Vigor Mortis

Chapter 176: Teleology

“Well that’s just fucking disturbing,” Jelisa mutters.

“Language,” I reply automatically.

Jelisa glances at me briefly and smirks, her face a disturbing mutation of what she looked like before. Had I not been told it was her, I’m not sure I would have guessed it. Her dark skin, her long white hair, the rounder configuration of her face, even her clothes are nothing like I’m used to. It’s funny; it reminds me of back when I first went to New Talsi and I didn’t understand that humans changed clothes every day. I’d think that someone was a different person the day after because their clothes changed. Now I know that everyone has a set of clothes that they wear, so I memorize all of their outfits and I only get confused if a bunch of things change at once. Even really minor changes can throw me off for a bit, though.

I talked to Xena about it once, and she thought it might have something to do with my perfect memory. Most humans, because they don’t compare experiences exactly, still recognize something as long as it’s kinda similar. I think that’s weird. If something is kinda similar, that means it’s still different, right?

“I’m going to reserve my right to swear on this one, Lark,” Jelisa comments, breaking me out of my thoughts. “Things look bad over there. Really bad.”

“The best way to solve that is a swift resolution to the current crisis,” Lady Vesuvius insists. “Your first priority is to not be suspected. Your second priority is to locate Ars. Is that understood?”

“Makes sense to me,” Jelisa agrees. “You’re sure my soul shield will protect me from Ars’ mindfuckery, right?”

“Yes, this has been tested,” Lady Vesuvius confirms. “Though there is always a worst-case scenario in which the talent has since evolved, I believe you will still be able to protect yourself. Remember: it spreads through contact, and it spreads automatically. The hosts don’t know they’re propagating it, but they will feel an urge to make contact with you or shake your hand if you draw too much attention to yourself. Pretend to also be indoctrinated.”

“I can do that,” Jelisa confirms. “Well, I guess I should start walking. You guys going to stay camped here?”

“In the unlikely event that we move, I will be sure to leave a way for you to track us,” Lady Vesuvius nods.

Jelisa nods, then turns to face me, arms open.

“Hey. One for the road?” she asks.

I nod and quickly sidle up against her body, letting her wrap her arms around me and give me a squeeze. She’s so warm. She makes me so happy. She smells so good. Memories of blood and human flesh flicker to the forefront of my mind, but I banish them as best I can.

“Don’t let the two monsters push you around, eh Lark?” Jelisa insists, pulling back from the hug and scratching me behind the ears.

“All three of us are monsters,” I remind her.

She gives me a meaningful look—not that I have any idea what the meaning is supposed to be—and turns to depart, leaving the rest of us invisible in the middle of a field. Well, invisible to everyone else, anyway. We can see each other just fine, and regardless of our disagreement on the semantics of monsterhood, Jelisa is right to worry about leaving me alone with Vita and Lady Vesuvius, at least a little bit. They both taste really, really good, after all.

“This is so annoying,” Vita grumbles, flopping to the ground.

I turn to her, a bit surprised by the comment.

“Um… what is, Aunt Vita?” I ask.

She perks up immediately, sitting straighter and looking at me with the same unreadable expression as always. I’ve been trying to memorize the different ways her eyes move, but I honestly have no idea how she’s feeling.

“Ha! ‘Aunt Vita,’ huh?”

“Do you not want me to call you that?” I ask. I assumed she did, since why else would she go out of her way to point out the relationship? Besides, I don’t feel like our relationship is positive enough for me to be comfortable with dropping formalities, but I don’t want to call her ‘princess.’

“Hmm… nah, it’s fine, I guess,” Vita admits. “I don’t mind it. I like you well enough. I’m just surprised because I thought you didn’t like me.“

I blink at her, trying to figure out the best way to answer that.

“Aunt Vita, I don’t really like anyone in my family,” I tell her. No one alive, anyway.

She makes some concerning noises that are probably alien laughter, based on how she slaps her knee.

“That’s a pretty fair answer!” she admits. “I kinda think of things the opposite way. I like everyone in my family, and if I don’t like someone I don’t consider them family anymore.”

“Like Ars?” I prompt.

“Yeah, like Ars,” she confirms. “Annoying bastard. I can’t believe he did this shit right when I’m trying to take over.”

I hesitate, wringing my hands together. Gosh, what a horrible thing to say. ‘How annoying that this awful monster uprooted the lives of a nation before I could get around to doing it first.’

“Come on,” Vita grunts. “If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”

“…You remind me a lot of how I used to be,” I answer after a brief hesitation.

“Are you calling me short?” Vita protests. “This is the tallest I’ve ever been, thank you very much!”

“Wh—no! What? Aunt Vita, I’m saying you have no regard for human life!”

“Oh,” Vita answers. “Uh… well, you’re wrong? If that were true, my conquest plans would be a lot easier. Fuck, actually, I wouldn’t even have conquest plans. I’d be up living the good life back in Liriope! I’m literally only helping out because I want to save everyone’s lives! If I didn’t care I’d just say ‘fuck it’ and let the other Athanatos slaughter you all.”

“That’s… Aunt Vita, there are so many important degrees of nuance between ‘willing to let literally everyone die’ and ‘genuinely empathetic.'”

“And I’m genuinely an empath…?”

I suppress a groan. What am I supposed to say here?

“I will be disappointed if that is the limit of your capacity for introspection, Vita,” Lady Vesuvius comments blandly.

That causes the bug girl to bristle, flinching slightly and clenching her lower pair of fists. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for chitin, since most of my first meals were armored in some capacity. Honestly, though, the mouthfeel is terrible. If not for my nostalgia—and the fact that it tastes just as good as any other body part—I’d probably not have any real desire to eat it.

“Okay, yes, you’re right,” Vita grumbles. “I don’t really care about most people. And honestly, even with the people I do care about, I don’t really have any idea how to like… show that. Other than existing near them, I guess. But on a whole? Yeah, I couldn’t really care less if this whole country fell into the mists. All I feel is irritation at the fact that I have to be here and deal with it at all.”

I swallow nervously. I’m hesitant to say this, but somebody should.

“…Stuff like that makes the prospect of you being in charge of this country, or any other, profoundly terrifying,” I tell her. “Do you get that? Do you understand how horrifying it would be to have some… demigod queen that strolls in, kills a bunch of people, puts herself in charge and just doesn’t care about anyone?”

Vita flops backwards and lies on the dirt.

“…Yeah,” she admits. “I do. I’m not stupid, I know people are scared of me and I know I’d be scared of me in their shoes. But like… what else am I going to do, Lark? Nothing? Just sit around and let shitty things happen? Fuck that, I’m not completely heartless. And the problem is that it feels like the people currently in charge are. I grew up starving and homeless, you know? A lot of people did, and no one was doing anything to stop it. How am I going to make people actually fix shit if I’m not in charge?”

“What makes you so confident that your totalitariannecrocracy is going to fix sh— fix things at all, though?” I challenge.

“Because I’m basing it on a system that I know works!” Vita snaps back. “It’s not one-to-one, and it’s not perfect, but… it works. The people there are happy, they’re well-fed, they’re living lives that they’re proud of! How many people do you know who can say that?”

“It’s not that simple, Vita,” Lady Vesuvius says. “You can’t just copy over a system of government that you have a passing familiarity with and apply it to a completely different species, a completely different culture, and expect it to work. The propositions you’ve made might work how you imagine them, I won’t deny that the potential exists. But the way you’re presenting it? It’s clear you don’t have a grasp of how people will react to your words, or at the very least you don’t care how people will react to your words, and that’s a problem. You want to make the island a better place? You have to care about what other people think. Rulership is about managing the needs and desires of other people, finding compromises and making things work. It’s admirable that you want people to be happy, but if you don’t have a real strategy for that beyond ‘use forced undead labor, because undead are happy,’ you are not the slightest bit prepared to make your dreams a reality.”

“Then help me, damn it!” Vita counters. “I told you from the start that I want you to help me figure this out! You know how to rule! You figure out a way to make things work!”

“…If I had a viable strategy for uniting the island under a singular ruler that wouldn’t do more harm than good, I would have implemented it already,” Lady Vesuvius says flatly. “You can’t just fly around and declare yourself queen by right of conquest. Being seen as a legitimate leader—which is what you’ll need to be in charge—is a complex and time-consuming process.”

“Well we don’t have a lot of time,” Vita grumbles. “If I don’t have real progress by the time Liriope floats overhead again, I’m going to look incompetent. Because I can just fly around and right-of-conquest everyone’s asses off, Penelope, so that’s what everyone is expecting. I want a better option, but it has to actually be better by the metrics that Liriope decides are important, or we’re back to square one.”

“And what happens then?” Lady Vesuvius asks, stepping closer to loom over Vita. “What happens if we’re back to square one, and the war with Hiverock resumes? Who do you side with, Vita?”

Vita props herself up on her lower pair of elbows, crossing her other pair of arms and looking away. She’s quiet, her antennae twitching in a way that reminds me of how some humans glance around without actually looking at anything when they’re thinking hard enough.

“…Let’s just try to make sure that doesn’t happen, okay?” Vita answers quietly.

Lady Vesuvius glowers down at her, and I shiver. I haven’t seen her express that much fury—or for that matter, any emotion—since before she turned herself all scaly.

“You know what I’d have to do,” she threatens.

“Like I said,” Vita presses, “let’s avoid that. Okay? Help me.”

Lady Vesuvius sighs and looks away, her muscles visibly relaxing a little under her scales.

“…Okay,” she agrees. “But you’re going to have to learn to compromise.”

Vita’s expression remains unreadable to me, and she doesn’t answer. Instead, she pulls out some of the meat rations we brought along for the journey, puts a soul shard in one of them, and hands it to me.

“Thank you, Aunt Vita,” I say, swallowing it whole and relishing in the blissful flavor, the constant, gnawing hunger vanishing for the smallest instant as it slides down my throat. Then the feeling is gone, and the urges to kill everyone return anew.

“You’re welcome,” Vita answers, and she sounds like she means it. She unfolds the bottom of her chin, mandibles stretching outward and unveiling a long, thorny tongue that wraps around one of the other meat rations and slurps it up. She reaches up to offer the last one to Lady Vesuvius, who simply holds up a hand to decline. Vita shrugs, puts another soul shard in the meat, and tosses it at me, which I find so surprising that I instinctively jump up and catch it with my teeth.

I land and swallow, my ears folded back and a blush forming on my cheeks as I wilt under the surprised stares of both Vita and Lady Vesuvius. Then Vita busts out laughing.

“Oh, Progenitor, that was amazing!” she chokes out. “Just like… wrar, snatch!“

“I… you just surprised me!” I stammer in protest. “I just felt food flying towards my face, so…”

“Holy shit you’re adorable,” Vita chuckles, causing my face to heat up even more. And she’s an empath so she can actually tell I’m blushing! Aaagh, nooo!

Vita chuckles to herself a bit more, but starts to quickly peter out as she glances out towards the city Jelisaveta is investigating in. I look over that way as well, but I don’t see anything.

“Do you ever wonder anything about your species?” she asks.

“Huh?” I blurt, surprised by the sudden change in topic.

“Do you wonder about yourself?” Vita repeats. “Or vrothizo in general?”

Uh. I’m not sure how to answer that. Honestly, I don’t like thinking about it at all. My species is terrible, but however the Mistwatcher made me isn’t my place to question. It’s not the kind of thing I can expect answers to before I die. Vita turns to stare directly at me, tilting her head slightly.

“…Are you still on about… Lark, I can just ask,” she insists. “Your species wasn’t made by the Mistwatcher, remember? You guys were made by Nawra, who is my big sister, and I can talk to her right now. You don’t need faith. I can get you the truth.”

“I… but my soul is what determines—”

“Your soul doesn’t come from The One Below All either,” Vita corrects, cutting me off. “I suspect it’s budded from your biological mother via an automatic process, but I can ask about that too. Also, even if your soul did come from The One Below All, that wouldn’t have any effect on your sapience because natural souls just adapt themselves to whatever brain they bond with. They’re not personalized in the slightest. Back me up on this, Penelope.”

“She’s right, Lark,” Lady Vesuvius sighs. “I can independently confirm this. There’s no compelling evidence to support the veracity of the religion you prescribe to, and plenty of conflicting evidence easily collected by rudimentary animancy. I also don’t believe Vita is lying, nor has incentive to lie, and her expertise on the topic is similarly proven.”

The more I learn about animancy, the more her story adds up, Jelisa told me. I shudder. Is this why animancy is forbidden? Does it corrupt your mind just from learning about it? …No. No way. Jelisa isn’t corrupted, that’s absurd.

“You’re looking at it the wrong way around,” Vita supplies. “It is forbidden because it makes you stop believing in the Church, but not because it mentally influences you. It’s because animancy disproves the Church, and the Church is incentivized to keep as many people unable to do that as possible.”

“Not that the Church would keel over and die if the facts which directly contradict its existence come to light, of course,” Penelope shrugs. “The vast majority of its members are genuine believers, and the Church’s vague tenets are flexible enough to bend around most provable facts and strong enough to hold firmly against any unprovable opinions. Honestly, the information ban seems somewhat unnecessary in that light, so it might exist precisely for the reasons given: animancy is prone to enable horrid acts of unspeakable evil because of the sheer amount of power it gives you over other people. But regardless of the reason behind the ban, violating it significantly enough makes it fairly obvious that most of the claims about the Mistwatcher purported by the Church are fallacious.”

I scowl, shrinking in on myself a little.

“Why does everyone keep pushing me about this?” I ask. “Why is everyone so insistent on being right and proving me wrong? Can’t you just leave me alone and let me believe what I want? Isn’t that perfectly reasonable?”

“No,” Vita grunts, “I can’t leave it alone, because the Church won’t leave me alone. Haven’t we been over this before? They want me dead because of what I am, or at the very least they want me to renounce what I am and pretend to be like them. I’m the one that wants to be left alone by them, Lark! Melissa is, too! I wouldn’t have a single fucking problem with the Church if they haven’t been constantly pressing me to conform or suffer, but not only do they keep fucking doing that they act like they’re doing me a favor while they do it! It’s maddening!

“I don’t do that, though!” I snap.

“Lark, you literally killed me because they told you to!”

I open my mouth, then close it.

“…Okay, you’re absolutely right about that,” I admit. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. But I don’t do that anymore.“

“No, you don’t,” Vita agrees. “But you’re going to have to forgive me for being really fucking pissed off at your religion regardless, okay?”

That… kind of ends the conversation, doesn’t it? She’s mad and she’s going to be mad no matter what. And… I mean, I can understand that. I don’t like it, but I understand.

“On my part,” Lady Vesuvius supplies, “I do not have much personal enmity for the organization beyond their governmental coup, which the common believer isn’t the least bit complicit in. I simply bristle at any philosophy that insists on the rejection of likely possibilities. This issue is far from exclusive to the Church of the Mistwatcher, of course, but it’s a prevalent enough problem in its ranks to be noteworthy. That said, finding a critical thinker is delightful regardless of the conclusions they’ve drawn, and I’ve enjoyed stimulating conversations with devout Church followers, despite our mutual confidence in each other’s incorrectness. So to that end, please permit me to turn the question around: why do you believe what you believe?”

I hesitate, but only for a short moment. I’ve thought about this before. I have the memories of those thoughts, just waiting to be quoted. Though at the same time, I want to change them a little, consider this conversation and apply them to it. Lady Vesuvius is testing me, I think. Despite my mixed feelings on her situation, I want her to think well of me.

“…I worship the Mistwatcher because I want to be a good person,” I tell her. “That’s all it is.”

“Yeah, and a fat lot of—”

“Vita!” Lady Vesuvius snaps, cutting her off. “Let Lark speak.”

I can’t see souls, not like the two of them can, but my senses still bristle at the invisible terror of Vita brandishing her tendrils, her current expression saved to my memory as my reference for furious. Just as quickly, though, the feeling fades, and she gives an imperceptible nod before turning away.

“I… I mean, looking at how Vita has been treated, without the justification of animancy being inherently evil, what we did, what Jelisa told me the Church did… it all seems downright barbaric. But what scares me is that’s kind of how all justice is, when you think about it. If someone does something wrong and they get away with it, that’s horrible and people want to correct it. But if someone doesn’t do anything wrong and they get punished for it anyway, that’s even worse. So it’s really, really important to know what makes something wrong. It’s a necessary distinction. But… I don’t know how to make that distinction. I wasn’t born knowing right from wrong, I very clearly remember what it’s like not knowing right from wrong, not even having a concept that I could be doing wrong. Before August brought me to church, I never really understood what I had done. I didn’t have words for it. But then there was this thing in my life that did have the words, it did know right from wrong, and it knew I was wrong. The Mistwatcher knew I was evil, and his servants knew how to teach me that. And… and I need that. I need that desperately, because I’m evil. I was born evil, my instincts are evil, and I have to fight them all the time. I am constantly holding back, constantly stopping myself from slaughtering thousands of people just like Keero did! Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

“Yes,” Lady Vesuvius answers.

“You… what?” I ask.

“I said yes,” Lady Vesuvius repeats. “I know exactly what that’s like. I restrain myself from committing genocide on a daily basis, Lark. My talent allows me to create diseases, and I gain perverse pleasure from unleashing them on people. My entire life has been a constant struggle to restrain those impulses, and sometimes I fail, and people die horrifically as a result.”

“…Oh,” I whisper. “But if you enjoy it, why don’t you kill more?”

“Well, at first it was self-preservation,” Penelope says. “Even as a child I knew I would get in trouble for killing people, and unlike you I was held accountable by people much stronger than I was. But if I’d had the opportunity to kill and get away with it, I almost certainly would have. Later on, the fear of punishment continued to keep me in check, but it was slowly replaced with… jealousy, I think. In the years before meeting Vita I wanted to be like other people, to be able to care about them in the way that you can. I felt I was deficient for lacking that capacity, and I tried to fake it as best I could. But people could still tell something was off about me, and I never perfected the charade until after I’d stopped yearning and started being profoundly bitter. I couldn’t hold my urges back, and I didn’t want to try anymore. So I joined the Hunter’s Guild in order to kill things legally, and the rest is a story for another time. Suffice to say, I expect that the semblance of morality that I developed was nothing more than a parroting habit. A ‘good noble’ is supposed to care about her subjects and cure their ills, and I was trying to play the part in order to form some kind of connection with someone.”

“You’re being a little too hard on yourself, Penelope,” Vita murmurs. “You did genuinely care, at least to some degree. You cared about my siblings, for starters.”

“Maybe on some level, to some extent,” Lady Vesuvius admits. “But that didn’t stop me from violating numerous codes of ethics when working on them.”

“…It worked out okay.”

“I suppose, and to some degree that conveys my point better, which is thus: I understand how you feel, and ultimately I think we have a similar answer to the question of ‘why don’t you kill more.’ It’s because we can wish to do evil and wish to do good simultaneously. That isn’t a contradictory state of affairs. Your conflicting desires are both part of you, because integrity isn’t a matter of not being tempted, it’s merely a matter of not giving into temptation.”

“Okay, sure,” I shrug. “But what makes the temptation to help someone good, and the temptation to eat someone evil? That’s what I care about. Because eating people sure feels really good, you know?”

“Can confirm,” Vita nods sagely. “Souls are delicious.”

“I believe that a good action is one that benefits at least one person other than the actor, and that an evil action is one which hurts at least one person other than the actor,” Lady Vesuvius answers plainly. “Note that neither definition cares for how an action impacts the actor themselves. As such, eating someone for no reason beyond your desire to do so helps only you and hurts someone else, and is unambiguously evil.”

Uh. That sounds a little… strange.

“Doesn’t that make self-defense evil?” I ask.

“Society as a whole benefits when aggressors are able to be dealt with by the aggressed, so no. Stopping a greater act of evil and discouraging repeat acts of evil is a clear net gain, even if the physical act of attacking an attacker hurts them.”

“Then it’s not that simple!” I insist. “You’re saying actions can hurt and help people at the same time!”

“Yes. Obviously,” Lady Vesuvius answers. “Most actions have both good and evil consequences. Where did you ever get the impression otherwise?”

“But… but if actions are good and evil, how do you figure out if they’re good or evil!?”

“Well oftentimes, you don’t.”

“That’s the problem!” I declare, pointing at her. “We can’t tell right from wrong a lot of the time, but the Mistwatcher can! It sees everything, it’s incomprehensibly intelligent compared to us, it made the world. We’re weak and stupid and unreliable. Humans are way better than you and I at figuring out moral problems and they’re still terrible at it, they do evil things all the time! How am I supposed to trust anything but the Mistwatcher when it comes to something as universally important as right and wrong?”

Lady Vesuvius stares at me a while, her face impassive but her scales swirling with color: green, gray, and tints of blue. Then she sighs, curling her massive tail underneath her and sitting down on top of it.

“I am terrified of the likely possibility that we don’t have a choice, Lark,” she answers quietly. “Perhaps what you say is true. Perhaps there is a universal constant, divine or otherwise, that defines righteousness. That good versus evil is as simple as obedience versus defiance. But when I look at the world and see all the ways the Church’s claims contradict my observations, I’m forced to wonder: what if there is no universal goodness? What if there is no afterlife? What if this world has no inherent meaning at all? What should I do then? So I thought about it. I defined what I believed to be the most universal definition of good and evil, I constructed the principles I felt I should live by, and then I found the Church lacking. I found that, by the definition of rightness I most firmly held in my heart, they were an obstacle rather than the allied bastion they so claim to be. And then, I knew I could not believe. Even if you are correct, even if the Mistwatcher does take some of us to heaven, I would have to fight it because it also leaves us to be tortured. The fact that I find the evidenceindicates heaven does not exist is merely a fortunate coincidence. I have more than enough enemies without adding god to their number.”

She scowls then, glancing briefly towards Vita.

“…Or so I thought, anyway. The Mistwatcher apparently will not let something so paltry as a lack of divinity prevent it from tormenting our entire world to suit its whims. But that is a problem to deal with in the coming eternity.”

I shudder a bit. The way she frames war on god as a mere future inconvenience, as something she’ll get around to eventually, as if it were simply low on a list of basic tasks to be completed in sequence… it’s surreal. I am very often reminded by my friends and acquaintances that I am powerful, that I am the sort of being that could not be stopped by countless numbers of normal humans. I am too fast, too strong, too capable of regeneration for normal weapons to do me any real harm. I am a step above them, but Vita and Penelope are far above me. The scent of their souls is intoxicating, a sort of power that even my mad, utterly thoughtless instincts know to fear.

Though on some level, I think I’m focusing on that to ignore Lady Vesuvius’ words. They ring a little bit too true for my liking. The ones I thought I could trust to tell me right from wrong have hurt too many people for me to be able to trust them anymore. And if they’re wrong, well… how am I supposed to know what’s right? How do I do what Lady Vesuvius did, and decide for myself? How do I have that confidence?

“I don’t like not having a purpose,” I admit. “Not having a plan. I never knew what the plan was, but I liked that it was there. It made things feel easier to handle, believing there’s a reason I exist.”

“There is a reason you exist, Lark,” Vita chimes in. “There’s a reason we all exist, it’s just that the reason isn’t particularly grand or important. I exist because some crazy bastard we’re here to kill decided to get his questionably-consenting wife pregnant before injecting the baby with an imperfect copy of the Mistwatcher’s anima structure, and this somehow didn’t backfire dramatically.”

“And I’m here because nobles are expected to have children so my parents didn’t think very hard about whether or not they were capable of raising one before having a lot of unprotected sex,” Lady Vesuvius agrees.

“So I’m going to offer again,” Vita tells me. “Because you have a creator, and you can get these answers. Is there anything you’d like her to tell you?”

I swallow saliva, feeling my heart beat painfully in my chest. I want to say ‘why would you make us at all?’ but I already know the answer to that. Vita already told me. I’m a mouth. I’m nothing but a tool to make someone else stronger. I wanted to believe I was more than that, but… I’m really not, am I? I was never meant to be. There was never any good I was supposed to bring to the world. So that just leaves one burning question.

“Why am I a person,” I ask, “instead of a thing?”

Because I should be a thing, shouldn’t I? If I’m nothing but a mouth to feed this ‘Nawra,’ I’m doing a much poorer job at it than my mindless siblings, aren’t I? I specifically and purposefully avoid my instincts to eat. So why am I like this? Why was I made this way? If the Mistwatcher really doesn’t have a plan for me, if my real goddess is Nawra, what plan does she have?

Vita stares at me for a while, but then she nods.

“I can ask that,” she says. “Shake me awake if something happens, okay?”

She lies back down on the ground and goes still, her breathing slowing to an almost hibernation-like state. Lady Vesuvius watches her briefly and then, to my surprise, lifts herself six feet off the ground with her own tail, twisting around to watch the city for a moment before lowering herself back to the ground again.

“Jelisaveta seems to be coming back,” she reports. “There’s no sign of a problem.”

“That’s good,” I say, and she nods. It’s a while before Vita wakes back up again, but we wait in silence until she finally takes a deep breath, indicating her attention is back on us.

“Well,” she mutters, stretching her body and returning to a sitting position, “I’m going to give you her exact words, I think.”

Huh. Interesting thing to specify. Does she just want to be precise? I can appreciate that.

“Uh, I’m giving you her exact words because I don’t think you’ll like them and I don’t want you to blame me,” Vita clarifies.

Oh.

“So, here’s what she said: ‘vrothizo sapience is an entirely unintended side effect of their adaptive nature, and its ability to override their instincts is unexpected, unplanned, and moderately undesired.'”

…Oh.

“‘It is, at least, quite interesting,'” Vita continues, still sounding like she’s quoting. “‘Vrothizo that are born relying exclusively on their instincts almost never develop intelligence by devouring large numbers of sapient creatures. However, their children do once those traits are passed on. I believe this is due to the fact that vrothizo souls have to spend some time growing in their vessel before the bodies hatch, and the ones that have intelligence already present in their brain structures gain the ability to rely on that intelligence over the concerns of the instincts that are supposed to be all-pervasive. It’s a bit frustrating, but within acceptable bounds of variance so fixing the problem isn’t worth the investment at this juncture.’ …And that’s it.”

So. I’m not supposed to be anything, then. I’m just a monster who’s so bad at being a monster I can’t even do that right. Regardless of what creator deity I belong to, I’m still a failure. I’m either too much of a monster or not enough of one!

“Uh,” Vita says awkwardly. “I think the important takeaway here is actually—”

“Shut up,” I hiss, feeling my body tense up and my muscles burn with barely-contained rage.

“…Excuse me?” she challenges all imperiously. As if she’s somehow earned my respect, as if she’s somehow due a modicum of propriety. No. Not anymore. Not when she never gives anyone any! She just pushes and pushes and pushes until she gets her way or something breaks! Does she want me to be afraid of her? What does she think I’m worried about dying!?

“I said shut up!” I shout at her. “Why do you always do this? Every time! Every time we meet you just have to take something good in my life and smash it into nothing! You act like you’re trying to help but you just make everything terrible! I don’t know if you’re doing it on purpose or not, but now you want to do it to a fucking nation so I can’t decide which would be worse!”

I let the swear leave my lips and I feel nothing, because I earned that one.

“Stop trying to help me, Vita! Stop acting like you know what’s best for me, stop messing with my head!”

I feel my lips curling back, my black fangs revealing themselves for the world to see. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Everyone says the Mistwatcher is evil now anyway, even Jelisa. August was wrong. He was wrong. All of it was wrong. So what does it matter? I wasted most of my life on a lie! A rush of air passes between my teeth, a warning hiss that conveys how I feel far better than any human words. My fight or flight is in charge right now, and I’m the only one here that doesn’t have wings.

If she wants me to be a monster so bad I should just eat her first.

Vita watches me, still sitting on the ground, and her expression is doubly unreadable thanks to the fact that I have absolutely no desire to parse it. I don’t care how she feels. I just want to hurt her.

“I’m sorry,” Vita says calmly.

I do not care. I do not give a fuck. I’m going to eat her. I’m going to tear through her armor and swallow her organs. I’m going to find out what color her blood is and bathe in it. I growl even louder, tensing my legs to pounce, and—

“Lark!” someone shouts, and barrels into my chest. My talons are dug firmly into the dirt so I don’t even stumble, instead twisting my head immediately to bite out their throat. The deliciously human smell of a familiar meal enters my nostrils and… and I realize it’s Jelisa. It’s Jelisa. Oh god oh god stop it’s Jelisa it’s Jelisa it’s Jelisa, stop, stop!

My body freezes. A tiny trickle of blood drips down one tooth and onto my tongue, and I almost lose myself again. But it’s Jelisa. If I close my mouth even a little, I’ll bite through her throat and she’ll die.

She’s hugging me, even though she doesn’t like hugs.

It’s… it’s Jelisa.

Hesitantly, I suck in a deep breath of air and slowly, carefully, move my fangs away from her throat. She remains clinging to me and I take a few more slow breaths, trying to ignore her scent. In and out. In, out. I refuse to kill my mother the way I did my dad.

“You don’t need anyone else to give you a purpose, Lark,” she tells me. “You don’t, and you never did.”

I let out a shuddering breath. I almost don’t want to tell her the truth, but it’s Jelisa. I force myself to speak.

“I want someone to, though,” I whisper. “I don’t know what to do on my own. Can’t I let someone else be in charge? Is that okay?”

The next breath I take makes my whole body shudder, heralding the coming of tears.

“I don’t like myself,” I admit. “I don’t trust myself. Even if you’re right, even if I don’t need it… does it make me weak to want my purpose to come from someone else?”

“Oh, Lark,” Jelisa murmurs, squeezing me tighter. “No. it doesn’t make you weak.”

Slowly, I wrap my arms around her, hugging her back. We stay like that, standing and hugging as tears run from my eyes. I don’t know how long it takes for my shuddering gasps to even out and my face to dry out, but we keep hugging even after that happens, and we don’t stop until Lady Vesuvius awkwardly clears her throat.

“As loathe as I am to halt what seems to be an important moment in Lark’s emotional development,” she says flatly, “we do have a megalomaniacal animancer to deal with. And also we should kill Ars.”

“…Hey,” Vita protests.

“I don’t have a confirmed location,” Jelisa says as I reluctantly allow her to extract herself from my arms. “But I do have a very good guess. Supplies all around the country are being rerouted somewhere, and people are suffering because of it. Ars is taking a well-oiled machine and ripping all the gears out so he can build something else, fucking over everyone that was relying on them in the process. This big city here is doing fairly okay, but some of the smaller villages are literally being starved out as their supplies are all taken and funneled into whatever’s going on. And nobody cares! It’s freaky. Anyway, I bet if we find where those supplies are going, we find Ars.”

“Then that is our next step,” Lady Vesuvius declares. “Do you have a direction?”

“I have the exact road,” Jelisa confirms. “We can follow it by air easily.”

“Excellent.” Lady Vesuvius turns to me, lifting herself up with her tail a bit in order to get to her feet more easily. “Are you good to fly, Lark?”

“Yeah,” I sniff. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

She nods and scoops me up into her arms, and before I know it we’re all in the sky. Jelisa points in a direction the journey begins anew, swift and invisible.

“Lady Vesuvius?” I ask.

“Yes, Lark?”

“When we get back to town, I’d like to take you up on seeing if I can acquire traits of biomantically enhanced creatures.”

It’s very slight, but the near-emotionless dragon woman does smile, just a bit.

“Very well, Lark,” she answers, and then we follow the road in silence.