the trick to making use of that information beyond lie detection until Penelope gave me some advice. I haven’t exactly had anything better to do in prison than build up all the skills I can, and this one can be pretty entertaining. When learning emotions, she said, it isn’t enough only to try and figure out why someone feels the way they do; if you do that, you can make guesses but not figure out if those guesses are right or not. The trick is to also use that guess, dissect it, and figure out how to get this person to feel whatever you want them to feel. If you can successfully manipulate someone, you know for a fact that you understand them.

Manus is terrified, first and foremost. That wasn’t the case until Ars escaped, so I’m going to guess he’s scared of the guy. Manus is furious, mostly at himself and again probably for letting Ars get away. He’s confused, because he doesn’t understand how we got out. From his perspective, the attacking forces got delayed here; no one should have made it to the lower levels. He doesn’t know how Lyn slipped by him, and my guess is that he thinks she freed me… which wouldn’t be possible unless she can kill five Templars by herself. So he’s probably overestimating her right now, and an extra flash of concern when he glances her way confirms that for me. I’m not sure I want to send Lyn on a bluff she can’t afford to get called, though.

It’s kind of like a puzzle, really. Or maybe a set of toy blocks. Something fun to take apart and put back together. How do I want the pieces to be arranged? Ideally, I could get him so fucking furious that he charges right at us or something stupid like that, but I don’t think that’s very likely. He’s closer to despair than anger, so that should be a better way to get him to act foolish. Just like that bitch Victoria.

“It’s kind of funny, really,” I continue. “You’re so worked up about some cognimancer escaping when you’ve been free this entire time. Does the sketch just miss having his artist around?”

His eyes narrow, jaw clenching. Oh, whoops! That really pissed him off, actually. Okay, maybe we’ll go with anger after all. I let mana flow through my tentacles, twisting them around and shaping it into a subtle kynamancy spell to send Lyn a message only she can hear. Who needs fingers, anyway? Mom nods, stepping back towards the staircase as I stride slowly forward, watching both Templars carefully. Manus mostly doesn’t give a shit, content to let me approach, while the ice-user actively tries not to react because he, of course, wants me to be closer. He probably won’t butt in until I get in his attack range, which is what I want.

“What did you just call me?” Manus hisses. “And here I thought you didn’t remember.”

“I don’t remember Ars, no,” I tell him. “But I’ve met splices. I know what you are. And I know you have two talents: that kineticism bullshit… and cognimancy. Cognimancy that you regularly use on your own Templars, because you are an abusive, power-hungry hypocrite.”

“I only cast to the degree necessary to ensure my people are not being tampered with by the likes of you,” Manus snaps. “Animancy is needed to combat animancy.”

“Yeah, but how often is it really needed compared to when you end up using it?” I taunt. “You do more ‘tampering’ than anyone else in this entire building. Every week I feel you mindfucking someone into obedience, drilling them with questions, then mindfucking them back to normal before wiping their memories of it all. It’s not necessary. You’re just addicted.”

Ooh, that one hit home, and not just in Manus. Jelisa and the ice guy are reacting to that. Interesting.

“I will not discuss prison security policies with a prisoner,” Manus snaps. “Return to your cell before this gets ugly.”

Hah, like that would help. My cell is a bit busted. Still, no value in pointing that out. He’s changing the subject on purpose, so I should call him out on that.

“That’s not a denial,” I say. “You hate your creator, but you’re still his creation in the end.”

“You know nothing,” Manus growls.

“I know that you have an entire crazy-powerful talent that doesn’t involve mindfucking anyone, and you could get along just fine using nothing but that. And yet you still peel open more souls in the span of a month than I have since I became an obligate necromancer! You call it security, but it’s just your excuse to be a monster.”

And honestly, I don’t blame him. Because it’s both. Manus’ talent wants to be used, same as anyone, and he’s using it in the best way he can while keeping that urge down. Is it a bit aggressive? Sure. Is it ridiculously intrusive? Oh yeah, absolutely. Would it actually catch any cognimancy performed on his Templars and allow him to protect them from it? Yeah, probably. Honestly, in his position, I might do the same thing. He’s not really wrong.

But he’s still really fucking insecure about it, and I want him off balance. A dozen tendrils twist around to reach into my own soul, pulling out fragments. Debris is everywhere, not to mention Templar corpses, and my two enemies are hyper-aware of this. They are expecting to have to fight a zombie army, so instead of making one I fill my fragments with power, transforming them into hungering shards. The two Templars before me have no way to know the difference.

And Ars gave me an idea.

It’s obvious, now that I think about it. Souls can move. I don’t understand how Ars made souls that fly through the air under their own power, but they can certainly move. Why should my shards need a vessel in order to function? Why should they need blood in order to drink the soul? It’s kind of an arbitrary limiter, isn’t it? My power seems to sing at the question, the understanding at the edges of my awareness churning into my conscious mind. Yeah, this will work. I twist the hungering shards further, and throw them at my enemies like weighted daggers.

I don’t exactly have a lot of experience throwing things with my tentacles, so most of my shots are off-course. Manus sees the attack thanks to his soul sight and dodges all but one of my shards, while his fellow Templar is not an Inquisitor and gets hit by three of my attacks. I immediately get an answer to my blood question: when my shards make contact with my enemies’ souls and start gnawing at them, they don’t really make much progress. I guess if I rip flesh out of someone I can bring bits of soul along without having to deal with magic resistance, but if it’s just soul versus soul then magic resistance comes into play? Ars didn’t seem to have that trouble but maybe he was just that strong. Still, this seems handy: magic resistance may be stopping my shards from dealing damage, but they aren’t getting rid of the shards either. My attacks will keep trying to break through until something deals with them, and that’s dangerous enough to force Manus to take his attention off me in order to do exactly that.

A plan in my head starts to form. I can throw souls, huh? In that case, instead of trying to approach these two… I bet I can make them come to me.

I feint a rapid movement forward, prompting Ice Guy to freeze a wall in front of me and obscure their vision of my position before I leap backwards, turning around and retreating back to the stairwell with Lyn and the others. The living and dead Templars are still on the landing for this floor, but mom is already long gone, having run back down the stairs. Carved from stone, the spiral stairwell has no central column, only empty space, allowing one to look all the way up or down the construction—or, if they’re particularly suicidal, jump all the way down. We are currently fourteen floors from the bottom, which is about two hundred feet. Two years ago, I cracked both my legs after falling twenty.

“Fight on the stairs!” I order my Revenants. “Go halfway to the next floor and stall for time. Keep their attention!”

Then I grab a terrified Jelisa, vault over the handrail, and jump down the middle of the stairwell. Jelisa screams as we fall about five stories, but I hold her head steady as I try to catch myself on a banister. It breaks, and I have to flail to grab the stairs underneath it to halt my fall completely. Two of my Revenants—the ones that had been on the lower floors freeing and collecting prisoners—immediately rush to my aid, worriedly helping me pull myself and Jelisa up onto firm ground.

“Thanks,” I grunt to them as we crawl to our feet, and then I kill them both.

Their bodies jerk, go limp, and fall off the stairs, splattering open nine stories below. I start pumping the souls as full as they can go with my mana as a smattering of stunned prisoners gape at me, all of whom are collared and most of whom seem to be somewhat out of their depth. The lower levels of the prison hold higher-security prisoners, so each and every one of these people likely has a dangerous skill or talent. Only a few of them catch my interest, however: an ugly splice woman comprised of three equally-sized soul fragments, a middle-aged man with a brandy-smelling auburn soul and impressively calm demeanor considering the current situation, and motherfucking Inquisitor Victoria, who is a rather different kind of prisoner considering that her incarceration began after the jailbreak. Two Revenants have the fortune of guarding her instead of helping me to my feet, and thereby get to remain in their body slightly longer before I remove their souls. Although I still do that now, causing them to collapse on either side of little Vicki, which prompts a terrified yelp that I can’t help but chuckle at. Hmm… I could just kill her now, but as one of my personal torturers I’m still indecisive on what I want to do to her.

“I’ll deal with you in a second,” I promise her. “I’ve still got a warden to kill. Who wants to help?”

A deluge of affirmation hits me in response, but I ignore the voices and pay attention to the souls. Most of the really eager ones seem a little bit… unreliable. This is a prison, after all, so a bunch of people in here are the bad kind of crazy. The souls I’m interested in seem firmly against helping as well, which is… no, wait. I step over to the splice, grab her collar, and snap it, which makes the rest of the prisoners even more rowdy.

“You can help,” I tell the splice. “Make sure Jelisa and Vicki don’t do anything stupid. Lyn, you too.”

“I-I-I don’t w-want to help y-you…” the splice stutters at me, her whole body shaking.

I roll an eye, popping the first chunk of collar metal down my throat.

“Then switch to the one that does.”

“Nix, don’t!” Victoria begs. “You don’t have to listen to her!”

The splice freezes, panic on her face as she fights herself from within. With two tentacles I grab the parts of her I don’t need, applying a gentle yet threatening pressure. Revulsion and terror fills them, but they can deal with it. I don’t exactly have the time to argue right now. With another squeeze they concede the fight, and the woman stands up straighter, grinning a smile of twisted teeth.

“You remember us, work of art,” she says happily, any trace of a stutter gone.

“Nope,” I deny. “I have no idea who you are. We can talk later.”

Manus finally finished pulling my fragments out of himself and Ice Guy, so they make their way to the stairs. As expected, they immediately start kicking the asses of my Revenants up there. In the first second of the fight Manus just telekinetically pushes half of them over the banister, where they proceed to fall to their deaths. It was really quite thoughtful of him, since it lets me catch their souls before their bodies splatter on the ground below and shatter them into an inedible state. I just reach out a few tentacles and rip the souls out as the corpses fall, not impeding their descent in the slightest. They, too, get pushed full of mana. Meanwhile, the remaining few Templar Revenants put up a rather pathetic fight, failing to do any damage to the more powerful duo as they chase my forces down the stairs.

Which is perfect, really. All I need is for Manus to not pay much attention to the stairs themselves. Stone is a pretty tough material, after all, but so is wood by most measures. A small fragment of my soul can shatter branches with relative ease. A collection of Templar souls, therefore, should have little trouble ripping apart carved stone from the inside.

“Get out of the stairwell and into the hallway,” I tell the living.

Leaning out over the half-broken bannister to better aim, I toss one mana-charged Templar soul into each floor’s worth of winding stairwell between myself and Manus. They worm into the stone, threads blooming in every direction as my power fills the building itself.

“Break them all,” I order.

Cracks run through the rock, snaking jagged lines as they widen and bloom and finally explode, less than a second after my words leave my mouth. The floor beneath the Templars crumbles, dropping them into the gaping death pit below. Manus and Ice Guy, of course, immediately react by trying to use their talents—kineticism can easily hold Manus in the air, and a block of ice can be a temporary, if uncomfortable platform. This is, in their minds, hardly a threat they aren’t prepared for.

But when the staircases shatter, so too do the souls within… releasing their massive payloads of blue.

My mana is me. I can feel it, know it, and move it even if it isn’t within my body. Normally this is somewhat useless, considering that it gets annihilated the moment it leaves my body. But the one other place my mana can be safe is inside a soul, and Templar souls can hold a fuckton of mana. Their threads were full to bursting with my beautiful essence. With Manus furious with rage and distracted by killing his former allies, he didn’t notice the trap until it was too late.

The warden and his fellow Templar fall, their talents unusable in what is, for barely a second, my domain. But then the staircase below shatters, and the next, and the next as the pair accelerate down the shaft. I gather and push my disembodied self through the air, coating Manus and his lackey in mana I will not let them use. The Templar souls in the staircase are irrevocably shattered, worthless for even a meal, but in their place I get two souls of far greater strength. Much like the corpses Manus himself pushed off the edge, I collect his soul as he falls past me, tearing it free of his body before he can pull the tiniest shred of Mistwatcher mana back into himself. His partner meets the same fate.

And now the prison is devoid of threats that can stop me. There’s nothing left to do but clean up. I allow myself to let out a satisfied sigh.

“Someone go down and collect the bodies on the bottom floor. Bring the two most-intact ones up to me.”

“Why the fuck should we listen to you?” asks the demonstratably stupidest prisoner. I pull out his soul and eat it, allowing his collapsing body to be my answer. A few of the smarter ones scurry off to do my bidding.

“Watcher’s saggy tits, what security did they put her under?” another goon mutters.

“Epsilon,” I answer.

“There’s an Epsilon?”

I just give an amused snort in response, turning towards where the splice is standing arm-in-arm with Jelisa and Vicki, grinning maliciously. I have no clue what this splice’s talents are, but the Inquisitors are more than terrified enough of it for me to be content that they won’t start shit.

“Right then,” I ask Victoria. “Now what should I do with you?”

“You shouldn’t do anything with her, Vita,” Jelisa insists. “You won. No one else has to die.”

“Oh, so you’re saying I should take her prisoner then,” I sneer. “Well, okay. She did teach me a lot on how to take care of a prisoner.”

I shove the shard into the collar of that auburn-souled old man and order it open as I walk his way. He jolts in surprise when it clicks unlocked, and I pull it off of him before returning to Victoria. I walk right up next to her, glaring up into her damn chitin helmet.

“On your knees,” I order her.

She flinches, but fails to comply.

“Are you going to make me repeat myself?” I ask calmly.

Slowly, shakingly, she kneels in front of me. I rip her helmet off, snapping the straps, and click the prisoner collar into place.

“Now then,” I sneer happily, raising a fist. “Time for interrogation.”

Jelisa, terror thumping through her soul, nonetheless breaks out of the splice’s casual hold and grabs my bicep.

“I stopped her, so I’ll stop you too,” she says firmly.

“You only stopped her after letting her get a few hits in,” I remind her.

“Well, I’m better than I was then,” she counters. “You can be better than her.”

I almost break free and start beating the shit out of Victoria anyway, but to my surprise, Lyn also steps in.

“Hey,” she says, scratching the back of her head. “Revenge is kinda for pussies. Y’know?”

I blink.

“What?”

“I just mean it’s like… gah. I don’t know, Rowan is better at this than I am. It’s stupid. It’s cowardly. What’s the point?”

I’m honestly surprised Lyn is uncomfortable with this. This is just how it’s done. Someone steals your food? Bullies you out of a good begging spot? Touches your Rosco? Well, now you have to kick the shit out of them or else they’ll do it again. But I haven’t seen my mom in two years, so the thought of disappointing her now—for whatever reason—is enough to make me reconsider my promise to kill every Templar here. I hate breaking promises, but… well, I guess I never said when I would kill everybody here.

“Fine,” I grumble, eliciting a sigh of relief and a surge of hope from Jelisa. Fuck if I know what she’s hopeful about, though. There’s no way I’m going to let Victoria go. “Just don’t do anything stupid, Vicki.”

“Thank you for being merciful to her, work of art,” the splice hums, two-thirds of her still brimming with feelings of violation. “We understand she was not good to you, but she was to us.”

Well, I guess now is as good a time as any.

“Who are you?” I ask her.

“I am Excorio. We are Altrix. Sano and Nix are my other shards. We are saddened that you do not remember us, Vita. Did your changes damage your memory?”

I scowl.

“A rather powerful cognimancer recently implied I lost some of mine, yeah, but I assume that was his fault. Or you’re just bullshitting me.”

“Ah. We see. Well, we are all happy to see you again. We helped raise you before our capture. You are like a… hmm. I suppose a daughter, to us?”

What was that pause for? She was about to say something else by habit, and is relieved to have caught it. It doesn’t feel like an omission at my expense, though. She just feels embarrassed about it.

“Well, I don’t know you and my mom is right here so I’m afraid I can’t reciprocate,” I grunt. “But I certainly don’t have anything against you either. Feel free to tag along, or whatever.”

“We shall,” she agrees, bowing slightly. I can feel she’s hurt by my words, but I don’t really want to deal with it. “The rest of me will also cause no problems, so long as you cause no harm to our favorite Inquisitor.”

I glance at Jelisaveta and snort.

“Well I guess if I’m entitled to one, maybe you are too. As long as your favorite Inquisitor plays along.”

Her bow becomes deeper for a moment, and then she stands back up straight. I guess that’s the end of that conversation.

“So your name is Vita, then?” the middle-aged man whose collar I took asks from behind me.

“That’s me,” I confirm, turning to face him a few moments before remembering to turn and face him with my physical face as well.

“It’s good to meet you. I am Jeremiah. May I ask why you removed my collar, Vita?”

“I like the smell of your soul,” I tell him honestly.

There’s a pause. Nobody seems to like that answer for some reason.

“I don’t mean that in like a ‘I want to eat it’ way,” I clarify. “At least not any more than usual.”

Hmm, that reassures him even less. I’ve been getting good practice on freaking people out and pissing people off, but the opposite still seems to elude me. Whatever, what would be the point of manipulating someone into feeling better anyway? Manipulating people has to be reserved for the extra-special assholes or I would socially exhaust myself after like… two conversations.

“Anyway, nice to meet you Jeremiah. The rest of you can line up and I’ll start snapping collars. Then we’re going to the upper floors.”

I hate every reason why this is the case, but some part of me does appreciate that this prison got its prisoners good at following orders. My earlier murder probably helped, and I can hardly regret it considering that prisoner had been thinking rather vividly about murdering me and, if I was interpreting his disgusting slew of emotions properly, animating and having sex with my mind-controlled corpse. Considering how shitty the Templars are, it can be easy to forget that a significant chunk of their prisoners are admittedly much worse. Accordingly, I ask everyone two simple questions before removing their collars.

“Do you intend to hurt me or anyone I care about?”

“No,” the greasy-looking older woman in front of me confirms. She’s not lying, which is good because those that do lie (and those that say yes) will get eaten.

“Are you willing to obey me as long as we are together?”

“Until we get out of this damn prison, sure,” she answers. “But then I’m going my own way.”

I nod. That’s fine by me. I open her collar, tear off a chunk of it to swallow, and call the next person down the line.

“Do you intend to hurt me or anyone I care about?”

“Shit no, I’m not stupid.”

“Are you willing to obey me as long as we are together?”

“You’re eating metal like it’s steamed fuckin’ crab meat. Yes.”

By the end of the line I have an interesting collection of Gamma and Delta prisoners. Eight of them survive and get their collars popped, ten of them I deem dangerously unstable and turn into meals, and three of them aren’t really crazy or evil but they certainly think I am so I regretfully decided to leave their collars on and see if they mellow out. Manus and Ice Guy are also now my Revenants, placed in relatively fresh bodies, though I’ve ordered them both not to talk.

“May I just protest your general policy of releasing large numbers of animancers back into the public?” Jelisaveta mutters. She doesn’t expect me to care but feels like she has to say it.

“Sure, but it’s probably a dumb idea to do it to their faces,” I tell her. “Besides, if they start fucking around in Skyhope I will consider that endangering people I care about and track them down. The capital stays animancy-free, got it?”

Various noises of acknowledgment echo behind me.

“See? It’ll be fine.”

“All the places other than the capital?” Jelisa demands. “You’re just going to let them cast as much animancy as they please?”

“Well, I don’t know what else you expect me to do with them,” I grumble. “My skills are murder and un-murder, and I’ve doled out what I consider reasonable amounts of both already. Look, most of the living ones aren’t going to be doing anything stupid. No one wants to just get caught again and end up back in a place like this.”

“Wait, you intend to go back to the capital?” one of the prisoners asks. “That’s crazy. There are going to be Inquisitors swarming everywhere when they know we all got out. You’ll get caught in minutes.”

“I can’t just not go see the rest of my family,” I insist. And I can’t just not go see Penelope, but I don’t intend to say her name out loud in front of witnesses. She’d be so mad!

“We could always go to you,” Lyn says. “Or you could hide somewhere in the forest and we could meet in the middle?”

“I’ll think about it,” I grunt.

It is a good point. It might put my family in danger if I meet them in Skyhope. Shit. Am I going to need to destroy the entire fucking church just so I can eat breakfast at home again? Is that what this is going to come down to? No, there has to be a less ridiculous way than that. I’ll have to think about it, like I said.

It’s a long walk home, after all.