Vigor Mortis

Chapter 132: Stained Glass

Remus has entered my body.

I feel it through her nerves, see it through her senses as the soul of my former partner-in-possession swims down Remus’s arm and into my body’s neck. Gah, I mean Vita’s body. She’s in control in every way that matters; I’ve trained myself to recognize her soul’s command signals and repeat them perfectly after interception, letting her control herself in the same way she would have if I were not diffused through the inside of her brain, my excess mass pooled around her spinal column.

Still, it’s my body in the sense that I’m in it, so Remus—or Remuslime, as Vita prefers—can’t fucking have it. I failed to convince him to compromise, so now I have to genocide my own species. It’s a painful, painful pill to swallow. I know it’s the right thing, I know what it’s like to be trapped inside one of us, I know these humans have more claim to their bodies than we do. So I’ve been watching my kind die in droves, a mass death I could have stopped in a dozen ways. But I failed all of them.

I’m quickly reminded it’s a poor time to regret these things as Remus physically slams into me, trying to dislodge me from Vita’s neck. I never expected to have this kind of fight, but suddenly I’m locked into a battle using my pathetic slime-self instead of a more appropriate vessel. A battle that I quickly realize I’m going to lose, because Remus can apparently use his enhancer training while currently a liquid. He flows into Vita’s brain, latches onto my diffused self and sucks it inside of him, cutting it off from my main mass. Then I’m booted out of the spine and into the useless neck muscle, smaller, weaker, and no longer in control.

Instantly, I lose almost all of my senses. Without a body I have nothing but a comically undetailed version of Vita’s soul sense and a mild sense of touch. I slam myself against Remus, trying to reassert control of Vita, but I may as well be tossing buckets of water at a wall.

Then, before I know it, I feel myself being torn apart by a death I recognize from Penelope’s memories. Back when her body was mine, she spent a lot of her time reveling in the horror of it, screaming silently within our mind as every step I took further solidified her helplessness. Much of the rest of the time she spent planning diseases and exquisite tortures to enact upon me when she got free. Though later, that changed to if she got free.

Feeling her pain and loss of hope was, ironically, a far more haunting torture than any she tried to concoct with her talent. Again, I barely even have a sense of touch, so any pain that targets me while I’m not possessing anyone is distant at worst. Still, it’s easy to tell what’s happening here: Penelope saw her opportunity for revenge, and she took it.

That’s fair, I think to myself, and then I die.

…

…Hmm.

I, uh, did die, didn’t I? So why am I still thinking? I experimentally attempt to move, and to my surprise I succeed. I’m surrounded by something… cool and hard? I don’t seem to be in a body, but things feel different, more detailed and refined. Oh Watcher, is this the afterlife? If the Church was right all along I’m going to be fucking furious.

I feel something suddenly ripple through my body, like I’ve been flicked by an intangible finger. I try to turn my head to look at it, but I have no head and no eyes. Yet still, I focus in that direction and somehow see, for a certain definition of seeing.

It’s Vita’s soul-sight! The living glow with power, while soulless objects are vaguely distinguishable as black silhouettes. How am I seeing this way? Am I in Vita’s body after all? I glance around and quickly find that theory disproved: surrounded in a glimmering network of inert souls, that terrifying tentacled eyeball stares at me with a horrifying intensity.

I shudder. She’s… different. Very different. We never collected anywhere near the number of souls currently inside of her. How long has it been? Did I die and then get revived? Shit, if that’s the case, it must be years from when I last remember… no, wait. I’m still a fucking slime. If Vita was going to revive me, why would she keep me as a Nawra? Was this the only way? Why aren’t I in a body, then? Did I get brought back just to lose my mind!?

Immediately, I start pushing against the edges of the container I’m in, trying to break free. I fail, predictably, but I exert enough pressure on the opposite edges to start shimmying rapidly up the cylindrical walls and pop out of the top. More strange vibrations ripple through me, but I ignore them and flow away from… what even was that, a bottle? I spill to the ground, a few bits of my body splashing off as I rush towards the closest body I can see. I refuse to lose my mind!

Raw terror descends in front of me, blocking my escape. A wall, a literal wall of Vita’s tentacles drop around me, countless in number. Shit, holy shit. What happened to her? What is she doing? Oh no, oh no, oh no! Yet more tentacles fall into the cage, and as I quiver in fear I watch them twist and bend themselves… into letters?

It’s okay.

Okay? How is any of this okay!?

Not a Nawra.

I freeze. Wait, what? She’s saying I’m not a Nawra? I damn well still feel like a Nawra! Mostly, at least.

Different slime. Ozoid. You won’t degrade.

Ozoid? Oh, ozoids! Aren’t ozoids non-sapient, though? I wiggle around, flattening my body enough to confirm I can’t possibly have a brain.

You’re animavorous. Soul still burns itself, but slowly. Can be replenished.

The letters flash rapidly in front of me, but sure enough my mind is still working quickly enough to catch them all, even without the support of a thinking organ. This is… surreal. I move slowly forward, my body stretching and rotating over what feels like giant blades of grass. No… normal-sized blades of grass. I’m just back to being tiny again. I can’t really decide whether to be grateful or exasperated. I suppose I do have a functional independent body now, but for fuck’s sake, why did it have to be, of all things, a different slime?

You’ll get bigger if you eat. Here.

The words make me jump a little. Now that I think about it, how is Vita responding to me? It makes sense that she knows I can see her tentacles, but how does she seem to know what I’m thinking? I suppose she was just starting to figure out how to read information from souls, last I remember. If it really has been years since I died, perhaps she can read minds by now.

Either way, my thoughts are put on hold for a bit when someone places a collection of tiny insects in front of me. And I truly mean ‘tiny,’ each of them is significantly smaller than even my palm-sized body. Following some newfound hunger that fills me, I spill overtop of them, a pleasurable tingle filling my soul as I feel them get absorbed into my body and dissolve inside me. It’s quite different from the empowering, satisfying joy Vita and I used to get from soul consumption. This new feeling is not unlike a fluffy, airy dessert vanishing rapidly after being put in my mouth. Ah, I loved those back when I had Penelope’s body! …Though I never had time to eat one myself, did I? And now I’m comparing them to bugs.

Ugh.

I spill over and dissolve more insects, Vita occasionally chatting with me through our limited, mostly-one-way capacity. With my soul senses I can look around and identify a bit of where I am; best I can tell we’re somewhere in the forest. I even recognize some of the other souls around me! Vitamin is here, along with both Theodoras… and all of them look like they’re in human bodies? I think irritated thoughts in their general direction until Vita figures out what I mean and explains.

Not alive. Revenants. In love with me.

That’s… a bit chilling. I look up at that expressionless burning-blue eye, wondering how far Vita has fallen in my absence to turn so many people into slaves. I… certainly understand the hypocrisy there, I suppose. But I had no choice, if I wanted to remain a person. Did she?

Would you prefer? Vita asks me suddenly.

…Would I prefer being a Revenant to my current situation? Shit, what a thing to say. I think as firm of a negation as I’m able and she nods, ending the conversation. What the fuck is going through that girl’s head? I suppose I’ll need to wait to grill her with more complicated questions. It’s infuriating to not know what she’s thinking! Speaking with her is so stunted now, so… impersonal. She says there’s another slime that can hear and speak, so I suppose I should focus my efforts on learning those skills again.

So that’s what I spend the next few hours doing. My memories—Penelope’s contribution to them, anyway—hold wonderfully efficient strategies for learning new skills, not to mention a wealth of biological knowledge I can use to help form the artificial lungs and voice box described by this ‘Melissa’ person with Vita as a medium. I have to admit, this ozoid body is an impressive upgrade from my Nawra form. Nawra are kind of runny as liquids go, designed for the ability to permeate into flesh and spread throughout a brain. I’m still a liquid, but I’m a much more solid liquid, if that makes any sense. My body is far stronger and can hold shapes drastically better than my Nawra body ever could. I actually figure out how to speak before I figure out how to hear, because the former means shaping myself to replicate systems I already understand, while the latter involves changing my fundamental understanding of a system I’m already used to.

The rippling vibrations I’ve been feeling? That’s sound. I don’t have ears, my whole body is the ear. In fact, I now hear sounds with the exact same part of my sensorium that feels whatever I’m touching, and it’s extremely disorienting. Learning which internal jiggles correspond to which words is a pain in my nonexistent ass, but it’s also fascinating, in a way. It’s a challenge to tear into, one that I can take my time with and not have to worry about torturing Penelope or boring Vita or slowly reverting into a non-person. It’s… it’s such an incredible gift.

Plus, the work fills the emptiness. It’s so strange to be alone. So… scary. This is the first time it’s ever happened. I didn’t think I’d find myself missing having someone else to be.

That’s just a passing thought, though. I’ll get used to it! It takes me about a day, but pretty soon I start figuring out the trick to equating vibrations felt with my new body to sounds I heard with my old body, and before I know it, I’m back to being able to hear again. Which means…!

“Vita!” I shout up at her. Though I’m so small, it’s more of a squeak. “What the fuck happened?”

Very vaguely, enough that I’m not sure it’s happening, I ‘see’ her grin. I’ll need to figure out how to read souls the way she can, because expressions don’t seem like they’re going to be a long-term solution.

“Penta,” Vita says happily.

Her tone is subtle, but I remember the subtleties. They’re different now, harder and flatter from how we spoke with them two years ago, but she still speaks with our voice. Two years, though…! It’s so difficult to believe. It all feels like yesterday.

“It’s great to have you back,” Vita continues. “Can you make yourself solid?”

“It’s not that hard,” I grumble. “Though I guess I have more experience being liquid than poor Melisa. Pick me up?”

She does so, and I dutifully do not start to dissolve her hands as she sets me on her shoulder. Get into the neck, my old instincts hiss, but they hold no sway over me now. I couldn’t if I wanted to!

“Shit’s been wild without you, Penta,” Vita admits.

“I can only imagine,” I drawl. “Which is why I just asked you what happened!”

She chuckles.

“Well, after Penelope did a little bit of premeditated murder on you—”

“Watcher’s eyes, I am not the least bit surprised about that,” I grumble.

“—I returned home and quickly had to start dealing with a vrothizo problem.”

“What’s a vrothizo?” I ask.

“Remember those black orbs Hiverock dropped on us?” she asks. “The ones I thought were eggs? I was totally right.”

I sag despondently.

“Of course you were.”

“So yeah, they hatched into soul-eating rapidly-evolving pitch-black monster creatures. One of them tortured some hunters by repeatedly biting off their limbs and letting their biomancer heal them, then doing it again. But then she got so much human soul stuck to her own she started to feel bad about it! So I let her go.”

“Every single part of that was horrifying,” I say frankly.

“What?” she says. “I thought you’d approve! Solidarity between monsters!”

“You were the one who said that! I just repeated it back at you in an attempt to get you to treat me better.”

“Aww!” she coos, pressing a finger onto me and jiggling my whole body, which feels extremely strange. “I knew there was some Penelope in you!”

“Of course there’s… what does that even mean?”

I jiggle back at her with as much indignance as I can muster, trying to reshape my body as she continues to prod at me. That larger slime moves around in a human shape from time to time, I can probably do just as well, even if I’m a fraction of her size.

“Well, I’m just… a little worried you two won’t get along?” Vita says hesitantly. “It’s kind of funny, actually. You were always the one urging me to get along with her.”

“I can’t decide whether to be relieved or hurt by the fact that you didn’t kill her after finding out she murdered me,” I grumble. “My objective was always the hope that she’d spare me for your sake. I suppose it didn’t really work out. What’s she up to, anyway?”

“Oh, she’s a First Lady now!” Vita answers happily. “It’s pretty cool!”

Thanks to years of expression training—years of Penelope’s training, I mean—I don’t flinch at that. I wanted to be First Lady.

“She’s also my girlfriend,” Vita continues, and my mind just about stops. How does… why are…

“What!?”

“You seem upset?” Vita asks, furrowing her brows. “Why?”

“How does that even work!?” I nearly shriek. “I know I asked you to get close, but… you… neither of you are attracted to women!”

“I mean, she’s attracted to me for some reason,” Vita grumbles. “But not finding her attractive is part of what I like about our relationship. No sex, no kissing. I don’t want to be into her, I hate that stuff.”

Okay that… that sort of makes sense, actually. Vita has a lot of hangups in that department, though I get the impression now she’s more certain of her position than she was when I had her memories. It’s a shame. I recall a few fun times… well. A few fun times Penelope had. Shit, this is so weird. Now that I think about it, I was looking forward to having sex for myself at some point, yet that’s off the table for the immediate future.

No, wait, I need to quit lamenting my body and focus on how Watcher-damn freaky this is. Vita and Penelope doing the deed is a weirdly masturbatory thought, and I’m in no hurry to unpack it. More importantly, Penelope doesn’t do relationships. She doesn’t do attraction. She has and enjoys sex but it’s usually despite the other people involved, not because of it. Our entire engagement was a political calculation where we carefully manipulated First Lord Johan Erebus’ emotions in order to receive power, money, and favors.

“Vita she… she’s using you for something,” I conclude. “She has to be.”

“Well, yeah,” Vita nods. “Cuddles, mostly.”

“No, you dense dolt, I’m saying she’s faking it!”

Vita flicks me, destabilizing the start of a humanoid form I’ve been trying to shape myself into and causing me to collapse back into a puddle.

“I’m an empath, Penta,” she reminds me. “I promise, she’s not faking it. Honestly, I think she’s just as surprised as you are that she fell in love with me. I just find her easy to understand, I guess? And she likes that?”

“I literally was Penelope Vesuvius, and I still find her difficult to understand,” I grumble.

“Nah, she’s really not that complicated,” Vita shrugs. “I don’t know why it’s such a big deal.”

I’m not sure what to say to that, so I give up and return to shaping my body. I understand almost everything there is to know about the internal structure of the human body, but more than that I’ve got a very fine sense of what makes the external structure of a human body appealing to look at. If I can’t be a beautiful human, hopefully I can at least look like a beautiful human in miniature.

In addition to a better sense of touch, my body’s proprioception is excellent. Crafting my face is my first task, as humans tend to empathize most with creatures that have attractive faces (unless that human happens to be Vita). It’s nowhere near as difficult a task as I was expecting, however, which I suppose makes sense considering that Melissa purportedly managed it. I can feel how my face looks, adjusting it accordingly. The most difficult part of the task is deciding how I want my face to look.

My first instinct is to copy Penelope’s face, but I reject that on the basis of not wanting to die. My second instinct is to take Vita’s, but I pretty quickly see the pattern there and decide that it’s somewhat of a step backwards to kick off my new, non-stolen body with stolen body features. Yet at the same time… those are my faces. Those are the only faces I ever had.

Well, fuck it. My name is a mix, why not my face? Vita and Penelope have two very different sorts of beauty: Penelope’s sharper features are rounded out by a rich diet, giving her a mild squishiness around her entire body that, now that I’m thinking about it, would make for a Rosco-tier cuddle. Vita, conversely, has a naturally rounder face that’s drawn more gauntly. Simply taking the more extreme parts of either and swapping them is a tempting idea, but the end result would look somewhat silly. Vita’s eyes, Penelope’s lips and nose, and a decent middle ground between their general face shape is the way to go.

I can use a similar strategy for the body. Vita’s relative squatness would look quite nice with Penelope’s more ample proportions. I craft a head around my face, shrinking it down to an appropriate percentage of my body mass as I extend from it the neck, the bare shoulders, the arms mirroring each other as I craft them with delicate attention to how the appropriate amount of muscle and fat would rest on the bones if I actually had any of those things. Each finger takes a detailed session of imagery to finish, but soon after I’m sculpting the torso, breasts, waist, hips, thighs (I allow myself to cheat a little with the thickness of the thighs) and down to the delicate toes. I’m not entirely sure how long the process takes, but I’m so immersed in it that I’m surprised I don’t see anything when I open my eyes.

Right. I’m blind. I kick my goopy little feet, dangling over Vita’s shoulder as they are. This is far from the body I wanted, but… at least it’s mine. It will do for now.

“Oh hey!” Vita exclaims. “You done?”

“You’ve certainly made quite a fascinating show of your plagiarism, I’ll give you that.”

I freeze. Shit. Is that…?

“Penelope!” Vita chides. “Be nice to my little baby shoulder slime! You already got to murder her painfully, right?”

“Oh, I suppose,” Penelope sighs despondently. “Welcome back from the pyre, Penta.”

“I… thank you, Penelope,” I answer.

“Mmm, no,” she grunts. “It’s First Lady Vesuvius to you.”

Part of my hand melts as my focus flickers with annoyance. She knows I wanted to be a First Lady, doesn’t she?

“Of course, First Lady Vesuvius,” I answer without a hint of the ice I want to put in my tone. “Apologies.”

Penelope does that very specific sort of laugh we use when mocking someone, adding just the slightest tinge of inappropriate volume and length to make it extra obnoxious. I respond by shaping my face into the ‘I know you’re mocking me but I have to suck up to you’ smile, which wins me a more genuine laugh when she recognizes it. Point one to me, bitch.

“Hmm, perhaps she might not be so bad after all,” Penelope muses. “I’m sure she can be of great assistance with my experiments. She knows almost everything I know, after all.”

“Uh, yeah…” Vita says slowly. “Do you mean she’ll be helpful like Theodora, or like Nugas?”

“Who’s Nugas?” I ask.

Penelope just grins wide enough for me to realize she actually went and grew herself fangs. Shit, that’s cool. Also, neither of them answer me and I’m pretty sure that means I should be terrified.

“Ladies?” I ask politely, glancing between them. “Who’s Nugas?”

“Don’t look at me,” Vita grunts. “She’s your freaky experiment-mistake-daughter-thing.”

“D-daughter!?” Penelope sputters. “Nugas is not my… oh, Watcher, that’s disgusting!”

“Hey, Vitamin said she was,” Vita shrugs. “And it kind of makes sense.”

“You and especially Vitamin have an incredibly warped perspective of what constitutes motherhood!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Wait,” I press. “You actually adopted Vitamin?”

“Of course I did!” Vita scoffs. “You know that, you were there!”

“Yes but that…”

That was a passing fancy, you never loved her. You just thought she was cute. You don’t care about her in the way a mother should. I want to say all of those things, but I shut my mouth and say none of them. Where does that emotion come from, anyway? That knowledge? Penelope never had a mother who cared for her, and Vita’s relationship to Lyn is more gratitude on her end than anything.

My silence wasn’t quick enough, though. Vita intuits what I was going to say, and her gaze is scathing. I quiver as ghostly tentacles curl dangerously around me. She’s just angry, though, not making an actual threat. Vita threatens people clearly and verbally, or not at all. She’s misinterpreted the threats of other kids too many times and doesn’t like being misunderstood herself. So… I’m safe to push a little further.

“…If things have changed since then,” I whisper, “why are you angry?”

Her soul eye flinches, looking away as her tentacles drop. I don’t know why I care about this, but I’m glad she’s thinking about it. …Though I’m a little worried about making her too grumpy.

“You know what?” Vita snaps, proving my fears. “I was just making sure Penelope wasn’t going to kill you before I head out, but all of a sudden I’m feeling pretty good about the whole thing. You two catch up.”

“W-wait!” I protest as she reaches over to grab me off her shoulder. “Where are you going? Can’t I go with you?”

I don’t care how angry Vita is, it’s better than being left alone with Penelope! I know the sort of grudges she keeps!

“I mean, you can if you really want to,” Vita grunts. “But I was planning to go fight a dragon.”

I stop flowing through her fingers in an attempt to escape. Did I hear that right? No, surely I messed up interpreting those sounds.

“Please go with her,” Penelope says sweetly. “It would tie things up nicely.”

“You can’t fight a fucking dragon!” I squeak.

“Sure I can,” Vita shrugs. “Why shouldn’t I? Norah and I probably have it in the bag, especially if we can find some good Risen to make on the way.”

“Dragons are absurdly dangerous!” I insist. “You could die!”

“Well yeah, but then I get to be a dragon,” Vita answers, grinning. “So it’s really kind of a win-win.”

“Vita, if you can’t kill the dragon by just rending its soul from its body, you probably can’t possess it,” Penelope chides.

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbles. “Ruin my fun, why don’t you? Anyway, here. One goopy personified trauma, just for you.”

Possession? No, wait, I’m going to get stuck with Penelope! I wiggle and flop to no avail as Vita hands me over. The noblewoman accepts me with a malicious grin.

“Aw, Vita,” she coos. “It’s just what I wanted!”

I relax a tad. That’s the ‘I’m acting happy ironically because I know I can’t actually do what I want here’ tone.

“She’s my friend, Penelope,” Vita reminds her, to emphasize the point. “Even if I did forget how annoying she can be.”

“I’ll be gentle with her,” Penelope says flatly. “Just leave enough of the dragon intact to get me some fresh scale samples. I want to see if I can grow them out of things.”

“Will do,” Vita agrees, wrapping her tentacles around Penelope and somehow lifting her—and therefore me—up off the ground with them, pulling her in for a hug. “Be back in a few days.”

“Love you, sweetie,” Penelope says, squeezing Vita back hard enough to splatter my body painfully between them.

“Hey,” Vita grumbles, releasing us. “You two get along, okay?”

“I’d really prefer to just avoid her,” I manage to say, slowly reconstituting myself.

“Well, I thought the same about her when I first met you, and you insisted we could be good friends,” Vita reminds me. “It obviously worked out pretty well!”

“When I said I thought you’d get along, I was lying,” I answer bluntly. “I just knew Penelope would want to use you to learn animancy, and if you weren’t valuable to her she’d probably kill me.”

“Huh,” Vita says. “Well, I actually think you’ll get along, so based on current trends I expect you to be married when I get back. Bye!”

“Not how that works, Vita,” Penelope calls back blandly, but she seems to be… smiling? And not using any of her double-meaning tones?

I try to sigh, though it ends up making a wet flatulent noise as it passes through my body. There goes my protection against a sadistic, vindictive woman who hates me. Now what’s my angle?

“…Logically speaking,” I try, “it would be better for both of us to get along. Grudges are counterproductive.”

“Yes, I agree completely,” Penelope nods along dangerously. “I propose we therefore take whatever steps are most likely to free me of that grudge in an expedient manner. Follow me somewhere private, would you?”

Shit, I walked right into that one. Quivering, I cease trying to maintain my humanoid shape and fully liquidate, dropping to the ground. Penelope starts to walk off and I follow her as best I can. It takes all the speed I can muster in order to keep up with her lazy pace, though. How annoying! If there was one advantage to my Nawra body, it was certainly a lot faster.

“What are we, uh, going to do, then?” I ask, once the two of us are away from camp.

Penelope laughs, and it’s chillingly real.

“Ah, Penta. I have to admit, I truly am grateful to you for convincing Vita to show me animancy. I’ve become quite proficient with it in the meantime.”

Oh, fuck. I immediately switch direction and try to sprint away, but she easily steps past me, her boot crashing down less than an inch away.

“I originally thought I would be satisfied with killing you,” Penelope muses. “But I was quite wrong. It just wasn’t enough because you didn’t suffer. You never went through anything nearly as bad as what I did.”

“I did go through that,” I insist. “I was you. I experienced every moment of your torment!”

“You know, Penta?” Penelope muses. “I think the saddest part of your existence is that you truly believe that’s the same. But look at this! It’s your own body, freshly budded, just for you! Perhaps it would help you understand…”

She reaches down and strokes her fingers over me. In terror I try to dissolve her, to burn her, but her skin ignores it.

“…If you experienced that terror more personally.”

A surge of mana jolts through me. I try to scream, but my body is no longer my own.

Watcher damn it. I just got this thing.