Vigor Mortis

I'm already moving and casting before the attack comes, and it's a good thing I am because otherwise we would have all died.

I tackle Xavier and Jelisa as my tendrils weave a repulsion spell to blast the rest of the team out of the way. An instant later, Ketevan's hoof comes crashing down where we had gathered together, Keero having teleported her right above us. Because of course that arrogant dick isn't just able to teleport himself, but also his ten-thousand-ton girlfriend. Though he does not, I note, teleport himself at the same time, and his soul feels strained when he—oh shit she's attacking again!

Ketevan the Worldshaker (and isn't that a pretentious fucking name) rips her hoof from the massive cracks she just hammered into the ground, wasting no time following up her devastating attack with another. A casual swipe of her forelimb barrels towards us, full of more contempt than effort and yet still nearly killing me and half my squad. Even though we avoid getting splattered, just the wind pressure from the movement knocks us all on our asses. We absolutely would have died a moment later if Lark hadn't started her counterattack.

Lark strikes like a fly attacking a horse, biting hard and painfully but not enough to truly deal appreciable damage. It's pretty damn distracting, though, and being the only one of us liable to survive a blow from the Worldshaker, we definitely want Lark to be the target she focuses on.

"Xavier!" Jelisa barks. "The lake!"

"Ma'am!" she answers.

Our camp is, of course, next to a decently large body of water, both as generally good sense and a massive force multiplier for the team's designated jester. A huge, coiling mass of liquid lifts into the air, though to my annoyance I feel Xavier focus on Ketevan, which is very much the wrong target. I grab her wrist.

"Ignore the big one!" I order. "You attack where I tell you to attack!"

"Wh-what? But—"

"There!" I snap, pointing at Keero's invisible form. "Now!"

To her credit, Xavier does as instructed, a blast of water forcing Keero to teleport to safety. Unfortunately, he reappears next to Bently and Harvey, alongside three illusory clones. Harvey is ready, though, and responds with a thunderclap of sound that bursts Keero's eardrums… but also Bently's, and Keero can regenerate a whole lot easier. The battle has barely lasted ten seconds and it's already going to shit.

I need to get my hands on these fuckers.

Keero is too slippery, getting a bite in on Bently and teleporting away before he can be hit with a counterattack. I might be able to climb up Ketevan enough to avoid being kicked into paste, though. At least as long as Lark is being distracting enough.

With a furious scream, our team's Vrothizo launches herself at Ketevan's face, barely avoiding the snapping teeth trying to swallow her whole in order to bury her entire face into the worldshaker's eyeball, ripping bits out of it piece by piece. Yeah, that'll do.

"Form up with Bently and Harvey!" I order, running off towards my new target… but Keero immediately takes that opportunity to teleport invisibly behind Xavier, moving for a deathblow. Shit, I'm too far away! Blood splatters all over the back of Xavier's armor as a decisive attack is struck, but it's black rather than red. The tip of Jelisa's sword appears to be poking out of thin air, the majority of the blade invisible due to being impaled through Keero's back.

"You… fucking bi—" Keero coughs, twisting his head around to look at her, but Jelisa cuts him off by slamming her shield into his face, ripping her sword straight through a lung and out the side of his chest as she does so. Yet her terror throbs even as she splatters the forest floor with the monster's blood, because despite the raw brutality of the move she still knows he's going to survive it.

I have to trust her to be able to handle it, though, because Lark can't stop Ketevan forever. I aim for the back leg, using my leaping rune to launch myself up to her thigh. Bently sees his chance to help, ignoring his gushing wound to bring his sword into the hoof Ketevan might otherwise use to swat me like a bug. And so, with my gauntlets digging into her skin, I draw power out of my soul like a well, grab the monster's soul, and pull.

Then everything becomes light and pain.

I scream, my consciousness replaced entirely by agony. My soul tries to pull away from it, but unhatched I'm linked too closely with my human sensations to fully ignore the way the fury of a storm arcs out from Ketevan's body, rips through me, and burns me from within. My blood vessels boil and burst as the lightning sends me into spasms, causing me to fall from the Worldshaker's body and nearly break my own neck… though I'm thankfully saved by my slow-fall rune. Still, my whole body continues to twitch and shudder, causing me to stumble dangerously as I try to stagger away. I could die at any moment, now.

And compared to Lark and Bently, I got off lucky.

Bently still writhes on the ground, Harvey wincing with pain as he tries to pull our teammate to safety despite the severe seizure Bently is currently suffering. Arcs of lighting still dance around his body, crawling across his armor and shocking Harvey just for being nearby. Lark, meanwhile, falls off the monster's face and hits the ground hard, which means she's an easy target for Ketevan's hoof to drop down and splatter her across the ground. I cast a quick rune to try and launch her to safety, but Ketevan still slams down on her legs, completely crushing everything below Lark's waist.

Fuck. Now I need to go save her. But between us happens to be an extremely huge, extremely hungry vrothizo, and it's not going to stop attacking out of politeness. Well, fuck it, I'll have to aim well. I charge a kineticism rune, waiting for Ketevan to twist my way before activating it and firing off between her legs. I barely manage to grab Lark by the armpits as I fly past, dragging her broken body away before both of us collapse in a heap by the edge of the clearing. Ketevan shifts her focus to the others, perhaps because they're closer, leaving Lark and I in relative safety… at least for now.

Lark's lower half is still attached to her upper half, but only technically; that whole part of her body has been popped like a grape, no small part of her once-internal organs being left somewhere between our current location and where we started. And the rest of the team is doing about as well, all things considered. Bently is conscious again, but he keeps getting wracked with electrical jolts and seizing up whenever he tries to stand. Jelisa and Xavier are trying to fight their way over to him, but Keero managed to bite off enough of Harvey's shield arm to render it useless, healing back most of the wounds Jelisa managed to inflict by surprise. She's largely immune to his illusions, but the rest of the squad isn't, and is stuck constantly jumping at shadows. I need to get Lark back up and running, and then… what, actually? What do we do then? The Worldshaker has fucking lightning powers, I can't touch her without getting fried! Do I hatch? Can I even win with this weak, shitty body if I do hatch? Well, either way, Lark comes first. Drawing my sword again, I raise it up above my head and take a deep breath.

"This isn't going to be pleasant," I warn Lark.

"Get… back…" Lark warns, on the verge of letting her inner soul spill out into frenzy.

"No," I tell her, and cut her in half.

My tormented body screams bloody murder at me, but I thankfully manage to get a clean cut through her spine. This is, I note, the second time I've cleaved someone in the squad in twain at the waist. Kind of a weird thing to happen twice, but whatever. At least it's for a good cause this time. I am, of course, only cutting off the mangled, useless bits of her body, partly because they aren't doing anything but bleeding profusely but mostly because, now that they're detached from her, they count as a corpse. Pulling out and shoving together a huge mass of soul shards from my Wight bounty, I stuff them inside Lark's mangled, dead legs and shove the resulting autocannibalistic abomination into her mouth.

I told her it wasn't going to be pleasant.

"Eat," I order, and her instincts don't need much push to comply. New legs rapidly start to grow as she devours her old ones, which writhe and kick as they, too, try to figure out how to eat something in response to my order. The entire time, Lark glares at me with a mixture of fury, hatred, and gratitude. But I don't have time to unpack that while we're all fighting to the death, I have humans to save and vrothizo to kill.

"Your job is distracting the big one," I tell Lark. "Don't bother going for the kill unless you have some way to do that I don't know about. Just keep her off us until we get Keero. Got it?"

Her mouth is full, but I feel her agree in her soul, so I cast another repulsion rune and shoot myself back into the fray, simultaneously placing a second underneath Bently and Harvey to save their life… and use them as a projectile against Keero, forcing him to teleport away from where he'd been harassing Xavier and Jelisa, both of whom are now pretty damn beat up.

Gah, we need Xavier to take out Keero, but she can't fucking see Keero, only Jelisa and I can ignore the illusions! If only there was some way I could… oh shit, wait, I'm being a dumbass!

"Xavier! Kill whatever's orange!" I snap, sliding to a stop next to her and running mana through my tentacles.

"Orange?" she asks, water swirling around her in a defensive ring.

I point to Keero's current position, which I've lit up with a glowing orange kynamancy illusion of my own.

"I'll be your eyes! Take him out!"

"Oh, fuck yes!" Xavier whoops.

"Oh, fuck you!" Keero hisses, and right before he teleports I paint the spot I feel him about to appear at with orange, causing him to get ripped up by a torrent of water on arrival.

It's not enough to kill him, though, so we continue the dance. Keero quickly intuits that Xavier still can't see any target markers she's not looking at, and also starts throwing up false orange illusions of his own as distractions. It's messy and brutal, but ultimately Xavier is the best match against Keero because she can attack a huge number of places at once; striking a false target isn't a problem as long as she's also striking the real one, and Keero's five-second teleport time limit means he takes a fucking beating every time we manage to catch him. Sooner or later, he's going to get annoyed, and—shit!

Keero teleports right between Xavier and I, claws thrusting forwards and piercing through Xavier's armor to stab her in the chest.

"Got you," Keero hisses.

"Likewise," I growl back, ripping out his soul.

Keero and Xavier both collapse to the ground. Damn it, I was too slow! This body is too fucking slow! I couldn't grab him before he stabbed her! Jelisaveta kneels down to treat Xavier, but none of us have any way to know how deadly the vrothizo's poison claws are. To make matters worse, Ketevan immediately lets out a wail of despair and starts charging at us, ignoring Lark entirely. Then Bently does the same, finally staggering to his feet and starting a furious charge towards her.

Wielding his sword in both hands and screaming like a maniac, Bently ducks under a deadly kick and cleaves his blade into Ketevan's calf. She stumbles but doesn't fall, her body once again erupting in blinding white arcs of lighting, which carry through the sword and strike Bently's body with blinding wrath.

Yet Bently doesn't stop screaming, and he doesn't stop attacking either. The lightning continues to pour into his body as he hacks away at a monster that can topple castles, and the more Ketevan electrocutes him, the weaker her lightning seems to become. Ah. She's running out of power! I don't know why Bently can survive it, but it doesn't matter; this is exactly the chance I need. I put one of my shards into Keero's soul and reintroduce him to his body.

"You are on our side now, and will not attack us," I speak into fact. "Teleport me onto Ketevan's back."

He does, obeying me before even understanding what just happened. Safely between her shoulderblades while Bently and Lark keep up the offensive below, I sink down, remove my gauntlets, and lay my bare hands on the monster's skin. She has such an enormous, beautiful soul. A kaleidoscope of life and death surrounding a core of void, formed by the slaughter of unthinkable amounts of people. It's almost impressive, in a way, but I still sink my power into it to pull it free of its vessel. It's fucking powerful, so it resists me, holding fast to its black sump of a host. Yet my true self is far larger than this pathetic mass of flesh could ever conceive, and even trapped in a lesser body my soul is still one that has devoured an army of my own. Without her lightning to stop me, I gain ground in our struggle bit by bit before finally, inevitably, I rip her soul from her flesh and ride her corpse into the ground.

A titanic crash makes the forest tremble as Ketevan the Worldshaker makes good on her name in death.

Keero appears nearby, presumably because he just found himself surrounded by people who hate him that he can't fight back against anymore. Unlike me, though, he doesn't decide to stand on his lover's corpse, instead appearing next to her head and crouching down.

"...You killed her," he says slowly, his head turning up to meet my eyes. "Why don't I hate you?"

I smile wide under my helmet. Ah, I've missed not having to feel guilty for this. This fucker deserves everything I've done to him.

"Because you're mine now," I tell him plainly. "But don't worry, she will be too. I can't safely digest her soul right now."

I put a control shard in the Worldshaker as well, ordering her to stand up. My squad steps nervously away, each of them tending to a variety of wounds as I rise up upon my newest minion's back, towering over all of them.

"Captain," Harvey says quietly, "I think we may have made a tactical error."

"Only if I intend to betray you," I protest, hopping off Ketevan and slow-falling to the ground. "Which I don't."

Speaking of, I run an eye across the squad to see if there are any nasty wounds I can help them treat. Xavier hasn't died yet, which I consider to be an excellent sign. A quick glance in her soul indicates… holy shit, is she using her talent to isolate the poison and prevent it from spreading? That's kind of badass. Likewise, Bently is still sparking with electrical energy, but it doesn't seem to be hurting him at all. Is that the part of his talent that I always felt wasn't being used? Fucking lightning? Wow. Lark seems mostly okay, if currently a bit awkward to look at due to the fact that she lacks any pants, though that's a problem I'm sure she'll fix for herself when the rounds of healing are over. Harvey has one of the worst wounds in that he's missing a hand, but Jelisaveta has the most wounds from spending so long dueling Keero. And she is, of course, busy treating Xavier, while Harvey and Bently are both capable of treating themselves. I walk forwards, cast a healing spell, and start treating Jelisa's wounds. She gives me a stilted nod of thanks, her focus on Xavier.

We cast, we heal, and we wait while my new pair of Revenants watch. Ketevan makes a series of purposeful noises to Keero, a collection of growls and clicks and a few disjointed enunciations, to which Keero responds with a different set of sounds. They're talking, I realize, using a language that I don't recognize.

"Translate," I order.

"Ketevan was commenting how surreal this is," Keero answers automatically. "It's so… different. We aren't hungry."

Lark intakes a sharp breath, her emotions shifting from disgust and fear to hope and longing in the span of three words. I smile. The poor thing is tempted just from that? I suppose I could offer, but… no, no that wouldn't be a good idea. Permanently removing someone's capacity for consent is fucked up even if they consent to it. I know that. Having guilt-free minions is making me loopy.

"It makes sense," I agree, ignoring Lark's intense focus on the conversation. "You are no longer alive, after all. For some reason that makes the void inside you feel… inert. And if it's actually inert, that probably means you can't digest things even if you tried."

Keero immediately starts babbling at Ketevan, presumably following my orders to translate by also translating for her.

"What language is that?" I ask.

"It doesn't have a name," Keero answers. "I guess it should? We invented it ourselves, though. There are no other speakers. I learned to speak your language after we started preying on humans, but Ketevan never bothered."

Interesting. So they were intelligent before eating humans. I wonder what decides if a vrothizo is born intelligent or mindless?

"Why did you start preying on humans, anyway?" I ask. "You picked pretty much the only species on the island that would gang up and blast you to death with magic if you pissed it off."

"Well, humans taste good," Keero says unapologetically.

I glance back at Lark, who immediately stiffens with embarrassment and looks away.

"...You do taste good," she admits quietly.

"What about you?" I ask, grinning. "Do you taste good?"

I see her eyelid twitch and she rounds on me, pointing an angry finger in my direction.

"You know what?" she snaps. "F-frick you, Vita!"

I snort, holding back most of a laugh. Damn it, that was really cute. What a good kid.

"Sorry, sorry," I concede. "I know that was gross, but we would have been dead without you up and running, Lark."

"I don't care about eating my own legs!" she snaps. "I care because you put human souls in them!"

I blink with surprise.

"What?" I ask. "No I didn't. I put human soul shards in them, which is totally different. You were just eating ex-Wight, Lark. That was very firmly no longer a person."

"Wait, did I just hear you fed Lark her own legs?" Xavier groans.

"Xavier, shut the fuck up and stop moving," Jelisa orders.

"I don't care! Just… don't ever do that again, okay?" Lark insists. "It… it tasted the same."

"Okay…" I mutter slowly, walking over to the mostly-destroyed part of camp that houses our tents and supplies. I'm not sure if Lark actually needs the meat part of her meat-and-soul diet, but just in case I rummage around the backpacks, managing to pull out a squashed meat ration. It probably doesn't count as enough of a corpse in the Mistwatcher's eyes to not be stolen from, but I go ahead and make a Dreg out of it anyway since it's not going to last that long.

"Eat this," I say, handing it to her.

She takes it, sniffs it, and glowers at me suspiciously. I motion for her to eat again, and she carefully does, swallowing the whole thing at once without chewing. Then, her eyes go wide.

"Th… this is…?" she stutters, staring at me with disbelief. "Was that your soul?"

"A tiny fraction of it, yeah," I confirm. "My soul, so it's mine to give, right? It doesn't actually hurt me at all, parts of my soul are explicitly expendable. It grows back."

"That… that felt like real food," Lark breathes.

"Of course," I shrug. "Why wouldn't it?"

"It's dried meat," Lark protests. "It's already dead. I can only eat the living."

"And the unliving," I correct. "And I just turned that jerky undead. Of course, it's still an emotionless slab of meat, just one that can technically move if I tell it to. So it counts! Isn't blasphemy grand?"

"Got it," Xavier hisses suddenly, and there's a wet splat as she telekinetically tosses a glob of her own blood out of her body, where it proceeds to rapidly kill the grass it landed on.

"Got it," she repeats. "I'm good, that's all of it."

"Oh, thank the Watcher," Jelisa sighs, casting one last spell and then immediately collapsing, her breath heavy with exhaustion.

"Captain," Harvey grunts, "I regret to inform you that heretics are corrupting the youth."

"Let them," Jelisa dismisses. "I don't fucking care. That heretic just saved all our asses."

"This does not strike me as in line with a Templar's principles," Harvey says evenly.

"Well it does to me," Jelisa snaps. "We saved Valka from a Wight, we avenged New Talsi, and we all. Fucking. Survived. That is an unconditional win to me, Templar. If the soul-eater our bosses don't like wants to give the soul-eater our bosses do like dieting tips after helping us protect the Watcher-damn country, I'm struggling to see the fucking problem. We did it, everybody. We won. Hey Bently, you doing okay over there? You're still sparking."

"I don't know how to turn it off," he admits quietly.

"Does it hurt?" she presses. "Does it feel wrong?"

"I mean, my whole body hurts, but I don't think it's the lightning," Bently admits. "That feels okay."

"Then you'll figure it out," Jelisa says exhaustedly. "It's a good… you did a good job. Everybody did a good job. Anyway, I'm missing a lot of blood. Someone please feed me."

Keero clears his throat.

"Did I do a good job?" he asks sweetly.

"Fuck you," Jelisa grumbles. "I hope you die worse the second time."

Woah! That shuts everybody up. I think that's the harshest thing I've ever heard Jelisa say.

"To be fair, you totally deserved that," I tell Keero.

"You're right," he agrees automatically. "I guess I really deserved that. So… now what?"

"Now the weak humans rest up because they heal really fucking slowly," I answer him. "And then I guess we head home while killing every vrothizo we detect along the way."

"Oh, you want to kill vrothizo?" Keero asks. "I guess you'll probably want to know about our eggs, then. Ketevan laid hundreds of them on the far side of the city."

There's a beat of silence.

"Did you say hundreds of eggs?" Harvey asks quietly.

"Uh, I mean, yeah?" Keero confirms, turning to Ketevan and firing off a quick jibber of their personal language. She answers, and Keero translates. "Three-hundred and sixty-one, to be precise."

That's… that's a lot of eggs. It only takes two surviving vrothizo to make hundreds of children?

"I wonder how many vrothizo are a similar size to this one," Harvey muses quietly, a similar horror settling on the entire squad. Except, apparently, Xavier.

"Man, I can't believe the city-eater gets more sex than all of us," she complains.