Vigor Mortis

Chapter 120: Pass or Fail

“Hey, Lark!” a voice calls behind me. “Whatcha reading?”

I flinch only slightly before turning around to see the happily-grinning Xavier, who is thankfully not accompanied by Bently today. The two of them seem to be together a lot, which I suppose might just be normal for roommates. Not that I’d know, as my situation is anything but. I like Xavier, all things considered. He’s polite and always seems happy to see me, which is a rare but welcome experience.

“Oh, it’s a copy of the Valkan legal code pertaining to business law,” I tell him.

“Wow, that’s… that’s some pretty dense reading!” he answers, chuckling. “You doing okay there?”

“It’s interesting, actually,” I say. “I like how the language is all very exact and clear, and usually gives guidelines when discussing areas explicitly about issues of interpretation. It’s very easy to understand.”

Xavier tilts his head in surprise, leaning over the back of the couch where I’m sitting.

“I thought you were just starting to learn how to read like, a tenday ago,” he says, surprised.

“Well, yeah,” I admit. “I have a few questions, actually, if that’s okay? What’s this word?”

I flip exactly thirteen pages back, hold the legal tome up, and point at the word I couldn’t parse.

“Er… that’s ‘machinery,'” Xavier says slowly.

I scowl underneath my helmet, trying to resist the urge to flick an ear in annoyance.

“Well why is it spelled like that, then…? Reading is weird. Er, I mean, um… thank you.”

“Uh, yeah, no problem, L—”

“Lark!” another the voice calls out, and this one I don’t just flinch at but straight-up leap off the common room couch, landing with my whole body tense for a fight.

“I can’t take it anymore, I’m just going to fucking say it!” Gina roars at me. “Take a Watcher-damn bath!”

The freckled and furious face of my roommate storms in, causing a lump of stress to start forming in my chest. I haven’t had the courage to take Lady Vesuvius’ advice and admit what I am to anyone, nor have I taken her advice to ‘establish dominance.’ So things with Gina have been… pretty much the same. Which is to say bad.

“I’ve been polite about it until now, but this is getting ridiculous. Your fucking stink has been getting worse and worse all tenday!”

I’m not sure ‘polite’ is how I would describe Gina under any circumstances, but I decline to say anything.

“I can’t go to the public baths,” I remind her instead. “I’m sorry.”

I start walking out of the common room, towards the entrance to the dorms. Someone I recognize is approaching, and I have a sinking suspicion it’s about me.

“Lark, your acrid fumes are filling our entire room,” Gina presses, following me with the other trainees. “The smell haunts my dreams. I will literally never be able to forget this.”

I stop. Sighing, I turn to face her.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. “I will ask my biomancer if there is any way I can take a sponge bath in one of her private rooms or something, but otherwise I’m not allowed to take my armor off.”

“Lark, that’s such fucking bullshit and you know it!” Gina snaps. I suppress a groan and turn around to continue walking. “You are shitting me or you are shitting yourself about this. There is no fucking way you were ordered to never bathe!”

“Well I was!” I grumble back, a bit more forcefully than I intended. “I don’t make the rules, I just follow them. I’m sorry. Honestly. But it’s not my call, so if we can please just go back to ignoring the way each other smells, I would greatly appreciate it.”

“That’s hardly fucking fair,” Gina complains. “Considering that I bathe, so I don’t smell like shit!”

“Nope,” I sigh quietly, swallowing a slight buildup of saliva. “You smell fantastic, actually.”

“Then it’s not the same damn thing, is it?” Gina snaps. “Lark, are you sure you have this right? Who ordered you not to take your damn armor off, anyway?”

Well, isn’t that a good transition.

“I did,” Galdra the Annihilator answers smugly as I round the corner to meet her. “Is that a problem, Trainee?”

Immediately, Gina halts in place, surprise and terror pushing her body into snapping a crisp salute.

“I—no ma’am! No problems, High Templar, ma’am!”

“You sure?” Galdra asks. “Because you’re right, she really does smell like a cat starved to death in my toilet.”

Gina blinks, a dumbfounded expression on her face as I appreciate that my helmet hides the same.

“I… if you ordered it, ma’am, then…” Gina stutters.

“So close!” Galdra says. “So very close. But it’s just ‘if you ordered it, ma’am.’ No ‘then,’ because the ‘it will be done’ is implied. Templars, Trainee, are an organization with a lot of moving parts. Sometimes, we will receive orders we don’t like, and sometimes you are just going to have to shut up and trust that the Church knows its business. I assume you can do that, Trainee?”

“Yes ma’am!” Gina answers primly.

“Great to hear,” Galdra answers. “But in this case you’re still right. Lark, I was just here to have a talk but fuck that, I’m getting you a bath.”

“Um?” I ask, but the only response I get is Galdra grabbing me by the arm and dragging me out of the barracks.

I could probably just not let her yank me wherever she wants, even given how light I am for my size, but I feel like ‘your superior officer grabbing and forcing you to move a certain direction’ sort of technically counts as an order. It’s a weird feeling, and when combined with the incredible power I smell from the High Templar it makes my body think it’s currently in a fight to the death. I just have to go with the flow, focusing on staying calm while carefully not flexing any of my extraneous body parts.

“Watcher below, how did you even get this rank?” Galdra complains, pulling me down the street. “The fuck has Vesuvius been feeding you?”

“Er, mice, ma’am,” I tell her.

“Wow, that’d do it. Mice sound gassy.”

“I don’t actually flatulate,” I clarify.

She moves her head in a manner that indicates she’s rolling her eyes.

“Damn, okay princess. If anything, that makes it even more impressive that you smell this bad.”

“Sorry,” I mutter. “So… where are you taking me, anyway?”

“My house,” Galdra answers, finally letting go of my arm as I start matching her pace.

“You have a house?” I ask, surprised.

She gives me what I assume is probably a weird look under her helmet.

“What? Yeah, I have a house,” she answers. “Of course I have a house. You realize most people have houses, right?”

I look away sheepishly.

“I mean… no? How should I know? Everyone had a house in Preacher Gregory’s village, I guess, but a lot of people didn’t in New Talsi.”

“Right, right. Watcher, you’re ignorant about the weirdest shit,” Galdra complains. “So the short answer is that yeah, some people don’t have a home, but it’s usually not by choice. If you don’t have a house, you are poor. I am a High Templar, so I am rather rich. Therefore, it can be assumed I have a house.”

Huh, okay. I think I can follow all that logic. I know what money is, at least, although I’ve never owned or used any. Preacher Gregory’s village didn’t have money, everyone just helped each other when there was a need. On the surface that felt less complicated, but it wasn’t really. There were transactions everywhere, I just didn’t understand them. That’s part of why I’ve been enjoying learning about laws. They are easy rules to follow, all written down neat and orderly in a place where I can actually, finally see them all. There’s so much clarifying information! It feels like finally having a handbook on how to not mess up and ruin everything.

“Okay, thank you,” I tell her. “I appreciate that you explain these things. By the way, where is Templar Captain Dasil?”

“Oh, I ditched him right before picking you up,” Galdra says cheerfully. “That’s why we’re walking so fast!”

Oh, uh… well, that’s not my business. I’m pretty sure she’s not supposed to be without Dasil, but no one is going to fault me for not calling Galdra the Annihilator on something. She is, after all, my superior. That’s one of those things the rules make really simple and easy.

It’s not long from there before we pass by the busy streets of wooden buildings and get to a much calmer district, where everything seems to be made of stone. I’ve taken to the habit of ignoring as much as I can whenever I walk the streets of Skyhope; there’s nothing quite like hearing part of a furious argument and always wondering if I could have helped diffuse it, or seeing the slightest facial bruise on a cheek and being haunted about that person’s situation at home. I know that I not only can’t help the majority of people I come across but I’m actively not supposed to: I am not a Templar yet, not fully trained to insert myself where I can help, but still representative of the Templars by my status. Butting in before I know what I’m doing would just risk making things worse. Still, with major crimes like premediated murder with malice aforthought, unlawful detention and torture, and of course improper corpse disposal with the aggravating factor of cannibalism no longer adding themselves to my record, my mind seems to enjoy finding new ways to make me hate myself. Negligence is also a crime, and no matter how justified I am in ignoring harm where I see it I still add every possible minor guilt trip to the mental list that reads itself over and over in my head when I’m insufficiently distracted.

Anyway, my point is, I keep my attention locked on as small a scope as I can, most of the time. Fewer tempting scents, fewer unwarranted fight-or-flight triggers, and fewer regrets. Yet even I notice that the stone-building district has a very different atmosphere to the wood-building district. No vendors on the streets, no rowdy conversations, fewer people but all with more colorful clothing… it’s odd.

“Why is it so different here?” I ask.

Galdra sniggers with amusement.

“The perception event tore down the literal wall dividing the classes,” she answers. “But Vesuvisus went and introduced a cheap construction alternative that more or less made another one. If you’re rich enough for stone, you’d die before you get caught owning a wooden building.”

Huh? Now I’m even more confused.

“That’s… that’s got to be a metaphor, right?” I ask. “I can’t think of any way monetary quantity could kill you if you use the wrong construction material… unless rich people like, I don’t know, put all their coins in a big room and the wood will break and spill it on them, or something?”

Galdra stares at me for an uncomfortably long moment.

“Actually,” she says seriously, “you’ve got it spot on. That’s the exact reason.”

“Wait, seriously!?” I exclaim. How the… that doesn’t make any sense! I was being purposely hyperbolic!

“Society is strange and esoteric, Lark. Sometimes things just don’t make sense on the surface.”

“Why can’t you just build a stone room and then build the wood around it? Wouldn’t that be more efficient?”

“Nope, it doesn’t work,” Galdra insists.

I wait a beat to no avail. Is she not going to elaborate on that? I guess she’s not going to elaborate. Okay. What the… what the frizzle is going on here?

“Wouldn’t this also mean Lady Vesuvius is poor?” I ask. “I thought she was rich, but her research facility is made of wood.”

“She is indeed poor,” Galdra says solemnly. “Please give her my condolences for this fact the next time you see her.”

“I… okay?”

See, this is… this is exactly my problem! How do all the humans just know this crazy stuff? I want to press further but Galdra doesn’t continue the conversation, so I don’t either. Eventually she turns towards a two-story stone house, relatively small in size for the area. It is, presumably, her house because she opens it up with the key and immediately starts deactivating various spell glyphs around the inside of the entryway. A tingly feeling in my spines warns me that I should stay well back until she finishes.

Once inside, I note that most of the furniture seems to be covered in some kind of discarded hair. Soon after I spot the source: various domestic house cats peek their heads into the room, all of varying fur length and color.

“Hello, hello, babies!” Galdra coos in that frighteningly affectionate voice she always uses before grabbing my ears. “Yes, mommy’s home! Oh, look at you! You’re all so cute!”

I flinch, instinctively double-checking that my helmet is on securely and taking as much solace as I can in the fact that she doesn’t seem to be talking to me. No, all evidence indicates that she is talking to the cats for some reason, despite the fact that I am fairly certain cats don’t know how to talk. That’s, uh, cool. I’m sure this is a normal human thing. An overflowing pack of cats starts to stream into the room from who knows where else in the house, all crowding around her legs and mewling like it’s a competition to make the most painful possible sound.

“Do you want your treats?” Galdra mewls right back. “Do you need your delicious treats from mommy? Yes, yes! It’s time for treats!”

She wades through the lake of cats as I follow awkwardly behind her, keeping my distance so I don’t scare the poor animals. If I try to get close, they’ll probably all run away. Which is fair, because after a tenday of nothing but mice I could definitely eat a cat right now.

As we pass through the house and enter what looks like some sort of small dining hall, I’m startled to see a human woman in the room, who immediately turns to bow at Galdra.

“Welcome home, Lady Karthala,” she says. “How has your day been?”

“Hmm? Oh, fine, it’s been fine,” Galdra answers dismissively. “Fill the bath for the guest and I, would you?”

“Right away, Lady Karthala.”

“Now who wants some treatsy-weatsies?” Galdra asks, returning attention to her cats as she pulls what I assume is catfood out from a cupboard. “You do! Yes you do! What a good girl you are, Penelope!”

I blink in surprise.

“Wait, what?” I ask. “Is Lady Vesuvius here?”

Galdra laughs.

“No, no of course not. I just name all of my cats after people I hate so that I can complain loudly about them in public and not get charged with slander. Speaking of: who pooped on the bed last night? You did, Remus! Yes you did!”

She starts scratching one of the cats behind the ears, the cat leaning happily into the rubs.

“A defamation, expressed with both falsity and malice, which injures the character of the person defamed shall henceforth be known as the crime of slander,” I quote. “Claims which would harm a person’s reputation, or which would cause them to lose preferment in marriage or service, or in their trade, or in any other occasion carry the weight of damages, and it is therefore right and just that perpetrators of such false claims should repay those damages. To qualify for a civil charge of slander, the alleged victim of defamation must—”

“Okay, okay, stop,” Galdra snaps. “When the fuck did you read all that?”

“This morning,” I answer. “Apologies, you probably know all that already. My point is that even if you have a cat of the same name you could still be sued for slander if your words intentionally damage the reputation of—”

“No,” Galdra says, cutting me off. “That won’t happen. It could happen, sure, but it won’t because no one is going to want to get into a protracted legal battle with me just because I do petty shit like name my cats after them. Isn’t that right, Arsy-warsy? Who’s a good little heretical baby? You are! Does Ars want his scritches?”

“I… I’m not sure I understand,” I admit.

Galdra sighs.

“Just because laws exist doesn’t mean they are all going to come into effect every time they could come into effect,” Galdra says. “Civil cases are a pain in the ass. Nobody wants to spend a month preparing for the damn thing and then three days yelling back and forth at each other in front of a judge. I would have to do enough damage to someone that it would exceed the amount of damage they would do to themselves by having to spend resources on the legal claim. Plus, I’m Galdra the motherfucking Annihilator, so I can get away with a lot of shit other people can’t just because they don’t want to mess with me.”

Okay, I take it back. Apparently, having written laws doesn’t change the amount of unwritten ones I don’t understand.

“I got the general impression that the point of laws was to provide an equal playing field so that you can’t get away with things due to personal power,” I answer hesitantly.

“Oh sure, yeah, you’re exactly right,” Galdra answers amicably.

“So then why…?”

“The laws just don’t work very well, honey,” Galdra answers with apparent solemnity.

I frown. I admit I only just started learning about them, but they seem like they should work. They are certainly much more thoughtfully written than most explanations I get about what is and isn’t okay to do.

“Look, Lark, if it makes you feel any better I doubt anything I say about my fucking cats is going to count for slander,” Galdra sighs. “It’s obviously a joke. Nobody is going to have their reputation credibly damaged if I say they barfed up a rat on the carpet.”

She pauses for a moment, tapping the side of her helmet thoughtfully.

“…Except Vesuvius, I guess. She might actually do stuff like that. But then it’s not slander because it’s true.”

I open my mouth to respond, but the woman from before reenters the room and bows again, telling Galdra that the bath is ready. From there I get quickly rushed out of the room where all the cats fight over various morsels and pulled into a private room with a tub of water where Galdra starts to strip.

I flinch in surprise when her helmet comes off. She has the age-wrinkles like August did, though not as many or as pronounced. She has no hair, either. Instead, the entire top of her head, around behind her ears, and down the back of her neck is all replaced by a shiny, worked plate of metal engraved with intricately detailed magical patterns. The rest of her body is a maze of inflammations, skin bending between red and ashy all round her taut frame. She’s toned and muscular, but her body still has the hints of that fragility I’ve come to associate with age. Age which I now know means a person is, slowly but surely, dying.

I put the thought out of my mind for now, removing my armor as well. The moment my helmet is off I give into the painful urge to stretch and flick my sore ears, and the need to move the many trapped parts of my body only increases from there. I speed through the motions of undoing the bindings on my armor, carefully disassembling everything exactly the way I’m supposed to as I time myself in an attempt to do it faster than I ever have before. It’s certainly not something I get much practice at, so I, unfortunately, fail to beat my record. Still, as much as I hate my body, it feels so good to be free from those bindings. I roll my second set of shoulders, splay my toes, and extend the spines on my back as I let out a delighted hum. Everything is so coiled and stiff! I want to run around!

My thoughts on the matter are disrupted when Galdra lifts a giant glob of cold water with a kineticism spell and blasts us both with it. With terrifying speed I’m lifted off the ground by the torrent as it swirls around me, scrubbing all over my body in a terrifying vortex before spitting me back out onto the ground, soaked and confused.

“Woo!” Galdra cheers. “That’s always a fun way to do it.”

“I… wha… was that it?” I ask, shakily standing up on my toes. My heart is pounding too fast to force my body out of a combat stance.

“Of course not!” she answers happily. “That was just to get clean. Now we’re going to actually have a bath.”

“…What’s the difference?”

She leads me to an adjacent room which appears to be a very small artificial lake.

“Ta-da! Get in, it should already be at least kinda warm.”

She wades into the water but I stay right where I am, ears pressed flat against the top of my head.

“Warm?” I ask. “Look, um, I don’t really like water that much, so…”

Galdra twists towards me with an expression of shock on her face. It’s kind of weird thinking of Galdra as a person with expression at all, as strange as that is to say. I’m just so used to her having a helmet on.

“Holy fucking shit,” she breathes. “Did you just actually assert yourself instead of just going along with whatever I say?”

I jump, terror flowing through me as I scuttle into the pool immediately.

“Sorry! S-sorry!” I yelp, quickly dunking myself into the water.

“Watcher’s eyes, girl, I wasn’t complaining,” Galdra grumbles. “It’s almost not fun to tease you when you just blandly accept any indignity I throw at you.”

I sink into the water, stretching my body out and letting the heat enter into my bones. It’s not as bad as I expected. I guess warm water is nicer than cold. I vibrate my quills a little, pulling in a bit more heat.

“If you aren’t enjoying it, you can always just stop teasing me,” I answer her.

“Meh, half points,” she quips back. “It’s not really asserting yourself if you just passive-aggressively phrase it as a favor to me. Besides, I said almost. Now quit sucking all the heat out of the tub, damn it!”

I flinch, immediately halting and retracting my quills.

“S-sorry,” I say automatically.

“And that’s zero points,” Galdra sighs, shaking her head. “Kid, once again, I am Galdra the fucking Annihilator. Who between us do you think has more control over the temperature of this pool? It should be obvious I was getting your goat on that one. You want it hotter?”

I sink down a bit further under the water. She’s disappointed in me for some reason, which is a bit frightening. I hope I didn’t do anything too badly.

“Yes, please,” I squeak softly.

“How much heat can you take?” she asks, her expression suddenly back to a grin.

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “More than this. The warmth is nice.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she agrees, and slowly but surely more heat creeps through the pool.

We sit quietly together like that, basking in the startlingly good feeling of hot water around our bodies. I continue to stretch my inhuman parts as much as I can, since I know that soon they will be trapped back in armor. All the while, I think to myself about things Galdra has said, things Lady Vesuvius has said, and all the many questions that bubble up in my mind alongside the water around me.

“What does ‘getting your goat’ mean?” I ask after a while. “I assume it’s some kind of phrase, since I don’t have any goats.”

“It means I’m trying to annoy you or straight up piss you off on purpose,” Galdra answers.

I frown, flicking my ears in irritation.

“Why would you do that?” I ask.

“Well, partly because it’s fun,” she says, which shocks me. Fun? Really? But it’s so mean!

“…Mostly because I’m seeing how you respond, though,” she continues. “Command wants to know how you react to shit.”

So Lady Vesuvius was right, then.

“It’s a test,” I realize.

“Yup,” Galdra confirms. “And I gotta say, you are doing a great job at being an obedient little tool.”

I smile. Well, that sounds good! Galdra doesn’t smile back, though, instead giving me a very serious look.

“…Um, is there a problem?” I ask hesitantly. “You said Templars are supposed to follow orders and stuff.”

“I just don’t know if having that attitude towards everything is going to be best for you, kid,” she grunts. “There’s orders and then there’s orders, you know?”

There’s a pause.

“Um… no ma’am,” I admit. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Galdra sighs.

“Yeah. I know.”

For whatever reason, she doesn’t explain so I don’t ask. The two of us continue to lounge, my quills now thrumming quickly enough to twist and absorb all the nearby light, preventing me from seeing anything. Galdra doesn’t seem to mind that I’ve just become a patch of darkness in her tub, thankfully, because the huge amount of energy flowing into my body feels heavenly. I set to massaging my enormous toes with two of my arms while the other two try to pull apart the many unruly knots in my hair.

“I really appreciate you letting me into your home and helping me get clean,” I tell her eventually.

“I assure you kid, my motivations were purely selfish.”

“I don’t see how that would change anything, but thanks for letting me know, I suppose.”

She barks out a laugh.

“Anyway, um, is it okay if I ask a question?” I continue.

“Go for it,” she grunts.

“Is the armor also at test?” I ask. “It’s restrictive to the point of being problematic for many people other than me, which I don’t like. And all of the other trainees seem to think it would be acceptable and normal for me not to follow my orders in this case. I don’t understand why. Is it because it’s a test?”

Galdra looks at me carefully for a moment.

“You’re asking the wrong question,” Galdra answers. “Everything is a test, Lark. What you really want to ask is whether the test is about yes and no, or how and why. Does that make sense?”

“I… I think so,” I say. “How do I figure that out?”

“You don’t,” she says unhelpfully. “If you want to give whatever answer you think someone else wants, you just have to guess. But if you want to give the answer you want, you need to decide.”

I hesitate.

“I’m still not sure I understand,” I admit.

Galdra sighs.

“Yeah, I’m not a great speaker. More of an example kind of woman. I’ll think of a good analogy for you in a bit.”

“Um, okay. Thank you.”

We return to silence, the water continuing to get hotter. It just feels so nice, so relaxing. I should never have doubted Lady Karthala, this will be a good memory to live through again if I need to calm myself down. For some reason, a bunch of muscles in my throat start to involuntarily vibrate alongside my quills, producing a rolling humming noise with every intake and expulsion of breath. It’s odd and surprising, but it sends pleasant vibrations through my bones so I decide to just let it happen.

“Holy shit,” Galdra mutters quietly. “You really are a cat.”

“Katzel,” I correct blearily. “I used to eat a buncha katzels.”

“They’re called that because they’re just big cats, Lark. Apparently, they even purr.”

“They’re tasty,” I murmur. Mmm… I feel like I’m starting to drift into torpor. Oh, well…

“Okay, that’s close to your heat limit, then” Galdra says, and to my great disappointment the water starts suddenly getting cooler. “Damn, girl, you didn’t even seem comfortable until we were way past what would boil a normal human. Those nightshroud quills are no joke. Where do you keep all the heat?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, the throat vibrations halting as embarrassment starts invisibly flushing my face. The water does seem awfully… steamy. There are a bunch of bubbles forming around Galdra’s body and rapidly shooting up to the surface, seemingly coming from nothing.

“I was tracking the heat entering your quills,” Galdra explains. “It gets sucked up into your body and then—pop!—it vanishes. Which, to put it lightly, is not how energy tends to work.”

“Lady Vesuvius could probably give you a better answer than I could,” I tell her. “I ate the… nightshrouds, you called them? I ate the nightshrouds because they don’t eat at all. I was hoping I could evolve that… but it doesn’t really seem to matter how much heat and light I absorb through my quills, I’m still always hungry. That’s all I know.”

“Hmm. Well, I—”

A loud beeping noise suddenly rings out in the adjacent room, where we left our armor. Galdra scowls, then wordlessly gets up out of the water and retrieves a tiny metal orb on a chain, less than the size of a knucklebone. She presses her thumb on it and holds it up to her face.

“Galdra here,” she grunts, not a hint of her usual amusement in her tone.

“High Templar,” the orb buzzes in answer, sounding like the voice of a frazzled young man. “Captain Dasil reports that you are not with him.”

“I’m at home,” Galdra snaps. “I’m allowed to have privacy at home. You didn’t call me just for this shit, did you?”

“If only. We got an emergency call from Site 4 a short while ago. Since then, they’ve gone dark.”

Color drains from the High Templar’s face.

“Shiiiiiiit,” she hisses. “Epsilon status?”

“Unknown. Assumed free until proven otherwise. The facility reported an invasion of two powerful undead and a kineticist matching the talent description of the former leader of the Broken Drakens. That’s all we know.”

“I’ll be ready in two minutes,” Galdra growls.

“You are on homeguard, High Templar. Braum and Cassia are our dispatch units for this.”

“Why not me? I can be nonlethal if the situation calls for it, you—”

“You are on homeguard, High Templar. Please go about your daily activities as usual. Just remain on high alert in case the situation escalates. We will direct Captain Dasil to meet you at your residence. That is all.”

“…Understood,” Galdra snarls, and the spell ends. “Well, get the fuck up, Lark. Bathtime is over.”

I nod, and with only the smallest amount of regret extract myself from the warm pool.

“What was that?” I ask.

“Absolutely nothing,” Galdra insists. “You were not part of that conversation. You were not here when I had that conversation. You will repeat absolutely no part of that conversation to anyone under any circumstances, ever. Partially because, as I have mentioned, you didn’t hear it. Am I crystal fucking clear?”

Instinctively, my ears go flat against my head, my body stiffening as my breathing becomes as shallow and quiet as possible. That tone of voice… something deep inside me knows to be frightened of it.

“Yes ma’am,” I confirm quietly.

“Good,” Galdra says firmly. “Let’s get dressed.”

I follow her back into the room where we rinsed off and left our things, and I’m vaguely pleased to find that someone apparently scrubbed out and washed the inside of my armor while I was in the bath. It’s a little difficult to be overly excited about it, however, since I’m still reeling with the fact that I have just been ordered to lie. And that… that’s weird. August told me in no uncertain terms that lying is wrong.

Well, hopefully no one will ask. It’s not as though a weird conversation like that is likely to come up later.

When Galdra and I are fully armored once more and my inhuman parts are fully hidden, we wait outside her house for Dasil to show up. It doesn’t take long for him to do exactly that, primly standing with his arms clasped behind his back as he stares at the both of us.

“You know, High Templar, it is… somewhat irregular for a trainee to be invited home alone with her sponsoring Templar,” he says slowly.

“Holy shit, Dasil, we didn’t fuck,” Galdra growls testily. “I’m straight and she’s two. The girl just needed a place to stretch away from the public eye.”

“It was not my belief that you did,” Dasil answers calmly. “But part of my job is to manage anything that might damage the integrity of your public image. Frequently, the default assumption when one engages in actions that have significant capacity for abuse is that they are abused.”

“Sorry, how would that even work?” I ask. “Um, f… er, that word means sex in this context, right? I understand how that works biologically, but the High Templar and I are both female.”

Dasil, after a brief and pregnant pause, turns to stare pointedly in Galdra’s direction.

“Nuh-uh, don’t you look at me, I’m not gonna explain it to her,” Galdra snaps.

“The method is irrelevant,” Dasil sighs, turning back to me. “It’s a complicated topic, but suffice to say it’s perfectly normal for relationships to occur under those circumstances, Lark.”

“Well yeah, sure, I knew gay people existed,” I agree. “I just didn’t realize they had sex.”

A single second of silence passes between us before Galdra busts out in a full-bodied boisterous laughter, nearly doubling over as her voice rings through the street. Even the ever-expressionless Dasil seems a little sheepish under his helmet.

“I-I’m sorry!” I say defensively. “I didn’t know! How was I supposed to know? I don’t know anything unless someone explains it to me!”

“It’s fine, Lark,” Dasil says, barely audible over Galdra’s wheezing. “Now you know. Shall we return to the barracks?”

“Please,” I whine. Agh, a ton of people are staring!

The three of us start the return trip to the barracks, Galdra’s hooting laughter following us as I silently endure my face’s furious blushing. This continues all the way out of the stone-building district, back to the much busier streets of the main city. I’m halfway convinced Galdra is going to keep laughing the entire trip back when she suddenly halts so abruptly, so completely that it sends a shiver down my spine.

“Lark,” Galdra hisses, her hand clamping down on my shoulder as she leans close to whisper to me. “You see that woman with black hair, leaning on the side of the building in front of us?”

I flick my eyes around, quickly identifying who she must be talking about. A woman I’ve never seen before, apparently ignoring us and everyone else as she stares the opposite way down the road.

“Yes ma’am?” I confirm.

“Kill her,” Galdra orders. “Use your teeth.”

My breath catches. My mind stops. I couldn’t have possibly just heard those words. No way.

“What?” I breathe.

“That’s an order, Lark,” Galdra snaps. “Kill her. Now.”

I swallow. What? What? What is happening? This is… I can’t…!

“Lark!” Galdra presses.

“I-I refuse!” I shout back. Then again, more quietly. “I refuse.”

“Lark if you do not kill that woman right this second you will be ejected from the Templars,” Galdra promises, her grip so hard on my shoulder I think she’s damaging the chitin.

“Then I will be ejected from the Templars,” I answer quietly.

She grabs my other shoulder as well, spinning me to face her.

“If you are ejected from the Templars, I will be ordered to kill you, Lark,” she hisses. “Kill. That. Woman.”

My whole body is shaking. My mind is on fire. I don’t understand what’s happening, but this is it, isn’t it? It’s over. I can’t kill her. I refuse to kill her. I desperately want to kill her. But I will not. I must not. If that means I have to run from Galdra’s wrath, well… it’s a good thing I am very fast.

“I refuse,” I tell her again.

She stares at me for a little while longer, and then just as abruptly as this all started, it ends. She releases my shoulders, stands up straight, and nods.

“Well, all right then,” she says, and starts walking towards the barracks again.

Dasil and I share a look and then start after her, my heart vibrating almost as fast as my throat did while I was purring.

“Wh-wait!” I say. “So, am I kicked out of the Templars?”

“Nah,” Galdra answers. “Actually, I’m feeling a little better about how well you’ll do with us.”

I blink. What the… oh. Oh.

“That was a test!” I exclaim. “So I did well?”

“Hmm,” Galdra rumbles. “Well, that depends. Are you proud of your answer?”

I think about that all the way back to the barracks. Am I proud? I mean… no. Not really. I’ve been proud of things before. I’ve been proud of clever traps, of successful hunts, of deducing correct answers and of arranging pretty collections of flowers. This does not feel like pride. It’s just… the only answer I had available to me. There was no choice. I can’t let that ever be a choice.

But taking off my armor isn’t like that. It’s a different kind of tempting, one that I don’t think will get anyone hurt. It’s just something I want, and something that people I know want. That’s it. So maybe… it’s the other kind of test.

Sitting alone in my room, I torpor until Gina enters, locking the door behind her.

“Well, look who it is,” Gina drawls. “Thank the Watcher for Galdra the Annihilator, valiant defender of Skyhope and also my nose.”

“I’ll tell her you said so,” I say. “I think she’d like to hear that.”

Gina flinches.

“Shit, please don’t,” she mumbles.

I tilt my head in confusion.

“Okay? I won’t then. So, um, are you… ready to see under my helmet?”

Gina, midway through the process of splaying herself out on her bed, stops moving for a split second before pulling herself back into a sitting position.

“…You finally got permission?” she asks suspiciously.

“No, I didn’t,” I say. “Want to see anyway?”

“I mean, yeah, I’ve been saying that since we met.”

I nod, carefully undoing the straps on my helmet and pulling it free, shaking my poofy bundle of hair as my ears flick upright. I watch, almost in slow motion, as my former-hunter roommate’s eyes go wide, her pupils dilating in terror as her jaw falls open, utterly silent as adrenaline briefly restricts her instinct to breathe. Her body is still, and I wait for her to decide whether to attack, scream, or flee.

She does none of these things. No, she says just a few words, and they make me want to run away instead.

“Holy fucking shit,” she breathes. “You’re Fulvia’s Lark.”