Vigor Mortis

Chapter 145: Do or Die

A scream sounds out across the battlefield, the first audible break in the battle-hardened professionalism of the Templar forces. Blood is everywhere, spilling across enough of the ground that even my dulled senses feel the sharp smell clawing up my nostrils. My dragon, weathering countless arrows and spells despite its invisibility, turns anyone not protected by treecover into paste. My ozoid-wight carves through those trees with just as much ease as it carves through people, enemy swords flashing to bisect its body only for the severed parts to be harmlessly reabsorbed, alongside the flesh and souls of its victims. Its golden body runs red. My many other surviving Risen, mostly flying monsters of various sizes and persuasions, harass the Templars from all angles. They’re directed by Manus and Ice Guy, both of whom hang back for that purpose, too useful to sacrifice like pawns.

And then there’s me. I can only imagine what it must be like to fight something that instantly kills anyone before they can even get close. The Templars aren’t stupid; they know they have to stay away from me. But as I run through the middle of their formation, moving from Inquisitor to Inquisitor, they often find themselves without anywhere to go. They’re correcting this flaw, spreading out and ensuring they have room to dodge and room to fire on me. But once I’m sure they know to fear me, I start sending illusory copies of myself to threaten multiple directions at once, scattering their organization anew. I feel, all around me, as the enemy’s morale starts to break.

I am so damn tired.

I sigh as I yank out the soul of another Inquisitor, Norah’s blade flashing around me on its chain to intercept incoming attacks. For fuck’s sake, just call a retreat already. Please. I don’t want to keep doing this. I swallow the soul without a thought, feeling my body surge with strength, but the exhaustion I feel is something more than just the physical, aching need for rest. I hate this. I hate being here. But I don’t know what else to do.

I feel a group of Templars on one side of me intend to dodge as one on the opposite side prepares a talent. I preempt their movement, ducking and flowing around the beam of red light that scours the spot where I had just been standing, engulfing the tree it ends up hitting in flames. More attacks fly towards me from a half-dozen other directions, some dangerous but most useless. I ignore the basic arrows, letting them break against my armor as I leap and weave around magically-powered shots, explosive talents, and other heavy impacts that could knock me off course. I kill the heat-beam user, eat him, and carry along my way, corpses collapsing in heaps around me whenever people brush too close.

I am so damn tired.

My shoulder twitches as I swallow more souls, a thick, bulging mess of fleshy tentacles growing ever larger from the stump where my left arm once was. They slither and flop with frustrating imprecision, rubbing uncomfortably against each other as they grow slick with blood. My blood. The damn tentacles are nothing but a liability, a giant pulsating weak spot uncovered by my armor. The wounds heal over quickly whenever they’re opened, but at this rate I’m eventually going to start losing consciousness. My body is going to run out of mass with which to make more flesh and blood at some point, and I can almost feel myself getting lighter. I need to eat something, but there’s no time to stop and chow down on Templar meat. The souls will have to do for now.

I recognize, dimly, that I just considered cannibalism and didn’t feel a single shred of disgust at the idea. I guess I’m already eating the souls, so why not the bodies? If anything, that’s way less of a moral problem. Whatever. There’s better food back home. I hope I can go back soon. I am just… so damn tired.

A great horn bellows out its call, relief and terror flooding through the Templars. Shit, what does that mean? What are they going to send at me now? They… huh. They’re retreating. These stubborn motherfuckers are actually retreating!

“Stop,” I call out, letting my voice boom over the battlefield. The Templars ignore me, of course, but that’s a good thing. I’m giving orders to my troops. I promised I wouldn’t attack any retreating Templars, and I won’t. I slow down, stop running, and simply stand still as Templars warily give me a wide berth, their commanding officers barking at the rank and file to avoid engaging me. Well… shit, okay. It’s over! It’s actually… hmm. No, wait.

Not everyone is retreating. Just most of them.

Shit. They figured out that their rank and file is doing little more than feeding me. I guess that makes sense. This isn’t their first time fighting a threat like me; Wights probably get stronger the more Templars they kill as well. They saw things weren’t working, so they’re backing off, leaving specific units to do the fighting alone. It’s annoying, because it feels like an abuse of my kindness… but I promised, so whatever. If anything, this is my fault. I can’t say I mind not having to wade through slightly dangerous fodder, and I at least got a major chunk of the Inquisitors they brought before they wisened up.

Now then… the groups that have jealousy in place of relief. The ones still tensed for the kill. The ones still bursting with terror because they’ve finally seen what they’re up against. The ones that aren’t retreating. I still have to deal with them. But I take my time, scanning their souls and making my best guesses as to what talents I’m up against, trying to assemble some idea of their plan to fight me. None of the people left behind feel as powerful as Arden, or anywhere close, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be dangerous to me. I’m not dumb enough to think that the right combination of weak talents can’t wipe me out, it’s just… well, still going to be less likely to work than an Arden-blast to the face. I should have the advantage here.

Though to my annoyance (but not my surprise), the squad full of people I know is among the ones staying to fight. Fine. I suppose that’s where I’ll go. My minions can handle the others. But Jelisa? Lark? Melik? Bently? People I’ve laughed with, people I’ve helped, people that have helped me? They’re mine.

I walk their way, taking my time and letting the retreating Templars fall back in an orderly manner. It still takes a while, between the corpses and logs they have to trudge through and the huge berth they give me and my now-stationary undead. I flinch with surprise, however, when I unexpectedly feel one of the retreating Templars die. Glowering, I let go of my weapon.

“Norah,” I hiss. “Go fetch To-Kill.”

She flies off, and I silently seethe as I wait for her to return with the bug man wrapped up in her chain. Most of the surrounding forest has been felled, so I get a lot of startled looks from retreating Templars as I retrieve a struggling Hiverock soldier from the treetops, his swords soaked with blood.

“You heard me order you to stop,” I remind him.

“Yes,” he confirms. At least he’s not stupid enough to lie.

“You killed a retreating Templar anyway,” I say simply.

“You are a ruler,” To-Kill-From-Above says slowly. “You are an ally. And you… are a queen. But you are not my queen, Athanatos of Skin. I have my duties. I did not anticipate that they would contradict your orders until you gave them.”

“So you’ll keep following your queen’s orders over mine?” I ask.

“Yes,” he confirms. “It is what I am.”

I sigh.

“Fair enough. Norah, cut off all four of his arms.”

She does, her chain and blade moving in two clean swipes. I kick To-Kill-From-Above to the ground.

“Does this sufficiently inhibit you from following orders?” I ask him.

“I… believe… it does,” he hisses, clear, sticky-looking blood oozing from his new wounds.

“Cool,” I grunt. “I’m sure we can get my girlfriend to fix you up after this. She’ll love finally having an excuse to see how you work.”

“I will… resist… biological inspection,” he informs me.

Hmm… do I care? Eh, yeah, I guess I do. He’s been a big help establishing our little town.

“You can remain armless if you prefer, I guess,” I allow, shrugging. “Good luck, To-Kill. Don’t fuck with me again.”

I resume heading towards where I feel my former acquaintances waiting for me. I give To-Kill-From-Above eighty-twenty odds of bleeding out or just getting stabbed through the face by a passing Templar as they retreat, but he’s a resourceful guy so I won’t be that surprised if he makes it out of here somehow. I don’t really care much either way. I just want this to be over.

I have to deal with old friends first, though. I step through a cluster of still-standing trees and see them with my eyes for the first time. Of course, that hardly means much, since they all look basically the same. Templar armor does that. Though it looks like Jelisaveta has a captain’s helmet, so that’s interesting. She’s in charge? Heh, she must hate that.

I walk calmly towards them, Norah resting in a relaxed position on my shoulder. Even if they aren’t retreating, I don’t intend to swing at this group first. I owe them that. Or… well, I at least owe most of them that. I don’t know the older-feeling guy whose soul pulses like thunder, or the girl with the soul like a pristine swirl of water. But Jelisa, Lark, Melik, and Bently are all people I’ve met before, people I’ve known since before this mess ended up in full swing. Which means they, y’know, might actually be able to see me as a fucking person?

I don’t exactly have my hopes up, though. For one, it’s obvious they’ve prepared this place as a battleground; I see and feel metamancy glyphs all over the goddamn place, they’ve set up near a small pond which will probably help the girl with the watery soul somehow, and they’ve all settled into combat-ready stances, the feelings in their souls indicating that they’re mentally reviewing whatever their plan to kick my ass happens to be.

Lovely.

I pump mana into and consequently annihilate every metamancy glyph that ends up in my range, but otherwise I just keep approaching without making any aggressive moves. They, likewise, don’t attack me. But I feel as though it’s probably going to fall on me to start a conversation, and I’m not sure how to do that. Hmm… well, I suppose there’s always old reliable.

“Hey,” I grunt, nodding in greeting. “Uh, how’s things?”

Despite the exceptional din of the surrounding retreat, awkward silence still manages to somehow stretch between us.

“Did… did the evil, mass-murdering necromancer just ask us ‘how’s things?'” the water girl asks.

“My girlfriend says it’s legally not mass murder if you do it to people that declared war on you first,” I answer flatly.

“That’s… okay, I mean, that’s not untrue, but—”

“Xavier!” Jelisa barks.

“R-right,” she answers. “Sorry, Captain.”

“No no,” I insist. “I want to hear the ‘but.’ Genuine curiosity here.”

Though of course, instead of indulging me, a number of the glyphs I destroyed while walking towards them suddenly reappear behind me, outside my reach. The water woman—Xavier, I guess, but I doubt I’ll remember it—unsurprisingly has a water talent, and, with Bently grabbing and somehow seeming to support her, moves a huge mass of the stuff up into a big ring around all of us. The glyphs activate, freezing the water into a huge circular icewall that traps us all inside. The older man I don’t recognize uses his talent on the wall, though so far as I can tell it doesn’t seem to do anything. Still, I find myself rather incredulous about the whole situation.

“Really?” I ask. “This is your plan? To force me into close quarters where I’m strongest? To give yourselves nowhere you can run?”

“We don’t want to fight you, Vita,” Jelisa insists.

“Then leave,” I counter simply.

Jelisa looks away, glancing at the pointlessly-armored figure that is Lark. Lark… doesn’t seem to be in great shape, emotionally speaking. No idea why, though. I barely know her. Maybe all the blood is getting to her poor little monster core? Her soul is super interesting now, actually. Her outer shell works like pretty much any other person’s soul would, and it sort of acts like a buffer between the void bits—which seems to be supplying her a completely different set of desires and instincts—and her brain, which does the actual piloting of the body. The curious thing to me is why her brain doesn’t also have those same vrothizo instincts… but I guess maybe it does? I don’t know, I should leave brain theory to Penelope. The point is, most of the people here seem wary, terrified, and determined. Lark, meanwhile, just feels like she got hit in the head with a hammer and can’t think about anything other than how painful it is. Except that she’s not injured.

“It’s not that simple, Vita,” Jelisa tells me.

“It’s absolutely, completely, one hundred percent exactly that simple,” I disagree. “Just leave.”

“The Church won’t accept that outcome,” Jelisa explains. “We’d just end up having to come back and fight you later. Right now, though, we’re cut off from the outside world. Harvey is trapping us in a giant silence bubble to prevent you from sending orders to your undead, but it also gives us a chance to talk without other Templars overhearing.”

Oh, shit, I hadn’t even noticed the silence spell! I can probably just throw my voice outside the bubble, but that’s still pretty clever of them. More importantly, though, I like where this is going. I smile, hefting Norah and sticking her head-first into the ground, leaning on her as a show of nonaggression.

“I’m listening,” I tell her, smiling slightly.

“Captain,” the sound-bubble guy (whose name is Harvey, I guess?) grunts warningly.

“Don’t worry, Harvey, this isn’t against our orders,” Jelisa dismisses. “It’s just a nonviolent solution to them. Well, mostly.”

“Mostly?” I ask, quirking an eyebrow.

“Our squad exists so Lark can kill you,” Jelisa says. “Through animavorism. But if you two instead have a battle that ends with Lark subduing you—enough that the higher-ups can be convinced that it’s possible to believably contain you—then we should, eventually, be able to transition things into your plan. The story becomes that Lark can defeat you, but not kill you. So you become our weapon against Ars, and she becomes your… keeper, I guess. That way we can all—”

“Fuck off,” I snap, my smile having turned into a frown early on into her dumb plan.

“Vita… I know it’s asking a lot,” Jelisa says. “Well, no. Honestly, it’s shitty. It’s awful, it’s unfair, and puts you at a disadvantage when you’re currently in a position of strength. But it’s also the only way we all get on the same side. It’s how everyone gets out of this alive!”

“Or,” I point out, holding my temper in, “you could all just leave.”

“I would if I thought that would help,” Jelisa promises me.

“It will,” I grunt. “Just leave.”

“That won’t stop this from happening again,” she insists. “I know you don’t want to be our enemy. You said as much. And helping us fight Ars is exactly the sort of thing that will get people to start trusting you. But you have to understand that, after everything you’ve done, you have to make concessions in order for us to accept that first step.”

“I think you’re somewhat understating how phenomenally moronic these ‘concessions’ actually are,” I growl at her. “Like, listen to yourself. Seriously think about this. You’re asking me to just let myself get my ass kicked, probably have parts of my soul bitten off, and then basically become a slave to a bunch of people that hate me? Yeah, I’m sure that’ll work out great. This is fucking weak, Jelisa, even for you.”

She makes a helpless gesture, half shrug and half concession.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “But it’s the strongest I have.”

“Well ain’t that the story of your life,” I grunt, and I’m not too proud to admit I feel a certain satisfaction at the flinch it elicits. “What about you, Melik? Is this your ‘thanks for saving my mom from a mind control slime’ present? Did the Templars ever tell you that their backup plan if I failed was to burn Litia Village to the ground with all of you still inside it?”

“Yes, actually,” Melik grunts. “Galdra mentioned it.”

I blink with surprise. He’s serious?

“Then why the fuck are you a Templar?”

“You know my talent,” he shrugs. “They didn’t give me a lot of options.”

“That’s rough, buddy,” I nod sympathetically. “Wanna join my team instead?”

“Hey!” water-girl yelps, breathing heavily from her previous talent use. “Don’t poach our squadmates in the middle of a battle!”

“It’s fine, Xavier,” Melik dismisses. “Being a Templar isn’t so bad. Besides, this way I get to kill fucked-up monsters disguised as people. Speaking of… I have a question for you. What happened to my master’s soul?”

I raise my eyebrows.

“Who’s your ma… oh. Oh, Theodora was your master. Of course she was. Fuck, now I have to keep you alive or she and Margarette will never let me hear the end of it.”

“So she’s one of your slaves, then,” Melik concludes, seemingly resigned to the fact. “Figures. Was it even really a slime controlling you, or did you just want her power?”

“It was really the Nawra controlling me,” I promise him. “I won’t pretend she deserved what happened to her, but I can assure you she seems pretty happy now, at the very least. I’ll take you to see her, if you want.”

“I’ll pass,” Melik hisses. “The woman I knew would never serve something like you. The whole fucking reason she was in Litia was to avoid having her talent exploited! Whatever thing you made is not Theodora anymore.”

“Hey, I resent that,” Norah says.

“Wait, who said that?” water-girl asks.

“I did!” Norah announces, and I somewhat hesitantly let her go so she can float under her own power, showing off a bit. “I’m a Revenant! And like, yeah, that’s weird and things are pretty different, but I’m still me! I’m still Norah!”

“W-wait, did you say… Norah?” Bently asks, horror creeping through his soul.

“Fuck yeah I did! Wait a sec, I know that voice. Bently? Yo, how are you doing!? Life been treating you okay? I hope my death didn’t freak you out too much, haha. Found a boyfriend yet?”

“You turned Norah into a scythe!?” Bently shrieks at me, and I wince.

“Hey, hey, don’t knock it ’till you try it!” Norah chides, floating and twirling around in the air. “I can fly, I can use my talent on myself, I can still see and talk and stuff… oh, and I parried the fucking Sword of Skyhope, so I’m obviously awesome.”

“Look, I just… I never found a good humanoid body for her, and she ended up really liking that one time she was a scythe?” I explain hesitantly. “So… now she’s a scythe-person. I promise, she asked for this. I’m doing my best!”

“Vita was right, Bently,” Norah insists. “You have no idea what fucked-up shit the Templars did to her. You’re on the wrong side! Also, you didn’t answer me about the boyfriend.”

“You… you’re not Norah,” Bently insists. “Norah would never be okay with something like this!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, do you become a completely different person whenever you change your mind about anything? Can’t we still be friends?”

“Bently, who is this?” water-girl asks. “You know this… scythe-lady?”

“She used to be on my hunter team,” Bently explains. “I… she was my best friend.”

“Ouch. ‘Was?’ Guess that’s my answer,” Norah grumbles.

“Well, hey, for the record, I’m cool with being friends with an awesome murder-scythe,” water-girl declares. “Since we’re apparently just waiting around and having a friendly conversation with the great-grand-heathen of the forest over here instead of that fight to the death I was expecting to happen, can I ask why she has a bunch of tentacles growing out of her body?”

“My arm got blasted off by Arden,” I answer, shrugging. “And my body just… likes to grow tentacles, I guess. I just kinda have a constant stream of mostly-uncontrolled biomancy constantly turning me into a mini Mistwatcher.”

“Wait, seriously?” water-girl asks. “Damn, that’s super cool. I mean, it also sounds like it might be kind of annoying, but it’s still cool.”

“Okay, I like her,” I admit, jerking my thumb at water-girl. “Are you sure you guys can’t just leave? I don’t wanna fight any of you.”

“Uh, I’m actually a boy,” water-girl says.

I blink with surprise, before squinting at her soul a bit harder.

“…Are you sure?” I ask.

“Uh…”

My question seems to hit her like a runaway cart, and I’m not even going to try to parse through all the emotions that spring up as a result. It’s not important right now. No, the way I see it, I have two issues that actually require my attention: firstly, why are we still standing around and talking? Not that I mind or anything, but I’ve already refused Jelisa’s offer and they’ve already refused my request for them to leave. So are they stalling for something? If so, what? And of course the second question is…

“Why haven’t you said anything, Lark?” I ask. “I mean, let’s be honest, you’re the only one who feels even kinda threatening. So what’s your plan? You wanna eat me?”

The armored vrothizo breaks from her daze for the first time, her attention locking on me. Ugh, is she taller than me now? Everyone is taller than me, dangit. When I make myself a better body, it’s going to be tall.

“H-how many people did you kill?” Lark asks me.

Huh. Can’t say I expected that question.

“What, like, just now?” I ask. “I don’t know. Between me and all of my undead, probably… hundreds? Why?”

“There’s… so much blood,” she says. “So much death. You killed so many, but… you spared me. Why?”

I shrug.

“It’s not really that complicated, Lark,” I tell her. “I kill people that try to kill me. I don’t kill people that don’t try to kill me. I feel like that’s a pretty normal stance. So when you stopped trying to kill me—or anyone else, for that matter—what reason did I have to keep fighting you? And to that end…”

I raise my hand up over my head, letting Norah fly into my open palm.

“…What reason do you still have to be here? I’m happy to catch up under better circumstances, but right now I have an army in my territory and I need them to leave.”

“I…”

Her answer trails off, but I find myself not caring overmuch as my senses suddenly pick up something exceptionally powerful rocketing towards the battlefield. It’s Galdra. She’s on her way here!

“So you were stalling me,” I hiss. “Okay, playtime is over. You drop these walls and get the fuck out of here, or we throw down.”

I weave a kynamancy spell to create attack orders outside the silence bubble surrounding us, but it gets blocked by some metamancy bullshit. Okay, I see how it is. I crouch down, readying to strike. The kynamancer preventing me from getting help is in the back, so Melik will be my first target. I need my dragon to bust me out of here.

“Last fucking chance,” I snap at them. “Let me out. Now.”

“Do or die, Lark!” Jelisa shouts.

“…Or both,” Lark answers quietly, and suddenly she’s on top of me.

Holy shit, she’s fast. I barely manage to deflect her sword with Norah’s shaft, my tendrils lashing out in retaliation. She pulls back, twisting and weaving as she bites my tentacles with her helmet still on, causing pain to flash through my soul. Fuck! I can create as many tentacles as I want, and I doubt she can bite all of them, but do I want to rip her soul out after all the effort I went through to keep her alive? Why am I even using tentacles at all?

I start moving towards Melik the moment Lark leaves my range, but less than a second later she’s back in my face. But this time, I’m ready for it. I jab Norah towards her like a spear, and as Lark twists around to dodge, Norah’s chain detaches. I take the sword strike head-on, trusting Norah’s talent and my armor to handle it as Norah twists around with her chain and cuts into the vrothizo, her blade slicing through the Templar armor like it’s not even there. Lark hisses as we put a gash in her side, retreating out of tentacle range a second time.

“She’s using Norah’s talent!” Bently announces. “Take the scythe away from her!”

Immediately, I feel a tug as something tries to do just that. What the fuck? I don’t have time to find the source, though, as Lark’s annoying hit-and-runs don’t let up. She peels off her helmet, tossing it to the ground as she reengages, smashing her shield into the flat of Norah’s blade to redirect it and loosen my grip. I continue to approach Melik, but the more I do the more swinging Norah feels like trying to pull her through rubber. Something yanks hard on her chain, forcing her to retract it and work like a normal polearm as I rely on my strength to push past the resistance.

“He’s yanking on the metal inside me!” Norah shouts at me. “It’s Melik! He’s pulling me in!”

Fuck! Now do I rush him to take him out or do I back off to try and break his effect range? Should I just fucking kill them all at this point?

Pain screams through me before I can decide as Lark manages to take a huge bite out of my unarmored arm-tentacles. I hiss with fury as I hear her own pain recede as a result, vicariously tasting at the pleasure she gets from eating me, flesh and soul. I don’t lose anything important, but it still hurts like shit! Worse, she doesn’t let up her attack, striking at my hand hard enough to loosen my grip. Immediately Norah is ripped outside my reach, and Lark steps in to bite my armored shoulder.

“Too soon,” I hiss, as Norah’s talent stops her teeth dead.

I punch Lark in the face as hard as I can, breaking half the teeth she tried to bite me with and spraying black blood everywhere. With Norah and I separated, I’ve got maybe ten seconds before she’s too exhausted to keep using her talent on my armor at this distance. That’s more than enough. With Melik occupied with keeping my scythe from chopping his head off under her own power, I rush for the ice walls and start popping every metamancy glyph I feel along the way, weaving my order to my undead once again. Sure enough, I’ve broken something important, and my spell goes off.

“They’ve had more than enough time,” I shout with magic. “Smash the ice walls around me, then kill every Templar that isn’t retreating.”

And the best part is, the sound bubble goes both ways. No one stuck in here with me knows I’ve given the order. Inside the bubble, all I hear is clanking noises as Lark’s gauntlets and boots hit the ground. Her face bloody, she rushes at me once more, claws and talons out. And now she’s even faster.

I feel my troops rush this position as Lark crashes into me, her broken torso armor bursting as she frees her second pair of arms on the way. I can’t block her six-limbed flurry of blows unarmed, but I don’t really need to. All I have to care about is her teeth. I’m simply too damn tough to flinch much from her other blows, even as claws rake through my mask and gouge cuts across my face. I don’t want to fight these people, I don’t want to kill them. So all I really need to do is wait for my undead to smash through the ice walls hemming me in, get Norah back, kill everyone else, and then leave.

“Are you trying to kill me, Lark?” I growl at her, trying to make a grab for her throat but being forced to back off as she snaps at me. “Are you sure you want to push me to do the same?”

“What else am I supposed to do!?” she shouts back. “This is what the Watcher wants from me!”

She reaches her arms around to fire webs behind me, cutting off my escape. So I walk forward instead, grabbing her wrists with fleshy tentacles and yanking her towards me for a knee in the gut.

“Is that so?” I ask. “Then there’s only one way that ends.”

She’s far faster than me, but I’m stronger, tougher, and have fought monsters for longer. I don’t need Norah or any other weapon to deal with her. Even my newly-grown faux-tentacles are strong enough to hold her down, spin her around, and force her to walk directly in front of me as I approach Melik.

“I’ve offered plenty of times to let you all go!” I shout at them. “Do you really want to die that much? I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of you!”

Bently rushes forward, his weapons raised, ignoring Jelisa’s shouts to stay away from me. I’m tempted, very tempted to kill him and make an axe counterpart for Norah, but I just fondle his soul a little and he collapses from fear. Weak, just like he always was. As he continues to fight with Norah, Melik finds himself struggling to escape as I approach. Behind me, my dragon smashes the walls of ice that are preventing my escape into frozen powder, and I feel that Xavier woman try to grab it all to attack me with. I pull Lark closer, holding her back firmly against my chest as I wrap my fingers around her neck.

Then the chaos begins. The many Templars that had been left behind in formation start dying once again, my troops starting the slaughter once more. Manus and Ice Guy jump onto my dragon’s back, flying off to engage Galdra before she makes it here. She literally won’t see them coming.

“Just let Norah go,” I demand. “And I’ll let Lark go. Then we can all go. You guys, your troops, me, my troops. Do anything else, and all of you die.”

My attention on Melik, I’m immediately relieved to feel the fight leave him. His intention to give up is clear, along with the rest of his squad. Except Lark, I suppose, but it doesn’t feel like she actually wants to kill—

My physical senses suddenly cut out. My body thumps to the ground behind me.

…Huh?

Before I can react, she’s rushing away, grabbing Bently and dragging him out of my tentacle range. I try to move, try to look around, but my shattered threads only pull on empty air. What just… oh. I see. Long, thin quills protrude from Lark’s back, slick with blood and messy with viscera. It’s hard to tell from the silhouette of my soul-sight, but I think there might be small bits of my skull and brain on there. What the fuck! She didn’t have those things the last time I fought her! Did Penelope tell me about those? Shit, she might have. I don’t really remember. My thoughts feel fuzzy. I think… I just died.

Well fine, then.

I let my tentacles sink downward, finding my corpse and feeling around inside it for purchase. Grabbing on, I let myself fill my old vessel, flowing through the insides and letting my power take it once more. Honestly, my body is much more comfortable, all of a sudden. Sure, my head has been vertically bisected and I’ve lost the tentacles that were replacing my arm, but nothing in here is… moving. At least not on its own. My heart no longer throbs in my chest, pulsing fluids to every corner of my innards. My lungs no longer feel the urge to suck in and expel wet breaths. My body is… calm.

The joy of it almost makes me calm as well, but not quite.

“Death it is, then,” I try to say, but one half of my head falls to the side and all that escapes my throat is a wordless rush of air.

I suppose that’s fine. I burst forward, not holding a single bit of strength back as I feel the telltale rip of my muscles tearing. Though this time, I truly don’t have to care. My body is already dead, and my muscles provide nothing of value anymore. I close the distance between myself and Melik with a single leap, grab him by the face with my one remaining hand, and slam his body into the dirt below. I feel him lose consciousness immediately, letting go to snatch Norah back out of the air. I should have known better than to try to spare them. They’re not worth it. Never were. I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all. But they’ll suffer first. Bently rushes at me again so I swing Norah at his waist to cut off both his legs. Everyone dies. Everyone is food. All but the one I promised. My one remaining eye swivels in my belly to stare at Jelisa.

Only you, my tentacles spell out for her in cursive. She orders a retreat. Too late, little Jelly. You had your chances. Far too many of them.

My dragon dies. My Revenants die. I feel them shatter in sequence, and soon they are joined by countless others. Galdra the Annihilator approaches, and I snarl in rage. The water girl rushes forwards to try to help Bently, so I grab her and hurl her at the kynamancer in the back, shattering the armor and bones of both. My tendrils rush forwards, ready to rip out the souls of my victims, but Lark moves with impossible speed, severing them with teeth and quill before I can devour my meals. She attacks me next, biting my exposed flesh but finding herself unable to pierce my skin. Foolish girl. I’m dead now. Norah can make my body just as invincible as her own. I grab her head, rip her off my body, and snap her neck, letting her collapse to the ground.

Before I can feast, however, the air around me turns to fire. My armor, my clothes, and the very ground I’m standing on all vaporize instantly, Norah’s talent straining to keep us both intact. I let a pulse of myself into the world, blue mana shattering yellow and ending the spell as I glower up at my new enemy.

Galdra the Annihilator. She’s here. But she can’t kill me, not when I’m like this. I leap up at her, Norah’s chain extending to cleave her head from her shoulders. She’s fast, though, flitting away before we can get in range and letting me fall back to the ground, where yet another annihilation spell hits us, full-force.

“Watcher’s eyes,” Galdra swears mildly. “You’re even sturdier than the dragon. The fuck do you eat, girl?”

“Souls,” I roar at her, using mana to speak the word and destroy her pitiful spell simultaneously.

“Right, yeah, duh,” Galdra sighs, scratching the side of her helmet. “I knew that. Stupid question, really.”

…And then the spell resumes. The burning, all-consuming heat of annihilation flares to life around me, following me as I try to dodge, letting up only in the moments I force it to with my own mana. Which is something I can only do in bursts, while Norah’s soul strains more and more under the power needed to resist incineration.

“Who’ll tucker out first, I wonder?” Galdra taunts from above. “Me, or your stick? I’ve been going hard for sixty years, girl, and you’d better fucking believe I’ve got at least forty more in me.”

Galdra starts supplementing her annihilation spell with projectiles to harass me with and further strain Norah’s talent. I continue to dodge and weave, letting my mana bloom into the world as often as I’m able to give Norah rest. But Galdra is right, I’m losing this. I should have taken Norah and the dragon to personally fight her, not leave her to a bunch of worthless Templars. Now I don’t have any way to fly.

And to make matters worse, I feel a tug again. Melik has regained consciousness! He’s badly shaken up but his jerks and tugs on Norah’s body are enough to be a problem, and I’ve been focusing so much on dodging Galdra’s attacks I’m no longer in range to just soul-kill him. Or anyone else on his team, for that matter. Shit!

“Hmm… you’re dumber than you were last time,” Galdra comments. “You fight like a wild animal while dead.”

The instant after I destroy her annihilation spell with another pulse of mana, she uses a different spell: ice walls solidify into existence from the air around me, hemming me in before I can destroy the spell that creates them. And beneath me, the ground starts to boil. I let out a pulse all around me again, but it doesn’t seem to stop what’s happening. If anything, it makes it worse! The heat is already there. She’d been gathering it and collecting it below me in order to make a trap of molten dirt and stone. My feet start sinking down into the red, noxious liquid floor. The moment Norah stops using her talent, I lose my legs.

And then her annihilation spell restarts anew.

“Time to see if this really works, then,” Galdra muses. “Stay back, everyone.”

More and more mana gathers around me. More and more heat. Norah and I start to cook alive, and not even my mana pulses give her relief. Her soul is straining, being pushed past limits she’s never reached before. I swing her at the walls hemming us in, cutting loose massive chunks of ice that sink into the lava pit that’s now caught me up to my waist. Wait, part of me thinks. If I cool this off now, won’t it just solidify around me? But the idea is caught in a swarm of fury and desperation, an unrelenting deluge of survival needs. I have to cut myself free. I have to kill Galdra. I have to devour them all.

But I feel Norah’s talent start to fail. I feel her desperation, her pain, the quiet breaking of something deep inside her soul. I feel her decide to focus on protecting me, even at the cost of herself. And finally, as the inferno continues to rage, I feel her break. So the part of me that still thinks coherent thoughts decides to let go.

Norah flies out of my hands, caught once again by Melik’s talent. I know I don’t even have ten seconds this time; Norah’s talent deactivates the moment her soul loses consciousness, something that I’ve never even seen happen to Revenants before at all. I feel my body dissolve into ash, pain screaming through me as the threads of my soul which hold me inside it do the same. Trapped in my own corpse, I burn. I… I have to leave. I need a different body! But they’re all too far away. I can’t… I can’t reach. I’m tired. I am so damn tired. But I’m not. Dead. Yet.

As my corpse dissolves to nothing, with me burning inside it, I leap.