Vigor Mortis

Chapter 156: Calamity Protocol

Waiting for Galdra to come back quickly becomes more painful than the knowledge that I have been violated on a fundamental level, though at least half of that is probably the boredom. Being stuck alone and unable to even cast spells means I’m forced to wile away my time doing nothing at all. I don’t even have paper to try and record theories, perform calculations, draw maps, or write down other information Galdra might find useful. Intellectually I’m aware that I should be furious at her, but, of course, I’m not. The sheer speed at which that happened is concerning; Nugas took much longer to adapt to her new self.

But I suppose that is exactly the problem. The true meat of the matter, the real reason I’ve so easily slipped into my new master’s grasp, is the knowledge that I deserve this. There is no fate more poetic for someone that bears my sins. I lusted for power and control so much that I ripped a soul apart to make it a slave. And for what? Because I wanted the power that Vita has? I’m arguably responsible for her sins as well. I’m the one that encouraged her to start making Revenants, that got her to bring Theodora back so we could start studying the blasphemies that led to Nugas… and ultimately led to my current situation. It’s only right that I stop her now, that I end what I’ve started. Serving Galdra is how I can do that.

…And perhaps if I prove I’m loyal and compliant I won’t be stuck in this damn cell anymore, and I’ll get my ability to cast spells back before I die.

Not from the wounds I’ve been given, those will heal on their own. My natural regenerative rate is enough even without spellcasting to supplement it. But my evolution into a new kind of being isn’t one that can be ignored or left to its own devices. Growing myself a new tail requires regular upkeep, and without that guidance the musculature and bone structure will likely grow incorrectly, which could cause severe damage to my lower spine. And that’s the least of my worries.

Hmm. I can’t be very useful to Galdra if I end up crippled. As much as it pains me, I should probably try to remove this collar. She told me not to, but… well, I’m operating with information she doesn’t have, because she had other questions and then she had to leave, and she would obviously prefer that I continue being alive to serve her, so this decision is the one that’s most likely to please her.

Right?

Right.

Great, let’s remove this collar and try not to think about the fact that doing so was one of my objectives before my priorities were shifted, since that would just lead to a frustrating logic loop about my priorities and the degree to which I should be weighting the unknown possibility that I’m currently enacting a plan that I subconsciously implemented in my own soul in case of a situation like this. The chances of such a thing should be low; Galdra would have found the memory alterations in my soul if I applied such things to myself, and she would have needed to investigate them for her own safety, and she’s not a fool so she would have, but she didn’t do anything of the sort, therefore they probably don’t exist.

I take a deep breath.

“Okay, Penelope,” I say to myself. “Let’s talk out loud to help focus.”

And not because I’ve had an artificially-induced mental breakdown that ripped away every good thing in my life. That’s not important right now.

“To remove an enchanted metal collar without killing myself I need to determine the mechanism by which it detects tampering and bypass that to unlock it, or determine the mechanism by which it detects channeling and bypass that to ignore it. But the limiting factor for both of those is that I have the ability to observe neither visual nor magical aspects of the collar, because I’m unable to channel and it is attached firmly to my neck. Definitely… a predicament.”

It means the only useful sense I have is touch. I can trace the outside of the metal collar, memorize the patterns I feel, and try to extrapolate the internal runes using that information as a starting point. Which will take a while, but it should be easy enough to do as long as…

I run my fingers over the outside of the collar, and scowl.

“…As long as the carvings aren’t entirely internal,” I grumble to myself, finishing the thought. Watcher damn it. I can’t meaningfully make progress on this. I’ll just have to wait for Galdra to return so I can explain the situation to her, which she’ll be understandably wary of so I’ll also have to prove my loyalty, but I can’t really plot out how to do that since there are no tasks I can perform to demonstrate it. I am well and truly stuck here, bored and alone and with nothing productive I can set my attention towards. So now what do I do? Masturbate?

I wrinkle my nose at the thought, some small part of me thankful that I don’t find the idea of Galdra walking in on that to be at all appealing. I need to be useful to her. I need to give her what she wants, supply her what she needs, be proactive about making her dreams a reality. And considering how unflappable she’s been during political attempts at seduction, I suspect she’s far too straight for that to be anything but a detriment.

Which is good. I’m not… I’m not quite Nugas. I’m just the same old monster with new priorities and no desire to mourn the loss of my old ones. That’s much less of a complete death of self, when you think about it. Right? Yes, I’m probably good enough at self-justification to think that.

I sigh, sitting down on the dirty ground as I try to direct my jittery need to be productive, to not simply waste this time. I’ve already abandoned the mask of my sneaking suit, which was of course designed to hide the shape of my body to make me harder to recognize. The holes blown in it are all still there, but thankfully I’m almost finished regrowing the skin and internal organs that I blew out of my own body when Galdra forced me to miscast. (For her own safety, of course. Very clever of her.) It has barely been a few hours since she left, and I already feel stifled without any way to assist her.

Then I hear the door open, and I immediately jump back to my feet with delight. She’s back! She’s… hmm. No, wait. I don’t smell her. And the only person with that kind of chemical crypsis is Lyn.

I seem to be getting rescued. Hmm. How best to prevent this?

Obviously, Lyn should die. This eliminates a significant asset of the enemy’s (as Lyn is ultimately more loyal to Vita and her family than she is to me) as well as proves my utter loyalty to Galdra as her sla… as her ally. I shudder at the thought I almost just had. She can be important and I can be loyal without… debasing myself. I am worth more than a simple slave.

Anyway. Killing Lyn. With magic, it would be trivial. Without magic, it’s significantly more tricky. I will need to catch her off-guard, and naturally that will require me pretending I still possess my old loyalties. Distasteful, but hardly a deception I’m unused to. Falling back into my old mindset should be a trivial task.

Countless magical defenses and traps stand between me and the entryway, but it doesn’t take Lyn long to make her way through them regardless. She’s not a professional thief for nothing, and I’ve upgraded her body significantly since she entered my employ. She’s faster, stronger, able to distinguish the slightest sounds and scents, and outfitted with numerous tools for infiltration and espionage, including a variety of metal artifacts. I’m impressed she makes it through Galdra’s defenses, but not terribly surprised.

The young woman has only grown more attractive thanks to my attention, her practical and many-pocketed armor strapped with a variety of knives. Strands of red hair dangle haphazardly from her bandana, and she flashes me her usual wry grin as she spots me behind the barred door of my cell. I smile back, every part of my expression appearing happy to see her.

“Lyn!” I cry out with relief. “I knew you would find me. How’s the situation in the city?”

“Not bad, all things considered,” she answers, nodding. “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, all the teleportation made you a bitch to track. You wiped nearly all of the Inquisition, which… well, you know my opinion on that.”

I do. She was against it, even though it helped Vita. But the Inquisition needed to be destroyed not just because it was a threat, but because it wasn’t enough of a threat. It was strong enough to disrupt our plans, but not strong enough to actually succeed against us, which means it certainly wouldn’t survive Ars. He’s had a decade and a half to plan his revenge, after all. Better for the city to purge it and remove the absurd ban on animancy studies. On this, I can agree with my old self; Galdra liked my plan, after all.

“That you’re here at all is what matters,” I tell Lyn. “My collar is supposedly an explosive strong enough to kill me if it detects me channeling. Can you remove it?”

“Depends on the lock,” Lyn grunts. “Let’s get you out of that cell so we can check.”

I nod in agreement, and she sets to work picking the lock on the door, which is open barely five seconds later. She steps inside and I turn around to give her access to the locking mechanism on the back. She frowns at it for a while, pulling out a couple runic tools to help her analyze it, and ultimately steps away without ever touching the thing.

“I give myself forty-sixty odds on getting that open versus killing us both,” she ultimately concludes. “We should get you to a metamancer instead.”

I scowl, nodding. That’s about what I expected. How frustrating. Well, there are plenty of ways to kill her without magic, so I just need to decide on one. The best and easiest option is probably to engineer some reason to grab onto her; Lyn is substantially faster than I am, but her musculature is inferior to mine. I should be able to get a firm enough grip to prevent her escape and then smash her skull. If she counters with knife attacks, it will be problematic, but likely not fatal. I don’t really touch Lyn very often, though, and any suspicious actions might cause her to accelerate her perceptions to the point that she’ll notice my deception while I’m in the middle of trying to tighten my own grip, and break it immediately.

“We’ll just have to escape while my magic is still being prevented, then,” I inform her. “And we should do it quickly. This collar might be traceable as well.”

“You set the pace,” Lyn agrees, and we start heading up the stairs to the ground floor, where the various lethal traps have all been disabled. A few steps of the stairwell are still smoldering molten rock, necessitating that we jump over. Perfect.

I take the leap and immediately hiss in pain on landing, collapsing as I clutch my obviously still-regenerating wound. Lyn’s eyebrows raise in surprise and she leaps ahead of me, offering a hand.

“You need help, boss?”

“I’m fine,” I insist, because I’d normally refuse to show weakness in this situation. I stand up just a little shakily, wincing as I take my next few steps and slowing down with each one.

“Yeah… um, I’m sure you’re fine, but you should let me carry you,” Lyn suggests.

I glower at her.

“It’s… y’know, very high-class noble of you to not need to walk yourself?” Lyn hedges.

I continue glowering. Just a little more.

“…We’ll be much faster if you allow it,” Lyn finally says.

I let out an aggrieved sigh.

“Fine. Go ahead.”

She picks me up in a princess carry, letting me put an arm around her neck in a natural way. Perfect. She rushes out of Galdra’s secret home, and I wait just long enough for her to stop being on edge before I apply more than enough force to crush her spine.

…Or so I expected, but despite my superior strength I somehow find myself flying through the air, experiencing only a brief sensation of Lyn’s body twisting to break my grip before I’m landing face-first onto the forest floor. Lyn leaps backwards a huge distance, drawing knives and crouching low into a combat stance.

“…Why did you just try to kill me?” she demands.

Shit. Is she really that fast? How did she get free? I barely even processed what happened!

“What are you talking about?” I snap back at her. “Why did you throw me? What’s the matter with you?”

“Ohhh, fuck,” Lyn hisses. “This is a Calamity Protocol situation, isn’t it?”

What the fuck is Calamity Protocol? I don’t remember making any such… okay, well, I suppose that means nothing. But I don’t intuitively understand what it could be, either. Based on the name, it sounds like it must be the old me’s contingency against being altered by animancy. But I’ve been trying to determine what such a contingency might be ever since I became loyal to Galdra, and I still can’t think of a valid countermeasure.

“This is not a Calamity Protocol situation,” I insist out loud. “Calm yourself.”

“Oh, shit, it totally is,” Lyn swears. “Damn it I don’t want to fucking do this.”

And with those words she simply turns and sprints away, leaving me to my confused fury. I suppose having my priorities changed doesn’t make me any less of a fuckup; now I’ve let an enemy element escape with knowledge of my location. Seething, I trudge back to Galdra’s secret home in the forest, trying to decide what to do now. I suppose that, since I’m not stuck in that jail cell, I can search around for something to write with and compile as many useful documents as I can for Lady Karthala’s perusal.

I call it her ‘home’ without knowing what it really is, but it looks like a home so that’s my natural assumption. The prisoner dungeon in the basement is just a practical feature. On the ground floor is quite a comely home, lavishly furnished and decorated with what seem to be old hunting trophies, including the stuffed head of a baby dragon which is mounted on the wall. Dragons are such interesting creatures, and I quite enjoyed getting to study the biology of the one Vita killed and brought back. I intend to incorporate many parts of it into my own body one day.

But I digress. It’s clear now that it falls to me to defend this place, now that Galdra’s enemies know where it is. Rifling through cupboards and drawers, I finally locate some things to write with and get to work compiling relevant information about the work I’ve been doing in Skyhope so that it will be easier for her to take over the publicly beneficial projects now that I’m absent.

Oh, Watcher, I’m going to be fucking absent. I won’t be a First Lady anymore. The one place I was actually starting to do real good for the world is gone. Now those projects are being left unfinished it might all have been for nothing! The lumber, the sewage, the schools—it all supplies essential services, essential materials, and essential jobs. If I’m not there to manage them they might fall out of proper management so I need to help Galdra do that in my place! She’s the only one I trust to do it, even if she’s probably not… interested… in any of that work.

And if she’s not interested, it can’t really be that important.

I set down the quill I’ve been furiously scribbling with, letting it drop still-wet to the table. For a moment, a bare fraction of a moment, my head feels blank as I try to process that.

“Who am I?” I whisper.

I want whatever Galdra wants. Everything else is… empty. I don’t feel any interest in city planning. I don’t feel any urgency for immortality. I no longer have any passion for the woman I loved. But at the same time, I hardly even understand Lady Karthala’s fickle desires. I have no drive. No ambition. But ambition is all I was. She hollowed me out and left nothing in its place. I can’t even hate her for it.

I stand up, leaving the scattered papers where they are. I walk outside the home, stepping into the forest where the monsters lurk. Then I bring my hand to my mouth and bite down. Blood starts to flow. I don’t have to wait long.

Drawn by the scent, monsters approach, stalking towards me in the underbrush. One of the many cat-like creatures in the forest arrives first, a particularly large variant that differentiates itself from katzels by hunting alone rather than in packs. This, of course, makes it much less effective a hunter despite its power, and it tends to be relegated to much shallower parts of the forest starboard from Skyhope. I idly note this information since it gives me a better idea of where I am, but ultimately it doesn’t much matter where Galdra’s home is; I have no intention of escaping. So I let the monster leap ravenously at me, its jaws opening wide to rip out my throat, and then I punch it in the eye.

I feel its skull fracture as it’s knocked backwards into a tree, and I approach while it’s stunned to land another shattering kick to its ribcage. It strikes out with massive paws, dragging painful gouges along one of my arms, but I strike it in the head again, then again, and it stops moving.

I hit it again anyway. Always best to make sure. I hit it again. It’s undoubtedly dead. So I hit it again for no reason. And again and again, my fists caving deep into the corpse and reducing it to messy red paste. I start to feel it. A smile is blooming on my lips.

So this is all I really am, in the end.

Finished with my fun, I bring the mangled corpse to my mouth and start to eat it. My body needs an incredibly large amount of food to sustain itself, and it wouldn’t be right to take Galdra’s. I still don’t have my magic, but I’m not worried about tainted meat. My body won’t succumb to disease even without my talent. When other creatures come to steal my meal, I happily kill them, appreciating the number of ways I can do so with my body rather than my mind. But I can’t eat much more than my current quarry, so I leave the rest to rot.

Covered in blood and viscera, my outfit torn to shreds, I eventually lug my way back to the house, my spirits lifted. Even better, I smell her. She’s home.

Galdra Karthala is here. My meaning.

I enter the door to find her already expecting a fight. Flames spring up around me immediately, so I stand still, giving her a tired smile as I crunch down on the leg I’m still eating.

“You got out,” Galdra mentions idly, though it’s obviously an order for elaboration.

“I did,” I confirm. “An old ally, whom you would know as Lyn the Metal Thief, found me and broke me out. I tried to kill her, but failed. She knows this location now.”

“Does she know it’s mine?” Galdra asks curiously, eyeing the collar on my neck.

“She does not,” I reassure her. “She’s aware I have been mentally influenced, so her natural assumption is probably Ars.”

“Well, that’s not so bad,” Galdra muses. “I’ll have to confirm it, of course.”

“Of course,” I allow, and lower my magic resistance the moment I feel her try to cast animancy on me. That seems to surprise her a bit, but in a pleasant way. The thought of it makes me… well, not happy, really. Satisfied, perhaps. That’s as good as I’m likely to get anymore.

My current master hollows my soul out further, but there’s not much left of me to carve. She seems amused at my explanation of what I’ve been doing since being let out of her prison, and while she doesn’t take the collar off she doesn’t lock me back up, either, ordering me to defend her home with my life. Ah, good. Finally a task I can focus on. I thank her for it, which causes her to laugh.

“You’re so Watcher-damn fucked up, Vesuvius,” she chuckles. “What a fucking freak.”

I have nothing useful to say to that, so I stay quiet.

She eventually leaves, claiming it will likely be quite some time before she can come back. Disappointing, certainly, but not unexpected. At least I have a purpose now: to protect this house.

“Oh, how far I’ve fallen,” I mutter to myself, and then I feel like a traitor for it. It’s not as though I’m worthy of the power and responsibility I once wielded. Even if… even if some of it was helping. Perhaps Galdra just doesn’t understand how much it was helping? She surely can’t be infallible.

…But there’s nothing I can do about it from here, so it’s a moot point. I get to work, but a day later I get another unexpected visitor. One that is both simultaneously more and less welcome than Lyn.

“May I come in, Lady Penelope?” Nugas asks, knocking on the door.

Nugas. She found me. Or perhaps more likely, Lyn led her to me. But why? Unlike Lyn, Nugas is loyal to me and only me. She is no threat to Galdra so long as I order her not to be one.

“I am not a Lady anymore,” I answer her.

“You are still my Lady,” she counters. “May I come in?”

I swallow.

“Yes.”

She does so, dressed practically for once in light full-body armor, her face still that horribly perfect mix of beauty and regrets. Watcher, how could I make such a thing? Such a… person?

“You look terrible, Lady Vesuvius,” Nugas comments brightly. “Shall I draw you up a bath?”

I am, of course, still covered in dried blood, since I hunt for every meal. It is the highlight of my day.

“This is not my home,” I argue, shaking my head to decline. “I should not dirty Galdra’s bath without her permission.”

Nugas smiles wide at that, though there’s a glint of cruelty to it.

“Ah,” she says. “How does it feel, my Lady?”

I blink tiredly at her.

“You always seemed… so much happier than I feel,” I admit. “Are you faking it?”

“I am not,” Nugas reassures me, stepping forward. She cups my face in both of her hands. “I love you, Penelope Vesuvius. You make me very, very happy. Do you not feel the same about your master?”

I look away from her, stepping back and breaking her touch.

“I suppose my servitude is different from yours,” I tell her. “I deserve for it to hurt more than yours does, besides. Galdra is doing what is best.”

Nugas chuckles.

“If you serve her, I will serve her,” she says firmly, starting to circle around me. “Your goals are my goals, my Lady. Now and always.”

“I thought as much, but it’s still reassuring to hear,” I admit. “You will make the task Galdra has given me much easier, and I do not suspect she will object to more servants. Thank you, Nugas.”

“It is, as always, my pleasure,” she coos.

“Nugas,” I muse, “can you tell me what ‘Calamity Protocol’ is?” I ask.

“Ah,” she says. “That’s very simple, my Lady. If you would come here?”

I’m immediately wary. As much as I trust Nugas, I keep my magic resistance up. I never taught her any animancy, but I can’t risk it. No magic flows into me, though… and instead, my collar clicks open. Nugas takes it off my neck, setting it down on the counter next to us.

“There,” she says. “All done.”

I furrow my eyebrows at her.

“…That’s it? This hardly seems like a plan.”

“Well it’s not your plan,” Nugas admits. “It’s mine. Calamity Protocol is simple, in essence. It requires nothing but your freedom. Now, you have physiological changes you’ve needed to manage for a while, don’t you my Lady?”

“I… yes, of course,” I confirm, trying to figure out her angle on this as I start channeling again, splitting half my attention on investigating and maintaining the changes my body has been performing without guidance for the past few days. “I have every intention of continuing to serve Galdra, you know. The Penelope you knew is long gone by now, Nugas.”

“That’s fine!” she says cheerfully. “If that’s what you decide, it makes no difference to me! You are still, fundamentally, my Lady.”

I give her a considering look. That’s… not an outlook I expected to hear from her, since she considers the opposite case to be true regarding herself.

“I’m not so sure I am,” I say instead. “But your loyalty is, as always, welcome.”

She beams, clearly quite pleased with herself. Galdra did not see fit to remove my revulsion at her existence, at least, so I do not indulge in my enjoyment of that loyalty. That is, as always, a dangerous road to walk down.

“You won’t stay this way, though,” Nugas tells me with chilling certainty. “You are, as ever, a woman of principle.”

I stare at her for a moment, then turn and head for the prison celler.

“Establish a set of metamancy defenses,” I order her. “Make sure no one enters other than Galdra, and clean the home for her arrival.”

“Of course, my lady,” she confirms happily, and I descend to the basement to strip.

Now that I have my magic, I can start making myself much more useful. I’m not a First Lady anymore, so I have no need to keep up appearances. I have Nugas with me, so she can handle the tasks Galdra wishes for without my help. I can focus on more important… well, Galdra’s desires are the most important things, but I can focus on things more befitting to my talents, since those desires are being fulfilled by someone else. That is, after all, the very purpose of a chain of command.

Naked, I squat down in the still-unlocked prison cell, focusing a cleaning spell on my body so as to ensure nothing on my skin will be an impediment. I guide the transformation of my tail, first, trying to think of safe ways to accelerate the process. Unlike my old daily routine, where all my time was always accounted for, I quite literally have nothing at all to do now that Nugas is here. I can devote all of that time to self-improvement. And since I have no need for maintaining a public appearance anymore, well… what’s holding me back? I’ll need an absurd amount of food to sustain constant growth and transformations, but if there’s one thing the forest has an abundance of, it’s meat.

Yes. This should work. With my constant attention and casting, I will be able to change my body far safer and more rapidly than before. My body needs to not only emphasize my strengths as a caster, but also cover for my weaknesses. It would be bad if I’m caught by the same trick a second time and turned away from Galdra. Therefore, I need to be able to defeat her tactics, should anyone try them again. So I focus, and I get to work.

The tail, I have already planned. Long and thick, the underside will be covered in stubby tendrils for casting. The rest of it, however, alongside most of my body, will have a more… draconic theming. Dragon scales, after all, are the most heat-resistant substance known to man. Galdra, the greatest thermomancer on the island, can certainly melt them, but not without a significant investment of both time and power. It isn’t instant, and that speaks a lot to their durability as a material. Having studied how they are grown, I can of course grow them myself. Having studied how they hold and transfer heat, I can also implement similar systems into my skeletal structure, creating an internal heat sink that should be able to survive at least a short while even in the event of a magic resistance breach. That way, if a comparable threat to Galdra ever surfaces, I can deal with it for her. Finally, I need flight. Dragons, again being an excellent example of physical superiority, accomplish this with a combination of magical and physical propulsion. Copying Lark’s limb physiology allows me to redesign my skeletal and muscular structure enough to add an extra pair of limbs, but rather than arms I’ll give myself wings. I just have to focus on the development of the body, simultaneously managing a dozen different changes at once without losing focus. I pour myself into the task, shifting and shaping with fervent anticipation. Ah, good. This is something I can still appreciate. Something I can enjoy. She didn’t take this from me. The search for superiority is ever at my core.

“Lady Vesuvius,” Nugas says, snapping me out of my thoughts. “It’s been a full day. I’ve brought you food and water so you can continue safely.”

I blink with surprise. Well, I suppose I have been running low on energy and water reserves. I gratefully accept the monster corpse and the pitcher of water, greedily gulping them both down.

“Have there been any problems?” I ask her.

“None I have not solved to what I believe will be your satisfaction,” Nugas answers demurely. “Would you like me to interrupt you if any additional problems occur?”

“Not if you think you can handle it,” I dismiss. “Thank you, Nugas.”

She smiles and bows before returning upstairs, and I return to my work. I have enough room and enough modular casting tendrils for dedicated spell-specific organs to be space-efficient, so I expand upon what I’ve learned about Bently’s talent to create an organ which converts channeled mana into chemical energy, allowing me to render food unneeded except for raw materials. And to manage raw materials, I create an organ system that develops and pumps a more efficient chemical slurry and repair function to wounded areas, again copying from vrothizo biology to enable hyper-rapid regeneration for as long as I have the mass to supply it. Days pass, then a month, Nugas remaining by my side to keep me fed and healthy throughout it all. Only once am I disturbed in a significant way, when Galdra shows up near the end of my changes.

“Holy shit,” she says, grinning widely as her words immediately capture my focus. I stare up at her from my place on the floor, heart fluttering with excitement. “You look even more insane in person, Vesuvius.”

It takes me a while to respond, as I’ve been still for many days now, my massive tail coiled around my body as I develop the many organs inside it. My body is still growing to its full size, with my height still reaching its full value, my wings barely half what their final width will be, and my tail yet unfinished in all aspects. I haven’t started growing my scales yet, since they would simply need to be replaced if I grew after forming them.

“You have remote viewing spells, then,” I manage to croak out, my voice alien from throat alteration and general disuse.

“Of course,” she confirms. “I’m not dumb enough to leave you here unsupervised. I was surprised when your girlfriend lookalike showed up, but I gotta say, I love what she’s done with the place.”

“Nugas is very useful,” I tell her. “As I hope I will be to you.”

“Aww,” Galdra coos. “What a good little girl you are, Vesuvius.”

Some deep part of me bristles at that, furious at the condescension. But I push it down and lock it away. It’s a compliment from Galdra, and it is welcome.

“Thank you,” I say, making sure not a hint of acid makes it to my tone.

She laughs.

“Wow. I can see why you made that Nugas girl. This is fun. I think you’re going to be just as much of a delight as she is.”

I do my best to ignore the cold horror I feel at those words as well. The need to please her is stronger.

“Thank you again,” I say. “I only wish I could safely serve you right now. But as I am, I need more time to complete myself.”

“The ultimate servant, huh?” she asks, reaching in and touching my soul as she does it, preventing any possibility of a lie.

“Yes,” I confirm easily, for I have no lies for my master.

“It sounds glorious,” Galdra grins. “I look forward to it. Will you be ready before Hiverock night?”

“I should be, yes,” I confirm. “Perhaps a day or two in advance.”

“Good,” Galdra says firmly. “You may be needed. Good luck with your work, Vesuvius.”

“Thank you,” I say, and return to it.

Galdra leaves soon after. Some hours later, I’m not sure how many, Nugas arrives with my food. Unlike usual, however, she asks me a question.

“Are you a servant, my Lady?”

I blink with surprise, pausing as I gobble down the needed mass to fuel my transformation.

“Yes,” I tell her. “Obviously.”

“Should you be a servant, my Lady?”

I look at her with confusion. After all this time, Nugas is still the person I have the most trouble reading.

“It is,” I tell her, “what feels right.”

She smiles broadly at that, and returns upstairs. I think little of it.

Days later, my body is nearly complete. I stand up for the first time in a month, shaky-legged as my new muscles feel as foreign to me as my new height. I’m nearly as tall as Norah used to be, when she was alive. My wings don’t take after the bat-like design of dragons at all, as while dragons evolved their magically-assisted flight back when they were originally smaller creatures that relied on wing-based thrust, there’s no reason to not make my thrust purely magical and use wings for gliding and control. My wings are therefore a collection of long, slightly curved, armor-like scale constructions that fold out into artificial-looking wings, reminiscent of airships more so than anything found in nature. They can twist away from my back for vertical orientation and hovering, or lay parallel to my back for faster, horizontal flight. My wings can’t even extend fully while I’m still in this cell, so I’ll have to wait to stretch them until after I’m comfortable walking with my new legs and tail.

After all, when I say my body is ‘nearly’ complete, I mean that it is functionally finished but I will need at least a day of general physical therapy and getting used to moving it all. My tail twists and writhes behind me, its incredible mass feeling deceptively light thanks to the obscene amount of strength I’ve managed to pack into this body. With a casual flick, I crack the stone wall beside me and can’t help but smile. I practice moving the tendrils at the bottom of the tail in time with my steps, I carefully coil my tail underneath me and lift my entire body with it, I lean forward and try to walk with it up off the ground, but that feels like it will only be possible with my wings extended to counterbalance. Smaller wings on the end of the tail also help with balance in flight, and a long fin on the top of the tail should hypothetically allow a rapid swimming speed as well, though that’s something I won’t be able to test here.

Carefully, slowly, I make my way up the stairs, the wood creaking and groaning under my weight. Nugas is there waiting for me, beaming with even more joy than usual. I smile back, my scales shifting from clear white to blue in order to show my happiness. Color-changing scales are one of the less practical alterations to my new body, but I quite enjoy them from a vanity perspective. Plus, by making a habit of matching my color to my mood, I can create false impressions of my mood more easily. It won’t fool any skilled manipulator, but it will certainly be funny to use around the less skilled ones.

“You are beautiful,” Nugas breathes, her voice full of awe.

“You’d think I’m beautiful regardless of what I look like,” I dismiss, trying to stretch out my wings in the larger room.

“Nonetheless,” she hums happily, “it is true.”

Even knowing the source could not be more biased, I am happy to hear those words. My beauty has always been something I’ve held as a point of pride, but now that I’m skirting the very edges of a humanoid form… well, it’s something I’ve worried about. I still have my face and my figure, a voluptuous human silhouette with extra parts attached, but ultimately it’s all part of a fundamentally different creature. I don’t even have skin anymore, even my tail tendrils having been formed with small enough scales to still have the needed flexibility.

“So then, what now?” Nugas asks me, sitting down and clearly enjoying watching me stretch. I’m still in the nude, of course, and will likely stay that way until I get an opportunity to commission armor that can fit me.

“Now I practice, and we wait for Galdra to return with more instructions,” I answer simply.

“Should you be a servant, my Lady?” Nugas asks me again.

I give her a disapproving look.

“As I said,” I tell her, “it is what feels right. You should understand that better than anyone.”

“I do,” Nugas confirms, standing up. “I know my role and my place. I relish it in a way that you don’t. Because I know the other things that feel ‘right’ to you, my Lady.”

She steps towards me, circling languidly around me and drinking me in with her eyes.

“Power feels right to you,” she muses. “Control feels right to you. Torture feels right to you. I feel right to you, Lady Vesuvius, deep in the core of who you are. You would not keep me otherwise. So tell me: what is the truth you have always known about your wants?”

I stare at her in horror, the answer on the tip of my tongue.

“Galdra could be watching this,” I say instead. “I don’t want her to order you away for saying these things.”

“She is not,” Nugas says with perfect confidence. “She is busy. I know when she is watching. So answer me, my Lady. What is the truth of your wants?”

I swallow. Why is she asking this? Why now?

“They… are aberrant,” I admit.

“Exactly,” Nugas says sharply. “So what do you use to decide your course of action? Is it your wants, my Lady? Is it what feels right?”

No. Of course not. I use my principles, not my desires. I do not have the inherent feel for right and wrong, so I defined the terms rationally, and used that to guide my actions forward. But none of that matters, because I failed. My nature continued to creep up over my reason when I least expected it. I remained a slave to the evil at the core of me. I did good, yes. I did so much good. And yet…

“I’m a monster, Nugas,” I tell her. “I will abuse any power I’m given.”

And this is the part where she says ‘Galdra will too,’ isn’t it? As if I don’t know that. As if the woman didn’t admit to my face that she’s the same sort of monster I am. But that’s not what this is about. Yet Nugas just reaches up and cups her hands over my cheeks, pulling me down to her height.

“Then abuse me,” she purrs.

I pull away from her, stepping back quickly and stumbling over my own tail.

“Don’t you think I deserve this?” I ask her. “After everything I’ve done?”

She belts out a laugh at that, crisp and clear and loud.

“Oh my Lady,” she says, almost condescendingly. “When have you ever been stopped by the fate you deserve? Besides…”

She steps forwards again, pressing her finger just under where my bellybutton used to be, over where my soul rests.

“We both know that when you finally decide to take your soul into your own two hands, you won’t come out of it as the woman you were before,” she says. “Why not take a fresh start?”

I take a shuddering breath. I don’t want this. I don’t want this at all. I just want to let Galdra control everything, to take all the responsibility, to not have to… to… ugh. I feel the disgust welling up inside me at those thoughts again, and this time I latch onto them. This isn’t what I am. But that doesn’t matter. The only question is ‘what should I be?’ Does serving Galdra match my definitions of right and good?

No. Emphatically no. Ignoring my personal sins, Galdra’s stack higher than any other, and she is exceptionally powerful. She is glorious and she gives me meaning and there is no doubt that, in terms of cost-benefit, she should die. Ideally, her soul can be saved and given to Vita, so I can still appreciate… so that her firepower isn’t lost against necessary threats. But fundamentally, Galdra is only a single tool against Hiverock, and the damage she deals is greater than the benefits she provides to Valka as a whole, especially if she enjoys making slaves like I do. …And like Vita does. It is, upon consideration, an open question whether or not giving Galdra’s soul to Vita is wise. She does not seem quite so stable or reliable without love blinding me. I… will have to think on that.

Regardless, by my principles the task is clear. I… must move against Galdra. But I cannot move against Galdra as I am, so I must change. I must undo what she has done. Of course, I should probably also do more than that, so I don’t simply turn out as the same or a worse monster than before.

“I don’t want to do this,” I say, mostly to myself. “Self-soul modification is the very definition of a slippery slope problem.”

“And yet you’ve already decided, haven’t you?” Nugas muses.

I nod, coil my tail up to sit on it, and start casting animancy on my soul. It looks… different. Scarred. Galdra did most of her work through removal, taking prior priorities and turning them into uninteresting nothings. She scraped me raw of ambition, of love, of willpower, and replaced it all with a need to serve her, to work for her. She could never make me into something like Nugas without taking months of slow torment and effort, but to just hollow me out? Crude, perhaps, but oh so horribly effective. But her mistake, Nugas helped me realize, is that I can only be chained so far to emotion. Oh, I have my dalliances. My failures. My moments when I give in to wants and urges that are better left locked up. This is, arguably, exactly one of those times.

And that makes it little more than just another mistake to regret later.

I might be able to turn myself back the way I was. Maybe. These changes are old and set, however, and though I can see the places where they do not fit I’d truly just be guessing how to twist them back into shape. I need to instead decide what I want to be and… no, that’s not the right word. I need to become the person my code of values and ethics demands I be, as defined by philosophy and reason rather than whim. My body, after all, is already something far beyond human. Why shouldn’t my soul match it?

Vita has even commented, before, on how different my soul is from other people’s. How I almost look like a splice in the way that my soul is in two parts: a spiky shell, and what most other animancers describe as the ‘bubbles.’ I’m not sure it’s an apt description, but if bubbles are the metaphor we’re choosing I think of them like those of a pot boiling over. Something that, if gone unwatched and unstirred, utterly ruins an otherwise delicious stew. They are, after all, my natural desires. The sadism, the need for power, the urge for dominance… those parts of me are all here. And they. Are. Aberrant. So I will twist and crush and change them, covering them up with the other half of my being, the artificial rules formed from my understanding of how a person should be, rather than from what I really am.

I will live henceforth as a servant of good, not out of empathy or love, but merely out of raw, self-inflicted willpower.

“I’ve created a frightening woman, Nugas,” I comment idly as I feel my mind once again start to become someone else.

“You’ve always been deliciously frightening, my Lady.”

“I meant you,” I tell her wryly. “Unleashing me and empowering me to violate my own soul like this… it’s irresponsible, at best. What if I decided to give into my older urges, or my urges to obey Galdra? With a name like ‘Calamity Protocol,’ you must have known how poorly this can go.”

“I think the thing about being a goddess,” she muses, “is that you are allowed to be as merciful or calamitous as you so choose. And when another woman dares to have the fucking audacity to change you in a way you did not wish to be changed, well… I thought you’d agree she was due a little bit of ruin.”

“I know this is entirely my fault,” I sigh, “but you are completely insane.”

“Perhaps,” she says lightly, sitting down on my lap. For once, I don’t push her away. “But am I less sane than you, my Lady? Or am I more?”

My fleshy tendrils twist away at strands of mana as I continue to kill myself piece by piece so I can stack the shards of myself anew.

“It will be,” I decide, “an interesting Hiverock night.”

“You don’t think you could form yourself a little love for me in that soul of yours, my Lady?” Nugas asks, cuddling up to my chest. “You know, for the greater good.”

I sigh.

“Perhaps if you behave,” I answer flatly.

“Always, Lady Penelope,” she assures me. “When have I ever been up to mischief?”

I don’t give her any of the obvious rejoinders, however, as I find the question of love to still be quite an open one. Galdra ripped my love away from me. But… should I put it back? Was my relationship with Vita healthy? For her, for me, for Valka? There’s certainly an argument to be made that there is significant strategic value in not breaking up with Vita, as doing so would introduce a dangerously unstable element to an already unstable person in the middle of a frighteningly unstable situation.

On the other hand, that’s exactly what I’m doing with myself.

“When,” I wonder out loud, “is love optimal?”

“When it makes you happy,” Nugas answers.

Hmm. Then I think… I will be happiest not doing anything at all. I choose not to love anyone, for now. I’ve always been scared of my incapacity to love. I’ll be happiest knowing that it’s not something fake that I’ve simply installed in myself.

And if Vita is truly a good person to have in my life, then I look forward to falling for her a second time.