Vigor Mortis

"You might need to let me handle it," I whisper regretfully.

I've thought about it a lot as we slowly approach, and so far as I can tell we have no better option. That Wight is packing the sort of power that could end civilizations if unleashed, which means the first and most important element is to not aggravate it. We need to be stealthy and we need to kill it instantly, before it can react. I have pretty decent stealth spells, and if I can lay my hands on it, I can rip its mess of a soul to shreds. If things go badly, I can hatch and soul-kill it with tentacles from a distance. The fused souls of an entire major city are of course far more powerful than I am, but the result is also fundamentally fragile. I should be able to break it apart faster than it can react, at least so long as I can reach it.

…Though that's kind of a heavy 'so long as I can reach it.' What else can we do, though? Ignoring it would be leaving a walking perception event to wander around. Fighting it head-on is an impossibility, and bringing the squad only makes stealth harder without really helping the situation all that much.

Jelisa slows our march, focusing consciously on her own feelings. Kinda weird, but… oh! She's sending me a message. Let's see… confusion? A desire for more information?

"This thing is a dead city," I whisper to her, "and it could kill one. Destroying it before it notices us is our only real option."

Lark's ear twitches, and she sends me a strange glance. Aw, shit, I need to be quieter. Jelisa, meanwhile, starts thinking about… hrm. It's a little more difficult to see without my eye uncovered, but my soul sense still does the job pretty well. She's thinking about me, I think? And death.

"I definitely might die," I admit quietly. "But no one else even has a shot. Lark is fast enough but would take too long to kill it."

"Captain?" Lark asks. "Is there something wrong? We're slowing down."

"I hear screaming ahead," Jelisa answers, and for all I know it's the truth.

"Uh, shouldn't we be going faster then?" Xavier asks.

"No," Jelisa answers bluntly. "It's too random, too… discordant. I give heavy odds we're up against a Wight."

"Oh, shit," Xavier breathes. "So what, do we just go home and grab a High Templar, then?"

"No," Jelisa says, shaking her head. "I only hear the one. So if it's a Wight made out of the entirety of New Talsi… we can't afford to leave it alone. The island can't afford for us to leave it alone. It's an uncontrolled superweapon made of a city's worth of souls."

The team pauses at that, letting the words sink in.

"What if it isn't uncontrolled?" Harvey ventures. "After all, we have an extremely powerful mass-murdering animancer on the loose."

"This doesn't exactly feel like Vita's MO," I protest, regretting it the moment it leaves my mouth. Come on, me, suspicious much?

"I meant Ars," Harvey grunts.

Gah, of course he did. Jelisa sends me a questioning glance, to which I give a slight shake of my head. Come on, Jelisa, I would have told you if I sensed motherfucking Ars Rainier around.

"It seems odd to leave the Wight in a dead city if it's enemy action," Jelisa muses, "but we can't rule it out. Either way, it needs to be destroyed. Our options for this are limited; in essence, the only safe way to kill a Wight is with full-body annihilation before it even notices our presence. Does anyone have any ideas on how to accomplish that? Wights aren't traditionally the most observant of undead, but it will still attack living things on sight."

She looks around, glancing between all of us before her gaze finally settles on me.

"Anyone?" she repeats.

Ugh. I see what's going on: she needs me to give an excuse on why I'm being sent off alone, since it doesn't make sense for Melik to be given this mission. I'll just have to trust she goes along with any bullshit I think up. And I will say, one of the nice things about Melik is that his broad range of magical talents might actually let me get away with some bullshit.

"I think I can do it," I announce.

Ultimately, killing this Wight is more important than my ability to stay undercover anyway.

"Explain," Jelisa orders.

"I know enough kynamancy that I have a good shot at sneaking up on it," I claim. "And with enough setup time, I'm confident I can destroy it in one shot."

Rather than send me out to get it done like I expected, though, Jelisa just looks to the rest of the squad.

"I'm a much better kynamancer than you are," Harvey insists. "But I admit I'm not confident I can destroy it. My talent isn't great at that sort of thing."

"I'm not sure how I can help," Xavier admits.

"Me neither," Bently says. "But I don't like the idea of Melik going on his own."

"I should go with him," Lark says firmly.

Aw, shit. No, that's the worst-case scenario.

"You can't kill the Wight or cast stealth magic," I protest.

"I don't need to," Lark says. "You can make both of us silent, right? I'll be your legs. I'll get us there far faster than you could get there alone, and I'll be there to bail you out if things go south. If I'm not there, and the Wight sees you? You're dead."

Possibly actually dead, since Wight-scale chaos magic might be able to damage my soul in a similar way to how Arden could… and even if it can't, there wouldn't be anything left of my body for me to possess if I got hit. Frustratingly, I can't deny that she has a point. I just don't want her to know I'm Vita, and this will definitely give the game away unless she's really, really gullible.

…Which she might be, actually. I guess we'll see, since I don't think I have a good enough reason to say no. I figure the odds of Lark killing me are less than the odds of the Wight doing the same.

"That might work," I agree, to Jelisa's apparent surprise.

"I don't like the idea of the two of you going off on your own," she says firmly. "I should also go."

"I'm not sure I could keep my balance while moving quickly and carrying both of you," Lark says hesitantly. "I could try, but I might fall."

"And that might alert the Wight," I say. "My spells can only do so much."

"Then it's fortunate that I can also cast them," Jelisa grunts. "Lark, what if you fashioned a harness out of your webbing? Can you do that?"

Lark raises her eyebrows, nodding thoughtfully.

"Yes… I could. That might work, actually. I could secure one of you to my back while I carry the other. But, um, I'd be a little worried about hurting you with my quills…"

"You won't," Jelisa says with confidence. "I'll take the back harness. You can carry Melik. Get to work on it."

"Yes ma'am!" she confirms, and silk starts to fly from her fingers, the weaving quick and precise. It's honestly almost hypnotizing to watch.

"So I guess the rest of us will sit here and… I dunno, pray?" Xavier says glumly.

"Prayer wouldn't be unwelcome," Jelisa admits. Pfft, speak for yourself. "But yes, your primary duty now is to keep yourselves safe. If we fail, you have to return to Skyhope to bring word."

"Gotta say, Captain, I've been less than impressed by my official missions as Templar so far," Xavier grumbles.

"Quit bitching and help me clear the perimeter," Harvey snaps.

Bently stays quiet as usual, though he follows along to help Harvey as well, seeming melancholy... or perhaps just resigned.

Soon enough, Lark has her harness finished, which amusingly makes Jelisa look like an oversized baby as she straps herself into it, Lark struggling to her feet with someone who weighs more than she does attached to her back. It's not an issue of strength, though, and when I get picked up into a princess carry in her arms she seems to be a lot better balanced.

"Ready?" Jelisa asks.

"Ready," Lark and I confirm, and we're off.

Shit, she's fast. Even with all the added weight, Lark flies through the forest with ease, not needing guidance from Jelisa or I to avoid the monsters in our path. I suppose this is as much her natural environment as it is mine, if not moreso. But when we breach the edge of the forest and start dashing across the salt flats New Talsi is built on, and even when we reach the city, she seems just as at home.

I guess that makes sense, considering this was her home. I'm the one who chased her out of it.

"Where is the Wight, exactly?" Lark asks, slowing down a bit to ensure our approach is careful and silent.

"A mile and a half aftward," I whisper.

"About a mile and a half aftward," Jelisa repeats.

"Okay, why do you two keep doing that?" Lark hisses. "I can tell you're whispering to the Captain, Melik. I can't make out most of the words, but I can tell you're doing it."

"Let's have this discussion after the threat in front of us is dealt with," Jelisa answers diplomatically. "For now, Lark, just consider it classified information."

"...Yes ma'am," she agrees, though it's clear her suspicions have only deepened. I don't really have anything to say on the matter, though, so I stay silent.

As we continue, however, something else interesting comes onto my radar: two people. Humans, as best I can tell, although one of their souls is so high up off the ground they can't possibly be… wait. I look a little deeper into the pair of souls and find a rich, creamy center of infinitely ravenous void. These are vrothizo.

Intelligent vrothizo. Fun. Well, they seem to be heading the same way we are, but they're far enough away that we should have plenty of time to deal with the Wight before they get here.

Right?

…

Damn it, I just felt one of them teleport.

"What kind of fucking monster did he eat that lets him teleport?" I mutter to myself, causing Jelisa to start to panic a little.

"Melik?" she asks.

"Yeah, we've got incoming," I sigh, not bothering to be quiet about it. "But we should still probably slow down, we're almost to the Wight."

Lark nods, and Jelisa and I get off the vrothizo wagon express to sneak forwards with our own feet. A horrid wailing erupts ahead of us, but thankfully it's just the normal sort of horrid wailing and not an indication that anything is going wrong.

"Okay, you two should probably wait here," I declare. "Just be ready to scoop me up and book it if something happens. Also be ready to fight a teleporting, intelligent vrothizo."

"Wait, what?" Lark hisses.

"Stay silent, stay safe, goodbye!" I answer back cheerfully.

I make sure Jelisa's silence bubble is fully active and covering Lark before I step away, taking my own silence bubble with me. I step carefully around the corner, spotting the Wight at the far end of the street, facing away from me and hugging its knees as it sobs and screams incoherently in the throes of madness. I creep forward, every lesson on stealth from my days as a thief and hunter coming to the fore. Failure here could have apocalyptic consequences… and I'd prefer not to go zero for two on solving that kind of problem. I creep closer, and all the while the teleporting vrothizo is doing the same. The furthest distance I've felt him move in a single 'port is a bit under a thousand feet, and I've never felt him do it sooner than five seconds from the previous jump. A much weaker teleportation ability than Capita, then. But he's a vrothizo, so it's probably not his only trick.

Well, the important thing is that I get to the Wight and kill it. Picking up my pace as much as I dare, I creep up behind the Wight's back, the vrothizo teleporting close enough that he probably has me in his sights. I'm close, so very close. But the moment the edge of my silence bubble brushes against the Wight, its twitching body jerks to face me, ruinous intentions coalescing in its soul.

"Too late," I hiss, and dig my gauntleted hands into its waist.

With an outpouring of mana, I flood its body with my own essence, causing it to drink me in as it seeks to attack. It's thirstier than I can provide, quickly moving on from my offering towards Watcher mana instead, the resulting detonation causing massive damage to its body. Enough to break apart huge chunks of its soul, though not enough to slay it. Yet I'm still holding on. I pull and tear, my power straining behind the restrictive wall of my shell, but still I start to break the Wight into its disparate shards, devouring it piece by piece. It screeches in pain and fury, but moments later it's dead and the fight is over. Dropping the corpse, I start stomping it into uselessness, ruining its ability to serve as a vessel as my own soul slowly starts to engorge itself on the shards of an entire city.

Well! That was… surprisingly successful! Amazingly successful, actually. I didn't expect to get such a clean win. Plus I no longer have to worry about the embarrassment of getting one-upped by an undead. I could hardly be a good queen of death if that happened. Mostly due to being scoured from existence by chaos magic. I seriously can't believe I pulled that off. I even got one of the best meals of my life out of it!

Of course, I'm storing most of the shards inside my body rather than eating them all at once; I'm not that reckless, but I'm not going to give up on this unprecedented bounty either. I should be able to figure out if I can safely eat them all without hatching if I go slowly enough, and if not I can always ditch them before we get back to Skyhope and I run the risk of stumbling upon an Inquisitor that actually intends to prevent me from performing blasphemy.

Now I just have one more annoying problem to deal with.

"Wow," a wry voice announces from a nearby rooftop, giving me a slow clap. "And here I thought you'd be turned into vaguely human-shaped paste. Color me impressed."

I deliberately turn towards the sound, spotting the striking image of a bipedal vrothizo standing tall and flashing me a toothy smirk. His mostly-humanoid head and torso give his silhouette a familiar shape, but the closer one inspects him, the less human he seems. It's quite an imposing mix of parts, honestly. Thick, poofy fur covers his shoulders like a regal coat, and six bone horns twist upwards out of the sides of his head like a crown. His whole body is long and thin, the tips of his otherwise-humanoid arms ending in foot-long fingers as sharp as blades. They look somewhat slick, as if dipped in liquid, and I decide to assume that they're poisoned. The most inhuman parts of his body are a long, segmented tail ending in a grasping claw, and the fact that each of his legs split into four insect-like spike-tipped limbs below the knee, though they're currently clumped together to imitate a more human shape.

"Actually, if I'd failed we'd probably both be dust, alongside what's left of the city," I answer him, seeing no reason to be rude. "So I appreciate you not getting in my way, there. Thanks."

He raises his eyebrows with apparent surprise.

"Well! I'll admit I didn't expect to be thanked by a human today. Keero the Cunning, at your service."

He dips into a low bow, and it's my turn to be surprised.

"A name and a cognomen," I note. "Like a High Templar. You've had some run-ins then, I take it?"

"I had to convince a rather dangerous aeromancer I was dead," he admits sheepishly. "But I rather liked the way she appended another word to her name. And I must say mine fits me quite we—"

His words are cut off as I turn and sweep my hand behind me, reaching out to grab him. He dodges, barely, even though I catch him by surprise. I huff in irritation. This damn body is too slow.

"Woah there!" he exclaims, the illusion on the roof vanishing and appearing over Keero's real body instead, where he had been trying to sneak up behind me. The real Keero is still invisible, of course, and the illusion overlapping him slowly starts to deviate from his position as he walks away, raising his both hands in a false surrender.

"No need for that," he says soothingly. "Sorry for startling you, friend. I wasn't intending anything malicious."

"Lie to me again," I warn him, "and you'll regret it."

"Now what makes you think I'm lying, friend?" he counters, but I see no reason to indulge the question. I turn and start walking away.

"Hey, hey!" he continues. "It's rude to turn your back on someone!"

"It's ruder to eat them," I point out calmly. "Which is what you were trying to do. The only reason you're still alive is because the things I would have to do in order to kill you would be annoying for me in the long term, so if you're really that cunning I suggest you teleport away while that still remains the case."

His soul boils with anger as his body tenses.

"You arrogant fucking human," he growls, but at that moment Lark steps into view, Jelisa hesitantly following her. The two vrothizo stare at each other in abject surprise, an emotional explosion ping-ponging between them.

"Y-you can talk," Lark manages to choke out. "You're a vrothizo and you can talk. Like me."

"Pfft," Keero scoffs, flicking his claws dismissively. "Talking is easy. Now, learning what all the words meant, that was the hard part."

"You're a person," Lark says, still hardly believing it. "Like me."

"A pretty great one, if I do say so myself," Keero agrees smugly. "Keero the Cunning. A pleasure to meet you."

He bows again. Or, well, his illusion does. His real body is now the one up on a rooftop. Tricky little bastard. Shame for him that none of it works on me.

"Lark, let's not forget that this is probably one of the so-called 'people' that ate this whole city," Jelisa reminds her quietly.

"I know, I know," she mutters back. "But I don't want to kill people. Even bad people."

"Hey, I take offense to that!" Keero interjects. "My love and I only killed maybe half this city, tops. I don't have any idea where the rest of it went. I was just dropping by to figure out what smelled so damn tasty and found this human already killing it. By the way, you have another one behind you. You gonna eat it?"

That seems to help Lark get over her apprehension. She bursts forward, claws grabbing for Keero's throat… but of course they pass harmlessly through the illusion, which disperses into nothing. Immediately her eyes narrow and she starts sniffing the air, ears on a swivel as she searches for his real body.

"Woah, woah, I was just asking!" another illusion says, appearing behind her. "Your human, your territory. Got it. You sure are a weird one."

The ground around Lark's feet shatters as she leaps up at the rooftop where Keero's real body is, crashing towards him faster than an arrow. But he teleports moments before they make contact, causing her to massively overshoot and fall back to earth a block over.

"Heh, look at her go," Keero muses, his illusion pretending to rest his elbow on top of my head. "You humans friends with her, or something? I ate all of my human friends, y'know."

"Go ahead and try to eat me, then," I tell him.

"Nah," Keero says. "I don't think we're friends."

Shame. All I can really do is stand close enough to Jelisa to prevent him from attacking her, then. This is kind of a frustrating stalemate. We need him to leave so we can safely meet up with the others; Xavier and Harvey's wide-reaching area talents are a much better matchup for someone this slippery. If we just start heading that way, however, we run the risk of Keero noticing our allies before we can meet up with and defend them, at which point he'll outpace us with teleports and potentially kill the rest of the team before we can warn them. Hardly ideal.

I could also just get him within twelve feet and then hatch, but again, annoying long-term consequences.

Instead I decide to turn and stare at where I know his real body is, giving him a good glower behind my helmet. He moves, and I follow him with my gaze. He teleports, and I turn to face his new location.

"...How are you doing that?" he asks.

I pull a gnashing shard up out of my soul, nestle it in the palm of my hand, and throw it at him. He dodges, seeming surprised and a lot more wary.

"And what the fuck was that? You're a weird-ass human."

"I'm starting to get a bit annoyed," I admit, "at being called 'human' all the time."

"And I'm starting to get a bit curious as to why," Keero muses.

"Melik," Jelisa mutters in my ear. "I think she heard that one."

"She was going to find out sooner or later," I dismiss. "And honestly, this makes things a bit easier."

I tap the inside of the shell, making the tiniest little crack, so small as to barely even be noticeable. But from that and that alone, the scale of my true self becomes known to the world. The utter terror my presence evokes from anyone with the ability to sense it oozes outwards, the sheer difference in what we are becoming brutally obvious to the mouthy vrothizo. Horror grips him, warring with that ever-present hunger that always wants to bite off more than it can chew. But Keero, like Lark, has self-control. And he knows when he's outclassed.

"How about you fuck off?" I suggest.

"...I think I might," he concedes, and blinks away.

I set about trying to repair the inside of my shell as Lark approaches us, dusting one of the thousands of shards floating inside my body and filling up the crack with it. She is, of course, horrified. Disgusted to the point of being sick. But as I'd expected, she is not surprised.

"So," she says softly. "Is Melik even alive?"

"No," I admit.

She doesn't seem to have anything to say to that. Without another word, the three of us turn and start returning to the rest of the squad, Lark's thoughts on the matter seeming to mostly be in the form of memories.

Neither Jelisa nor I comment on her tears.