Vigor Mortis

Chapter 31: Hiverock Night

Hiverock floats abnormally close to our island. It skims just barely above the great mountain Claw Peak, which crests a few thousand feet above the walls of Skyhope. I’ve heard that closeness, as well as the abundance of farmable land on our island, is what makes our island so appealing for those invaders. Yet who really knows?

Back at the guild, we find the rest of our team together in the mess hall, along with a ton of other hunter teams. Almost all of them have been recalled for this, apparently. So many huge, interesting souls!

“Vita, Penelope! Hey!” Bently says, waving boisterously at me. I smile and wave back.

As I walk on over, Bently immediately gets up and squeezes me in a huge hug.

“Vita! Norah said Penelope is going to be okay! You did it!” Bently cries.

“Ack! Y-yes! Yes, we did! Please put me down!”

He does, though nothing can put down his smile.

“Have you ever helped during a Hiverock night before, Vita? I haven’t! I’m excited!”

“Only you would be excited to get stabbed by parachuting bug-men, Bently,” Orville says flatly.

“Wait, ‘parachuting?'” Norah asks. “I figured the bug people would have wings.”

“Nope,” Orville says, shrugging. “They just jump on us. They’re batshit insane. They don’t stop until the whole damn island passes over, no matter how many we blow out of the sky. Boulders too, which the High Templars have to deal with. Barely any touched down the last time they attacked, though, which is probably what prompted them to stop.”

“Have you fought on Hiverock nights?” I ask, surprised.

“Yeah,” Orville confirms. “A bunch of times. My master said it was a good way to learn. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but I can’t deny that the nonstop threat of death is a hell of a motivation to speed up casting time.”

“Is that why you’re a hunter?” I ask.

“More or less, yeah. You can’t become stronger without pushing yourself. Drills only do so much.”

“Do you think they’ll attack tonight, Orville?” Bently asks.

“I don’t know, Bently, I’m not a suicidal four-armed bug man. We don’t even know what they want, the ones that get captured just do nothing until they starve.”

Huh, that’s kinda creepy. Ooh, maybe I can find a bug man soul and ask them! That would be cool!

My arm chops me in the kidney. I yelp.

I-I mean, not that I want an invasion to happen. That’d be really bad!

My eyes roll on their own. Even my body betrays me! Dang sassy mind control slimes.

“You okay, Vita?” Orville asks, his eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, yeah,” I assure him. “Just… trying to keep myself awake! I’ve only had one full night of sleep in the past, uh, six days, I think? Seven?”

I’m out of soul snacks, too! Honestly, it’s a catastrophe. Maybe if there’s just a very small invasion…

“Oh, shit that’s right. Vita, do you wanna take a nap before nightfall?”

“Yeah, I should probably sleep. But I’m more interested in these bug people! Do they understand us?”

“I dunno,” Orville says.

“Do they attack any other islands?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“What’s their hive structure like?”

“How would I even know that?” he asks, exasperated. “Vita, go sleep. We’ll wake you up when night falls.”

“Okay, okay,” I agree. “I’m going.”

I trudge up the stairs, not bothering to undo bits of my armor. I’m just going to pass out in it.

“You wouldn’t happen to be able to keep watch while I sleep, would you?” I murmur to Penta.

“No,” she subvocalizes. “I’ll fall unconscious when you do. We dream the same dreams, I think.”

“Aww, that’s kind of cute!”

“Personally, I find it disturbing.”

I flop down on my bed, grabbing Rosco and holding him tight. Ugh, I can’t sleep on my stomach anymore. It hurts my chest. I don’t even have boobs yet!

“Are you holding up okay, Penta?” I ask her. “Sharing a body is weird.”

“It’s better than I can expect anywhere else.”

“Mmm. That’s not really an answer.”

A pause.

“…I want my own body,” she admits. “I’m not planning to swim out and take one, but I can’t deny it’s tempting.”

I frown. Yeah, she’s sort of gone from warden to prisoner, huh?

“It’s not just that,” she says, answering my thought. “I can probably get used to that. But I worry… can we really be friends when I’m just a tagalong?”

“Of course we can be friends!” I insist. “We can figure out how to share, right? It’s nice knowing someone is there to watch my back.”

“You say that,” my mouth whispers, “but the moment I irritate you I’m put back in the box. I feel you holding my soul whenever you do it, Vita. It’s a terror unlike any other.”

“Sorry! Sorry. I’ll try to lean away from the soul-grabbing thing. And, um, if you want your own body, we can look together! The problem is going to be finding someone awful enough that we don’t mind consigning them to lifelong torture, but not so awful that you being in their head makes you turn evil.”

“Yes, that is a bit of a restrictive conundrum, isn’t it?” she murmurs flatly. “You could also make me a… well, you know.”

I blink.

Uh, you mean one of the dead things that follow my orders unconditionally? I think.

“Yes,” she mutters. “That. If I’m going to be bound to obey you either way— and let’s face it, I am— I can tolerate wanting to do it. The issue there is, of course…”

Can’t have undead running around, yeah. It’s not really a solution. We’ll try to think of something, okay?

“Thank you, Vita. Sorry to be such a bother. I know you’re going out of your way to save my life, I just… I wish I could be anything other than a Nawra.”

We’ll figure something out, I promise. You ready to sleep?

“I’m as tired as you are. Good night, Vita.”

Good night, Penta.

————————–

“Get up, V,” Norah says. “Penumbra’s coming.”

My eyes shoot open and I hop to my feet, grabbing my spear and checking my knife. Yep. Everything’s in place.

“Anything yet?” I ask the fully-armored hulk that is Norah.

“Nothing,” she says. “It’s not totally dark yet, but the island is coming in fast.”

How long were Hiverock nights? Five hours plus a bit, I think. Maybe if there’s no attack I can use that time to freak out over how I accidentally signed myself up to go on a mission with fucking Templars. I’m so dumb!

Whatever, right now we have to worry about bug men. I head outside with Norah, the rest of my team waiting. A Templar, as facelessly helmeted as always, orders us to stand street guard a couple blocks down, Orville is providing overwatch from a rooftop above us. Looking towards the island aft, there is no longer a sky; just the enormous, towering island of Hiverock, consuming more and more of the wall-blocked horizon. Hiverock’s orbit is nearly the same as ours, but further from the mists and much, much faster. Its penumbra— the ever-deepening shadow cast by a higher island before true nighttime— rapidly darkens the sky as it approaches. The whole team has to take care not to hold our breath in awe of the sight. Our island is wide, but Hiverock is tall, a towering spire of worked and layered stone. As it gets ever closer, I can just barely spot tiny moving specks on the outer walls of the island: the tireless bug-people, working their craft even as they approach enemy territory. What exactly they’re working on, though, I have no idea. Perhaps they’re just waiting to drop on us.

It gets darker, and darker, and darker, until suddenly light flashes into being again. From around the city, enormous spotlights shine like the day, granting visibility all the way up to the underside of Hiverock. The island orbits so frighteningly close, just over a half mile above us. Before long, it’s directly overhead. Fear centers us, anticipation stretching every minute to an hour. When will the attack come? Will there be one this time? What sort of plan have they been saving for us?

Just when I start to think they’re leaving us alone again, bodies start to drop. They fall, tumbling from heights barely visible. There is no coordinated dive or practiced fall; the four-armed humanoid silhouettes roll head over heels, flailing in the skies. Commanding shouts echo around the city, and ten seconds from the first drop, we shoot back. The mages fire first, piercing the sky with burning bolts and spell-slung arrows. There is no need for the archers to follow up. Barely two, three dozen figures fell from the island above. They’re all dead before they hit the ground.

That’s it. Nothing else falls on the city. There are other places the bugs are dropped, one group at a time. The groups are small, and everything near Skyhope is easily wiped out. Some fall far away, either blown up by other cities I know little about or dropped into places we cannot defend and do not care to; any of our foes who fall into the deep forest have far more to worry about than us. That’s it. Just patches. We wait with bated breath, anticipating the deadly follow-up that never comes.

“…Is that normal, Orville?” Norah calls up.

“Not even a little bit,” he answers. “This is new. Normally we have a sky full of bug men or nothing. I have no idea what that was.”

We wait and wait and wait, tense hours passing. By the third hour in, everyone is antsy. When will something finally happen? What was this, psychological warfare? A feint? Are there invisible bug men dropping somewhere else? Well, if so, they’re nowhere near me. Or they don’t have souls, I guess, but I doubt that. By the fourth hour, people are starting to relax despite their better judgement. By the fifth hour, we’re convinced nothing is coming. Dropping soldiers in any significant quantities right when they are leaving would be a strategically questionable move, to say the least.

“So what, they just dropped a few people on us, went ‘Yep, this city is still well-defended’ and then gave up?” Norah grumbles. “That was fucking terrifying, but nothing happened.”

“Yeah, I have no idea,” Orville answers. “Maybe they were just giving us all the people they don’t like.”

We chuckle nervously, keeping our eyes on the sky. Surely that was all for something. Yet it’s not until we can nearly see the light of day again that it comes.

All around us, yet far away from the city, inky black orbs pour from holes in the bottom of Hiverock. Each spot we let their sacrificial soldiers drop to the earth by either apathy or inability to stop them, they dump those dark somethings. Quickly, a spotlight focuses on them, yet there’s no information to glean. They’re just pure black ovoids, reflecting no light. It’s difficult to determine their size at such great distances, but each is likely at least as tall as my waist.

“What the fuck are those,” Norah breathes.

“I have no idea,” Orville answers.

I just stare in horror. I don’t know what they are either, but they remind me of my soul.

“Eggs,” I whisper. Penelope hears me, and her eyes go wide.

“Eggs?” she asks. “Are you sure?”

“Nope,” I say honestly. “But that’s my bet. Eggs.”

“Eggs of what?” Bently asks.

None of us have an answer for him.