Vigor Mortis

Chapter 135: Survival Preferred

Damn it, I thought I was being real fucking smart when I let Lark leave with that other woman. How do I keep fucking these things up!? It was obvious that Gina was just distracting me so Lark could head off alone with what was almost certainly Fulvia. Unlike Site 4, documentation on Lark is thorough, and I’m well aware that two of her victims are alive in the city, and that one of them is a hunter, and that Gina was a hunter before joining the Templar training program. It’s not really a big mystery. When probably-Fulvia asked to take Lark away somewhere and see her face, I thought to myself: ‘Well, it’ll probably be good for both of them to get some closure.’ It’s not like I can’t track them halfway across the city.

Yet I guess my streak of catastrophically fucking up isn’t quite over yet. I hear the sickening blows, the subtle sounds of shattering bone, and I’m instantly in panic mode. Fuck, I knew Lark was contrite, but I didn’t think she was ‘let her beat me to death’ contrite! Watcher’s eyes, she’s suicidal, isn’t she? Not in the ‘does stupid things that might get her killed’ way, but literally suicidal. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I fucked everything up again! She needs help!

“Follow me and catch the first alley cat you see,” I snap at Gina, interrupting whatever it is she’s been saying. “Bring it with us. That’s an order.”

“Wh-wha?” Gina blinks, dumbfounded.

“Have you never heard of a fucking order, Trainee?” I bark, already breaking into a sprint. “NOW!”

I focus on cycling power through my legs, per my enhancer training, as Gina sputters slightly before running after me. We’re not that far out, I’ve made sure of it. It’ll take me thirty seconds to reach Fulvia and Lark, tops. But thirty seconds is a long time to have your face beaten in, and every couple steps a sickening crack in my ears reminds me of that fact.

“Stop,” I hear Lark plead. “Stop!”

Her attacker doesn’t. Rage starts to drown out my guilt, pushing me a little faster.

“Fulvia, I don’t want to fight back!” she yells. “If I’m hurt too much, I’ll lose control!”

“Then do it!” Fulvia screams. “Bite me, you fucking freak! Give them a reason to put you down!”

Oh, no. No, no, no, this is all my fault! I misread Fulvia so hard! Damn it, I’m not a fucking mind reader. I shouldn’t… no. No, I’m still sure she didn’t have any murderous intent. This is a spur of the moment thing, isn’t it? One that I allowed to happen because I let a victim and her abuser in the same room, without supervision, like a fucking moron.

I told them I wasn’t cut out for leadership.

No time for self-pity, though. I have to fix as much as I can. I make it to the abandoned home they’re hiding inside, one of the many that still hasn’t gotten fixed from the perception event two years ago. I boot down the door, shouting at them to stop, but of course they don’t. The stench of vrothizo blood and human fury mixes like acid in my nostrils, and I’m instantly reminded of the last time I fought a vrothizo, the way my senses seized control of my brain at exactly the wrong moment and nearly got me killed. Sure enough, Lark has a wild, feral look in her eyes, and I fear the worst. To most people, her blood would probably be difficult to distinguish from her skin beyond the slightly glossier color, but my eyes easily make out the difference, and… that’s a lot of blood. On top of her head injuries, there’s no way Lark is in a lucid state of mind.

So it’s horrible, but not terribly surprising, when she bites off Fulvia’s hand just before I can reach the two of them. What’s surprising is that Fulvia just rears up for another punch with that arm, the sheer teary-eyed fury on her face making it clear she’s completely lost her senses. Not even the pain can snap her out of whatever she’s going through right now. Or perhaps it’s the pain that put her there. Doesn’t matter. I’m there, and using all the momentum from my run and all the enhanced strength I can muster, I grab her under the armpits and throw her as far off of Lark as I can, sending her careening to the other side of the room. Unfortunately, Lark doesn’t seem quite done, and I’m suddenly the closest meal option.

Maybe… I shouldn’t call her Lark. The frenzied, bloodied beast twisting to lunge at me is not the polite, heart-breakingly depressed young girl I’ve been tasked to watch over. This is just a frightened, hungry animal, fighting for its life. In the instant before she tries to devour me alive, however, I find myself staring intently at her face.

From the moment I first saw her, I found myself liking Lark’s face. Human skin is disgusting for countless reasons, but the foremost problem is sweat glands. I absolutely despise sweat glands, the little holes that cough and vomit up foul-smelling fluid all over a person’s body. Lark has a few sweat glands dotted here and there, but best I can tell they seem to be disappearing, sealing up and removing themselves from her body. Her face has none left, though, meaning all the water on it is clearly from her tears.

She swallows most of Fulvia’s hand, lips curling up in a red-stained grin before turning on me. Though while her mouth is smiling, her eyes are wet with terror. I watch, in those slow moments where my life is in danger and my senses snap to even more horribly precise extremes, as her tear ducts pour yet more fluid out as her injuries rapidly stitch themselves together. She’s not crying from the pain. She’s… still in there.

Cool, I guess I might survive this.

The eternal moment passes, and the vrothizo lunges at me, jaws open wide. I don’t have a single fucking chance of dodging Lark for more than a second or two, so I don’t bother. Praying to the Watcher, I do what I know her instincts will be all too happy to allow: I shove my hand right at her mouth, burying my arm as deeply into her throat as I’m able.

Before my talent manifested, my family had a dog. His name was Boxers and he was the best. We used to play-fight all the time, which would often involve him getting a little chompy. Never enough to really hurt me, since Boxers and I were best friends, but we’d pretty seriously get into it, wrestling in the dirt and absolutely going at each other. The ‘brilliant’ idea my dumb little brain came up with here is similar to something I used to do in order to win fights with Boxers: push my arm into his mouth on purpose and wedge it deep enough in there to prevent him from biting down. That move always ended in victory for me; Boxers would start gagging and give up immediately whenever I pulled it off. I don’t know if vrothizo can gag, but still… have you ever stuffed so much in your mouth at once that you physically can’t chew anymore? Biting down just becomes impossible because there’s too much in the way? Yeah, that’s the strategy here.

Now if this sounds like a stupid idea in general and doubly so against a vrothizo, well, that’s because it absolutely is. For one, I’m not ‘play-fighting’ with Lark, she’s seriously trying to kill me. For two, her teeth are magically ultra-sharp. Just by grazing them on the entry, my arm is absolutely torn open, large gashes opening up on both sides of it. That’s mostly okay, though, because I fully expect to lose it.

I’m fighting a fucking vrothizo, after all. My whole team struggled with a weaker one than what Lark is reported to be capable of. So in my defense, I’d argue any plan that involves me getting horribly maimed isn’t inherently stupid for that reason. Rather, any plan that doesn’t account for the fact that I’m about to lose a limb at minimum is unrealistically optimistic. If I can gain an advantage by leaning into the inevitable here, I’m going to take it.

Immediately, though, I run into a few problems: first, Lark apparently doesn’t have a gag reflex. Even with her throat and windpipe blocked, she doesn’t seem to give a single shit. Second, since her teeth can slide through bone like it’s a gelatin dessert, she doesn’t really have to worry about being unable to chew all that much. With enough struggling, she’s going to sheer my arm off anyway, as her teeth won’t get stuck in my flesh if she jerks her head around. Third, once I stick my whole arm as deeply into her throat as I’m able, I feel my fingers disintegrate. Still, I press down on her lower jaw as much as I’m physically capable, desperately trying to keep her mouth open and my arm intact long enough to get a sentence or two out.

“Fight it, Lark!” I shout at her, forcing myself to form words instead of agonized screams. “You don’t have to do this!”

And that’s it. That’s all I can do. Buy time long enough for the person I know is still there to get herself under control and hope she doesn’t fucking kill us all. If I’m lucky, eating my arm will even help her out with that; the reports say she’s insisted that food helps her resist her urges.

And I believe her. I’ve known too many sociopaths and liars to think that she’s either. That fact is little consolation to the screaming agony that is my arm, though. Pain, so much pain. And pain… is a problem.

My talent drastically increases the precision at which I can discern things my senses pick up, as well as drastically increasing the range of things my senses can pick up in the first place. It doesn’t really make any individual sensation more intense, the intensity comes from the fact that I’m just constantly picking up so damn much all the time. I feel heat and cold much more precisely than I used to, for example, and can pick up even the slightest fluctuations in temperature, but I’m still comfortable in the same temperature ranges as before. Likewise, pain isn’t any more painful than it was before my talent manifested. It’s just a lot more… precise.

With horrid exactness, I feel every individual fracture in every individual wound. Each frayed tear of skin, each pulse of blood flowing outward, every movement of broken bone against bone… the knowledge of these sensations fills my mind to the brim, already stacked up alongside tracking Gina’s footsteps, monitoring Fulvia’s heartbeat and breathing, analyzing every minute scent in the air and twitch of Lark’s body, and every one of the thousands and thousands of competing signals from the cacophony of the city, all crowding for my attention even as I face what may be my death. I feel them start to reach a tipping point… but if they spill into my mind now, if I have an episode now, it will be far, far worse than the last vrothizo I lost my mind to. I’m keeping her jaw open as best I can, but she’s thrashing around, sawing her teeth through me. It won’t be long before I lose enough of a muscle or tendon for this to all be over.

“Come on, Lark!” I beg her. “Come on, you brave girl! Come back to me!”

In response, she grabs my face, jerks her head, and tears my arm clean off. I feel the strain on every tendon and muscle fiber, the near-synchronous snapping of every bit of flesh unlucky enough to not be cleanly severed by a tooth, the ripping of skin, and the chalky crunch of what bits of bone still held together, vibrations running up my shoulder and down my ribcage.

It probably says a lot about how fucked up my talent is that the sensation is a relief. Having one giant wound just below my shoulder is so much less of a mental load than having my whole arm covered in deep, asymmetrical gouges. Downside: she’s now swallowing the rest of my arm, and crushing my face, and I don’t have a grip on her anymore. What’s with monstrous, stupidly strong girls and grabbing me by the face, anyway? This is really not something I expected to happen twice. Oh, wait a second, I’m probably bleeding to death.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, what do I do here? I can feel the blood pumping out of my brachial artery. At its current rate I’ll probably pass out in the next fifteen or twenty seconds, so that has to come first. With my one remaining hand I flash through a simple kineticism spell to pinch the artery shut. Then I start one of the basic biomancy spells I know, trying to tuck my legs up underneath me to get a knee on Lark’s neck to keep her on the ground. It doesn’t work perfectly, but the more time it takes for her to swallow my arm, the more time I have before I get bitten again.

“I get we don’t know each other that well, but I’m really fucking counting on you to come to your senses here, Lark!”

The vrothizo bucks, and if not for the fact that she’s still holding onto me I would have been flung clean off. It certainly knocks my knee off of her throat, though, and she swallows most of the rest of my arm in one gulp. Taking in a huge breath for the first time since I stuck it down there in the first place, the monster lets out a horrid wail, half beastial fury and half human despair. Shit, time to sacrifice another limb, I guess. I need my other arm, though! Curling my toes up as much as I can, I stick the tip of my boot in her mouth and let her bite off, her teeth barely missing my foot.

“Stop talking to it like it’s a person!” Fulvia demands suddenly. “Kill it!”

“Why the fuck are you still here?” I shout back at her. “Get yourself to a healer!”

“No!” she shrieks, and the sound is so horrified and raw that I instinctively glance her way. Fulvia is panicking. Beyond panicking, really. Her mental state is as animalistic as the monster trying to kill me.

“No healing!” she insists. “Not until it’s dead!”

I glance at her mangled, bloody hand, finishing up my own one-handed healing spell. Pushing down the distracting influx of sensations as my shoulder starts to knit itself back together, I glance at her mangled stump of a hand. Yep, she’s definitely bleeding too much.

“Well if you stick around here I’ll heal you myself!” I snap.

Immediately, she and Lark both freeze. Holy shit, thank the Watcher, Lark stops moving. I keep my body tense, but her grip goes limp and her hand leaves my face. With another swallow, all the human flesh she’s consumed finally finishes its journey to whatever passes for her stomach. A warring combination of avarice and blank horror spread across her face, slight twitches in her expression filling me with hope.

“Hey!” I say excitedly. “Hey, hey, hey, hey! It’s okay, Lark! You’re okay, you got this!”

Her eyes squeeze shut, and I carefully get off her as she shakingly rolls to her side, curling up and starting to sob in earnest. Which, y’know, on one hand… poor Lark. On the other hand, I’m missing a hand ow ow fuck. The pain’s honestly not so bad, though. If anything the healing process is a lot more uncomfortable and distracting. That and the lightheadedness. Holy shit do I need a nap.

“I’m okay, Lark,” I whisper reassuringly, idly finding my free hand scratching behind her ears like I used to do with Boxers. Which… wow, I must be really out of it. I haven’t willingly pet an animal since my talent manifested. Not that Lark is an animal, I just… uh, the point is, it’s no fun at all to be able to feel every individual hair, every mite and flea, every bit of dirt and gunk the animal hasn’t cleaned out. At least I have a glove on, now. I feel like I should be using my hand for something else, though… oh, shit! I have to heal—

My thoughts are cut off when Fulvia tackles me from the side screaming bloody murder, which fucking figures. I’m knocked over, and I try to guard my head from the fall before suddenly remembering that I don’t actually have an arm on that side of my body anymore. My head slams into the stone floor, leaving me reeling. And to cap all this shit off, this is the moment that Gina finally picks to enter.

“Hey I got the cat or whate—Watcher’s tits!”

“Restrain Fulvia!” I order her, and to her credit she actually does that. Without even dropping the hungry-looking scraggly alley cat she has in one hand! That’s cool. Very cool. Also, I’m getting her ass kicked out of the trainee program for this shit.

I lie on the floor for a bit, listening to the choked sobs coming from the girl who just swallowed my arm and trying to figure out how the fuck to salvage this situation. It’s my job, after all, to ensure Lark is loyal and fighting fit for whatever it is the top brass want her for. More importantly than that, however, is the fact that I’m responsible for a young girl going off alone with someone dangerous and having her face beaten in. I’m like… her guardian now. It’s not like she has parents, anyway. Watcher, I’m not qualified for this. Why do these things keep happening?

It’s not super difficult for Gina to get Fulvia under control, though she does wail and curse when she’s forced over to me so I can make sure she doesn’t bleed to death. (You’re welcome, I guess.) I get it, she just had an intensely traumatic episode after being reunited with her abuser. I have sympathy for that. But she lost control after confronting that abuser on purpose, going out of her way to be alone with them, and that confers on her some responsibility for going absolutely apeshit. She was clearly not ready for this. Whatever. I’ve done what I can for her. I just have one more responsibility here.

Regretfully picking myself up off the cold stone, I scoot over to Lark. The poor girl is still sobbing in a ball, though I can hear her running her tongue over her teeth as if trying to clean them.

“Well Trainee,” I drawl tiredly, “you were wrong. I totally stopped you.”

She ignores me and continues to cry. That didn’t go over well, I guess. I motion Gina to me, instinctively trying to hold my arm out to request the cat… and manually needing to do that with my other arm instead. Fuck, that’s surreal. She hands the cat to me, which Gina rendered unconscious somehow. She must have guessed what I wanted it for.

“You need anything else to eat, Lark?” I ask her plainly.

She shakes her head no with a rapidness that borders on desperation.

“Okay, that’s fine,” I tell her. “But I want to double-check here, because I know you’ve said that getting fed enough helps you stay in control, and I think right now you might not be thinking completely straight about whether you should be eating more. So if you can, really give yourself a proper once-over, okay?”

She draws in a few deep, shaky breaths, giving me an answer about ten seconds later.

“I should eat,” she admits quietly.

I nod, handing the cat over to her. She sits up and takes it gingerly in her hands, staring at it with utter self-loathing for a moment before bringing it up to her mouth. With startling precision, she bites off all four of its legs and its tail in rapid succession. She then swallows, shoves as much of the head and shoulders into her mouth as she can, and bites that off as well, placing what’s left of the now-dead torso on the ground next to her. The whole thing takes… maybe two, three seconds? I watch as bits of anima fall down her throat alongside the flesh, noting how small they are even compared to the already-tiny cat soul. That’s relieving, and a quick glance at my own soul confirms it has taken very little damage. Thank the Watcher.

Curling her knees up and resting her face against them, Lark continues sobbing. I leave her alone, my brain moving far too sluggishly from the adrenaline drop and blood loss to come up with the right words to say. Instead, my gaze meets Fulvia, who is no longer frantically raving and screaming. Instead she just glares at Lark and I with open hatred.

“It’s fucking with you,” she hisses. “It’s not a person. It’s a sadistic monster that learned how to talk.”

I glance over at Lark again briefly before meeting Fulvia’s gaze again, checking the part of her very few others can see. I see her soul, a sphere like a cracked blanket, smelling of fresh wood, somehow soft yet brittle. It looks, inarguably, like a human soul. Nothing like the non-humans at Site 4, or how I’ve been told a vrothizo soul appears.

“Maybe so,” I admit. “I’m no mind reader. But the thing is, maybe she’s not. Maybe she’s just a scared girl fighting with every ounce of her strength to not be the monster that hurt you. Maybe the things she did when she was just a few months old aren’t who she is now.”

“You don’t know anything,” Fulvia insists. “You weren’t there. You didn’t get tortured over and over, day after day, body and soul violated over and over until I no longer knew who I was. There is nothing, nothing that can do that to a person and not be a monster to the core.”

“Well, I think cores can change,” I answer. “Which kind of sucks, because it would be so much simpler if they couldn’t. It’s much more convenient, much more black-and-white to lay people out as good or evil, humane or monstrous, and guiltlessly punish the wicked. But that is not what the Watcher teaches us. People can change. People deserve an opportunity to return to the community, better than they were before their crimes. Punishment without rehabilitation is nothing but cruelty.”

“But most people don’t change,” Fulvia growls. “You really think a monster is going to?”

I shrug, startling myself at the lack of weight hanging from my shoulder.

“Most people don’t have the right kind of help,” I counter. “But somewhere in her life, I think Lark did.”

“Stop defending me,” Lark whispers.

I carefully don’t react to that, but inside words twist my intestines into knots.

“No,” I tell her, pouring into the word every ounce of conviction I can muster.

She looks up, wet eyes wide with confusion.

“I bit off your arm,” she reminds me.

“You did indeed do that,” I admit, nodding. “If only we knew, say, the most powerful biomancer in the country. Any idea how we could get an appointment with her?”

She stares at me in utter uncomprehension, ears flat against the top of her head.

“How… how are you so calm?”

Uh, because I wake up every morning in a more stressful situation than this, and the elation of not slipping back into that during the middle of this confrontation is almost more exciting than the fact that everyone survived? Because the intense pain in my shoulder is really just another sensation, and I’ve been learning to ignore those for so long that it barely registers? Because this entire situation is my fucking fault to begin with for not doing my job, and until it’s over I will keep a brave face up for as long as you need one? All of those things are true, but none of them seem like a good answer to give at the moment.

“Lots of experience,” I say instead. “Believe it or not, I’ve been on more harrowing assignments than taking care of a kind young girl who offers to let people beat the shit out of her in hopes of making them feel better.”

“You don’t know anything,” she whispers. “I’m not kind. I… I wanted to…”

“I know a lot more than you think I know,” I say, cutting her off. “I hear more and see more than you’re aware of. Do you want me to get mad about my arm? Well, sorry, I don’t really have the energy for it. It’s way fucking easier to just say ‘I forgive you.'”

“Fuck you,” Fulvia hisses. “Fuck you both!”

“Okay, well, she doesn’t agree,” I drawl tiredly. “Which is fair. You probably don’t deserve forgiveness on that one, but you don’t really need it either. I think.”

Shakily, I try to stand up. Woah, nope, way too lightheaded for that. I sit back down.

“Lark, put your helmet back on. Gina, go get more Templars. And… a medical professional. Or two. I dunno. I think I’m going to pass out soon. G’night, everybody.”

I lie down then, because like, may as well get comfy, right? Floor comfy. Wow, I’m out of it.

“Don’t… don’t start another fight while I’m out, okay?” I yawn, hearing the words come out of my mouth slurred and slow. “Only got… one more arm.”

I’m not sure exactly when I fall asleep, but I’m not enough of a coherent person to worry about it when I wake up. Filter, filter, filter… sterile smells, numb body, multiple synchronized heartbeats, zero outside sounds…

I come back to myself far faster than usual, as wherever I am just doesn’t seem to have much for my senses to latch onto… with, of course, the exception of First Lady Penelope Vesuvius. Did she set up silencing spells around where I’m resting to help me wake up…?

I open my eyes, and sure enough she’s there, waiting for me to do just that. She smiles like a viper, though I instinctively give a soft smile right back.

“Sup,” I grunt.

She chuckles, grinning wider and showing off her pointed teeth.

“Hello to you too, Inquisitor Captain,” Penelope answers. “How are you feeling?”

Hmm… good question. How am I feeling?

“Mostly numb, so.. Pretty great, all things considered?” I decide. “I wish I could wake up inside whatever sensory deprivation thing this is every morning. How’s the kid?”

“Lark?” Penelope asks, tilting her head. “She’s perfectly fine. Physically, anyway. She’s obviously distraught, but entirely returned to her senses. Now, let’s see if we can say the same about you, hmm?”

A slew of standard medical tests follow that up, and Penelope eventually concludes that yes, except for my arm, I’m healthy enough to function. After slurping down a bunch of largely-tasteless nutrient goop (I’m pretty sure she made it tasteless specially for me, which is very nice of her) I’m feeling a lot better in general.

“Right, so, down to business,” Penelope says, and I focus on her immediately. “In your honest opinion, what would happen if Lark and Vita fought?”

I blink in surprise. It’s an odd but simple enough question, I suppose. Lark would probably get her ass kicked. Even if she could kill that ridiculously tough girl, Vita’s a Lich, so she could just steal a nearby… no, wait. Lark’s bite deals a frighteningly large amount of soul damage. I’m certain of that. I… think. I quickly flick through the soul sight spell under the covers of the cot with my one remaining hand, checking my own soul. Oh yeah, wow. I’m surprised I can function with that big chunk bitten out of it! If Lark had gotten more than one limb, I probably couldn’t have woken up.

“…I think it could be legitimately dangerous for Vita,” I admit. “Lark’s bites are scary, anima-wise. It’d be dangerous for Lark too, though. Vita is terrifyingly strong.”

“I see,” Penelope muses, her lips pursed as she watches me carefully. “Well, that’s somewhat good news, I suppose. Lark is being groomed as our anti-Lich weapon, so your superiors will be happy to know that their operation has a good shot at success as long as Lark gets proper support.”

I raise my eyebrows with surprise.

“You know about Liches, Lady Vesuvius?” I ask. Something about the question feels odd to me, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“Of course,” she answers easily. “I’m a First Lady. We were all briefed about the situation with Vita and Ars recently. Dreadful stuff. It’s increasingly fortunate we have Lark, isn’t it?”

“I… suppose so,” I hedge. As far as I’m concerned, we should probably just leave Vita alone, but I doubt that’s a welcome opinion to go spreading around more than I already have. “I just hope everyone ends up okay. Ah! I should go give my debriefing, probably!”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Lady Vesuvius chides. “You should rest in bed. Three day’s bed rest, no less. You’re still healing.”

“It’s not like I need two arms to report to my superiors,” I point out.

“Mmm-hmm. But don’t think I didn’t notice your fingers moving under there, Inquisitor. Be honest, how much of your soul is missing right now?”

I wince.

“Uh, like, a quarter of it? A fifth?”

“Bed rest,” Lady Vesuvius orders. “I’m no animancer, but it doesn’t take one to know that’s not healthy. I’ll pass along anything urgent to Templar command, if you have it. I’ll give you my clearance papers if you need to see them.”

“Yes ma’am,” I sigh.

“I’ll make sure Lark is taken care of in the meantime,” she promises. “You did well today, Captain.”

“I don’t feel like I did,” I admit. “I’m responsible for getting Lark into the situation where she was forced to lose control.”

“And you got her back out of it with only minor casualties,” Penelope insists. “And that is what your superiors are going to see. You just proved Lark isn’t a disaster waiting to happen. That she isn’t one dropped pin away from a massacre. Even better, you did it while containing the information breach at the cost of your own safety. That’s the angle I’ll be pushing to those above you, and you’ve earned the praise you’ll get for it.”

None of that makes me feel better. I sigh, suddenly exhausted once again.

“Honestly, I almost wish they’d just fire me at this point,” I admit.

“Ah, we can’t have that I’m afraid,” Penelope answers soothingly. “You’re simply much too useful.”