Vigor Mortis

"I can't believe your idea of a vacation is to explore a literal, actual sewer system," Tala whines. "This is so disgusting."

"Oh, it's not so bad," I protest. "Honestly, this is probably the cleanest sewer I've ever skulked around in."

Besides, Tala and I are both flying. We don't even have to walk around in the sewage.

"Why am I not surprised that you have a wealth of comparisons ready?" Tala groans.

"I… I mean I wouldn't say a wealth," I backpedal. "It's more that I was just pretty familiar with like, a specific sewage system that's much worse than this one. Ugh, god. Just thinking about it reminds me of the time I tortured that child murderer."

"Woah, woah woah woah, back up on that one!" Tala yelps. "Are we talking about a murderer who is a child, or someone who murders children?"

"Uhh… gosh, I mean… both, technically?"

"Mal-Mal!" Tala yelps. "Vita tortured a kid!?"

"Hey, the motherfucker killed my sister!" I snap at her. "Besides, don't act like we don't torture countless human children. I knew people that were on the streets because our soldiers had killed their parents, okay? It's not… you're not any better than I am."

I stare her down and she has the decency to at least look embarrassed.

"I guess… I never really considered that," she admits.

"Really?" I ask. "What did you think war does to people? Some of our own soldiers get fucked up by war, of course the victims are more or less being tortured."

I let out a huff of air.

"I mean, I get that what I did was fucked up. Or at least I do now. Back then it was just revenge to me. I… I mean, after he killed Angelien I was pretty fucked in the head for a long time. I killed him, I turned him into an undead, and then I ended up slowly beating the shit out of him while I convinced him I was going to do the same to his family. He was like… fourteen?"

"Progenitor's mercy," Tala whispers. "I… fuck."

I shrug.

"I was only sixteen," I mutter. "And I think my body was fourteen, for what that's worth. Shit, I… I've never told anybody about this before. I never even talked about it with Penelope."

"I'm just gonna say it: Vita's life was fucked up, Mal-Mal," Tala declares. "That… that's a lot to take in."

"'Your' life," I correct quietly. "You mean 'your life was fucked up.' That was my life, Tala, not anyone else's. But yes. It was fucked up. I never told you the part of the story after the perception event, did I? After all that death there was a Dreg swarm, naturally. I took it on myself to help with that. Then I got arrested by the local theocracy and spent two years in a secret prison being tortured over and over because they wanted me to let my sister's fucking soul get destroyed!"

There's a crash and a crumbling noise, and a dull impression of pain snakes its way up my arm. I glance over to where I have, apparently, punched a crater into the nearby stone wall. I pull my mangled hand out of the hole and start casting a spell to heal it.

"There were good things in that half of my life," I admit. "I've gushed about most of them. My mom, my hunter team, at least while that lasted. Penelope, of course. I'm grateful to a lot of people. But in much the same way you can only imagine the scale of suffering I'm talking about, I could only imagine the scale of luxury I have now. All of me now has perspective that I haven't had before. Vita gained what she wanted: safety, family, love. But Malrosa gained something she wanted, too: a purpose. A goal. Something to dedicate eternity to. I'm going to conquer The Plentiful Wood for the sake of Liriope, and I'm going to conquer Verdantop because it's a horrible place that needs to be rebuilt."

More tentacles uncoil from my core, writhing alongside my fury. I stop breathing for a moment, using an art to respirate for me as I force my flesh into stillness, calming myself down. My tendrils relax, and with some measure of control over myself reestablished I start to breathe again.

"I'm not a very good person," I say softly. "But as long as I'm strong enough to protect myself and my family… who says I can't spare the rest for a bit of altruism? Even monsters can do that. Can't we?"

Tala doesn't seem to know how to feel about that, let alone how to answer. That's fine. The question was rhetorical, anyway. It's something for the future, after all, since conquering an island can't really be construed as altruism, even if I think it's the best path forward. It is the path that makes my home a safe place to live, though, and that's the first step. I'll return to Verdantop, I'll wipe the vrothizo off my island, I'll domesticate the forest, and then I'll tame Valka itself. There's not going to be anyone getting tortured for the kind of magic they practice anymore. There's not going to be anyone starving in the streets. And there's not going to be any more dead children. I'll craft my own form of the Progenitor's utopia, but with undead instead of my own sons. Those that want to keep this hateful, oppressive world the way it is will be the labor force that works to change it, until their bones grind to dust.

And by then I'm sure I'll have a new vessel waiting for them.

"So, um… where do the obarians play into this?" Tala asks hesitantly.

"I dunno yet," I admit. "But we'll see soon. We're close."

Tala and our retinue of guards all stiffen up at that, their bodies tensing into combat-ready mode. I almost laugh, but I suppose we should stay quiet. I shove a tendril into another alarm ward, weaving a silence spell around it before pumping it with mana and wiping the enemy-detection spell out of existence. They have no idea we're coming.

"You got the force barriers, right Tala?" I double-check quietly.

"Yep," she confirms. "Though obarians have poor depth perception, so I don't expect too many projectiles."

"Expect 'em anyway," I grunt. "Trap emplacements don't need depth perception to work."

"Ah. Right."

I don't bother checking on the soldiers. They know their business. I weave a persistent silence bubble around all of us, and we start approaching the last couple of turns. I sense about eighty obarians clustered together in the sewers ahead, though based on soul strength I estimate only about twenty to thirty of them are combatants. The rest are civilians, workers, and even a handful of children. All of them are miserable. I suppose I would be too, if I was reduced to growing food out of my own conquerors' shit. Well, it's showtime. I grin, crack four sets of knuckles, and turn the corner… only to come face-to-face with a wall.

Ah fuck, knowing where the souls are doesn't mean I know the layout of the sewers. I led us to a dead end. Minor problem, though.

"Hey," I ask one of the soldiers, pointing in front of me. "Is this wall load-bearing?"

He steps forward and gives it a brief inspection.

"No, my Princess," he confirms.

"Awesome," I answer giddily. "I guess it's time to do my best Sky impression."

"Your best what?" Tara asks as I surround myself with destructive force and step through the wall.

Disappointingly, burrowing through the wall with Motion arts is much slower than Sky's absurd propensity to treat solid objects like suggestions. I grind my way past the obstacle anyway, my mana split between actually making progress and silencing the otherwise-deafening ruckus sheering away the stone would make. But the wall is thankfully not very thick, and soon enough I'm stepping bodily through it into a ratty makeshift living space that reminds me painfully of Lyn's old shack.

Two obarians are here, one adult and one child. Mother and son, I think. They stare at me for a horrified moment before the mother screams something at the kid, wraps one of her thin, fleshy tendrils around a knife, and rolls forward to stab me. The kid starts to flee as I regard the weapon critically. It's not enchanted. It's not even half-decent chitin. A stone knife. I reach out and catch the blade with my dragonscale gloves.

"Go-Speak," I order. "Politely greet them, please."

Moving my grip lower, I carefully roll the knife to extract it from the obarian's tentacular grasp without breaking the fragile blade. Go-Speak starts warbling out words in Obarian, which is a very… bellowing sort of language? Low and musical, but in an annoying way. Obarians, like Athanatos, don't have their mouths connected to their respiratory system. The difference is that while Athanatos have engineered articulators in our sides that replace the speaking functions humans use their tongue and teeth for, obarians have none of that, making them incapable of speaking most of the sounds that comprise the two languages I know. Therefore, their language just kind of sounds like moaning. The tortured-soul kind, not the having-sex kind.

"Go-Speak, tell them that I'm here to talk, not to fight them or remove them," I order, placing the stone knife on a nearby counter. "And stick close to me."

My soldiers file into the room, followed closely by Tala as Go-Speak bellows out my declaration. Stepping out of the scrap-made home into the shit-filled 'street,' I instantly send a dozen obarians into a panic. Shouts of alarm echo through the area, and everyone becomes so concerned with running from me that they're hardly paying me any attention.

"Go-Speak, how do I say 'shut up and listen' in Obarian?" I ask.

He warbles something and I copy the sound with a spell, raising a hand and letting it go again as a commanding roar, loud enough to shake the entire tunnel. I'll tolerate being hated and feared, but I will not tolerate being ignored.

"Repeat the following," I order my translator. "I hope and expect to leave here today without hurting any of you. I don't demand your trust or friendship, I only demand your attention. I will be speaking with your leader or leaders. Come forward of your own accord, or I will have to insist."

The grating sound of stone rolling against stone is the only sound that answers me for a while, but I have succeeded at being heard. Even better, I've succeeded at being listened to. The obarians know how fucked they are to see a Queen in battle armor, and while I can't understand their words I can feel the terror in their souls conclude that cooperation with a genocidal enemy somehow offers a better chance for survival than trying to fight or flee from it. Which is an extremely pleasant surprise! Nobody actually fucking surrenders when I ask them to! Immediately, my opinion of obarians has skyrocketed. In short order, three obarians roll up to us. Two men and a woman, I think. Maybe two women and a man? I'm not totally clear on how to interpret an obarian's gender, and I'm even more useless than usual in terms of figuring out an obarian's sex.

Regardless, the one in the middle asks something, which Go-Speak translates for me.

"He is tersely asking you what you want," Go-Speak says.

Ha! Tersely? That's funny, he must be trying to act tough even though he's fucking terrified.

"I want to talk," I say. "About you, about your people, about how you live and what you did when we came to take your land. I want to learn what you know. I want you to be valuable, unique, and useful so I can make a case for ending the genocide of your species."

The obarians are briefly shocked, but quickly recover. They're interesting creatures; if I'm not reading them wrong, their emotions are much more dulled than humans and Athanatos. They have emotions, but they're less prone to immediately following them. They're more… ponderous creatures, used to moving slowly and planning before acting. They're logical in ways I wish more people would be, myself included. I kind of want to learn their language now.

"They're asking for clarification," Go-Speak says. "True or false: you are part of a different faction that opposes the annihilation of their species."

"I would not describe myself as part of a different faction," I answer. "This is not a political movement. It is a personal desire, and one that is locked behind the whims of my elders. But yes, I disagree with the generally-accepted wisdom of annihilating you, and seek reasons to argue against it."

The obarians don't take long to agree, which again… wow. I bet a bunch of humans would have immediately tried to kick my ass. The ty of my situation is likely part of it; I doubt any other Queen has even tried to have a conversation with them. They're just obstacles to most of us. Little mortals in the way, to be pruned from our perfect gardens. Having once thought I was one of those little mortals means I have a slightly different perspective, though. If they're in the way, why not move them rather than kill them all? It's not like we don't have the strength.

Unfortunately, while the talks are peaceful, they aren't very fruitful. I want reasons to keep the obarians alive outside of just like… intrinsic value of life, since the Queens obviously don't much care about that. They spend a while talking about their architecture, and yeah, I think their architecture is cool as shit, but if Dalakana was going to be swayed by that she would have been after living in it all this time. Their building techniques, their magic, their industrial capabilities… all of it pales compared to what our colony already has in spades. We don't need expert builders, we can just decide to generate a near-arbitrary number of them whenever we want. Liriope doesn't need more people. In fact, it needs less people, because we have a resource shortage, and everyone who eats food and isn't us is nothing but a red number in the ledgers.

Okay, so, no practical purposes. What about art? I doubt obarian operas are going to be a hit back home, and unfortunately no one brought any instruments while they were fleeing for their lives. No storytellers even survived, at least not that they know of. In the end, we agree to part ways for now so I can give them a bit more time to present their case.

I'm not sure what happens if they can't make a good one. It never really occurred to me. I… probably should have thought this through a bit better.

Tala and I return to the surface and I immediately suggest swimming as our next activity, which she firmly rejects. I decide to go alone then, leaping into the beautiful crystal water and sinking down into the dark depths. There's a glorious bounty of undersea 'predators' here that don't understand their place on the food chain. My ocean is bigger than yours, motherfuckers.

Progenitor, it's so beautiful down here. It's so empty. Nothing but water and souls, a weightless expanse devoid of light yet teeming with life. My body is deliciously close to not mattering at all, moved by will and barely slowing me down. I seek prey only with my true eye, I kill only with my true tentacles, and I devour only with my true mouth. It's bliss. It's freedom. How I wish I could go a step further, to cast aside this flesh holding me back, to peel it away from me and dance without impediment in the darkness of this vast, cold world.

I must be down there for hours, because soon enough I start to get hungry. I'm tempted to eat down here and keep going, but I feel like if I do that I may never return. So I surface with my latest catch. I've been having fun killing prey, eating its soul, then carving up its body and pulling the blood out with magic to attract more predators, who I then rip the souls out of and eat, etc. It's been delightfully chaotic. I'm really glad I know a water-breathing spell! I grab the biggest corpse I have onhand (bigger probably means tastier, right?) and fly up to the surface, which takes longer than expected. Still, I burst joyfully back into the air, my delicious leviathan corpse cresting the waves immediately after me. I whip my wings out, casting a giant spray of water everywhere as I hear a terrified shriek and, shortly afterwards, my leviathan is obliterated by a magical barrage of absolutely unnecessary proportions.

"Wh…! Tala!" I yelp at her. "Damn it, now I have to go back and grab another one."

"W-wait! Mal-Mal, wait! I'm sorry, please don't—"

"Be back in a sec," I grumble, then dive back under the waves. It takes a while to find another suitably large specimen, unfortunately, and it's dark when I make it back to the surface. Tala is unconscious by the shoreline, though she has a large honor guard who all make gestures of respect as I approach.

"I wanna see if this tastes good," I inform them, levitating the leviathan to the shoreline. It's a pretty cool-looking creature, halfway between little disciple and… bird, kinda? It has a beak for some reason.

A group of them immediately moves to carry it… somewhere, I suppose, as I walk forward and flick some water on Tala's face to wake her up.

"Muh… Mah! Mal-Mal!" Tala jolts awake when she registers me, staggering to her feet.

"You didn't have to wait for me, you dork," I say, prodding her.

"Wait for you!? Mal-Mal, I was scared to death! You were down there two and a half days, I thought you died!"

"Wait, really?"

"Yes, really!"

I look up at the sky overhead. Holy shit, I'd thought it was just evening but… nope. That is a different island from when I went under.

"Oh," I blink. "Uh… well that'd explain why I'm so hungry. Sorry, Tala."

I cast a quick spell to launch all the water off of me, then wrap her up in a big hug.

"I thought you died again," she repeats.

"I know. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to lose track of time."

"How? How did you… why did you…?"

"I was having fun," I answer softly. "A lot of fun. Sorry. I just kinda… sorry. I'm okay. I won't die on you, I promise."

"But are you going to change on me again?" she asks helplessly.

I suck in a breath, almost answering 'no' on reflex. But Tala deserves better than that.

"Yes, hopefully," I say.

She looks up at me, horror in her eyes. I give her a calming look.

"We all learn and grow and change," I tell her. "Sometimes I might do it… jarringly fast, I suppose. It's definitely not the sort of change most people have. But still, I want to be better, so I hope I don't stay the same."

"That's not what I—"

"It is," I insist. "I'm not done. My body is going to change, too. I'll outgrow my flesh someday, Tala. Maybe not because of death—hopefully not because of death—but I won't look like this forever. In personality, in body, in… everything, really. I want to be better. So I'm going to change again."

I put a hand on each of her cheeks, hugging her tight with the other two.

"But no matter how I change, I'm still going to love you, okay?" I promise her. "You're the best sister ever. Nothing will change that."

Tala lets out a shuddering breath.

"Okay," she says quietly.

"How about we get some food and sleep?"

"Okay," Tala repeats. "Were you awake that whole time…?"

"Yeah, eating souls always perks me up."

"Y'know, it's kind of really easy to see why the theocratic military was always after Vi… I mean, after you."

An unexpected joy fills me at the correction, and I laugh.

"It's not my fault the Templars never had a taste for good cuisine. Speaking of, we're having weird lake leviathan tentacles tonight!"

"I'm sorry, we're what!?"

The next few days of our vacation continue at a much more normal pace. Tala and I hang out together and play around, and I end up visiting the obarians two more times. They aren't very fruitful conversations, but they're certainly interesting ones. Neither Malrosa nor Vita was ever much of a social butterfly (or I guess a social moth) so the long, drawn-out talks aren't really my thing, but I get to know a handful of the obarian refugees. They aren't associated with the rebel group that's been periodically attacking the city, they're just trying to stay alive. It's a goal I can firmly empathize with, but I can't really do much to help other than bring them food.

That's a choice which turns out to be a mistake.

"Princess," Dalakana sighs. "I'm sure you've surmised that I have been asked by the Progenitor to assess you during your time here."

"Uh… yeah, I assumed that was the case," I nod.

Then I stop nodding and signal affirmation with my eyes. Gah! In my defense, I'm super nervous; I just got summoned to Dalakana's personal queenly throne, and the War Queen has made no illusions of dressing up her audience hall as anything else. The most common decoration in the hall is melted obarian armor.

"Then why in Her name have you been aiding the terrorists!?" she groans. "I would be in my rights to kill you, Malrosa. Do you understand that? I'm supposed to kill you if you betray Liriope in any capacity."

I stand up a bit straighter, a bit of panic rushing through me. She's obviously not killing me right now, so I assume I'm in the clear, but I get the impression this is very much a time to be careful with my words.

"I am firmly and emphatically trying to bring value to Liriope," I say. "I'm not betraying it, and I'm not aiding its enemies. I swear on my soul."

"Is that so?" Dalakana sighs. "Do explain to me, then, what foolish nonsense leads you to believe that while you're stealing food to give to obarian rebels."

I swallow nervously. I kind of want to point out that the obarians I'm aiding aren't actually associated with the terrorists, but I'm not sure she'll care. It'd likely be seen as pedantry; savages are savages, after all.

"I… I want to bring them to The Plentiful Wood," I explain. "You don't want them here and… well, that's your prerogative, obviously. But I think genociding them is… a waste of time and resources. If they have a reasonable alternative to hiding away underground and death, they'll be a lot easier to get out of the ground."

Dalakana's eyes bore into me for an uncomfortable minute before she speaks.

"You found a hidden colony of rebels literally hours after arriving here, and you expect me to believe that you intend to do me a favor not by purging them from my lands—which you know is what I want—but by feeding them, so they can continue to multiply like rats. Your explanation has increased your status from 'traitor' to 'traitor and moron.'"

I carefully refrain from reacting, keeping tight control on my body with my soul threads as anger runs through me. Of course, Dalakana can read souls like I can, so unless something about my divinity makes that difficult I'm sure she can see through me like glass. Still, the ritual of it helps me calm down a bit, and since she took a while to respond to me I feel no obligation to give her a quick reply.

"I don't think all the obarians should die, is all," I admit. "I wanted a compromise between efficiency and genocide. I've been trying to find a way to let them bring more to Liriope than they take away. Because the act of attempting that, the act of looking for that, is important to me."

Dalakana visibly relaxes at that, if only by a slight bit.

"Thank you," she says. "That is a much better and clearly much more truthful explanation. But my darling child, part of being loyal to Liriope is trusting the wisdom of your elders. You are not in charge and you do not make the decisions. This is because, when I tell you extending that kindness isn't worth the effort, it comes from experience."

"That's my problem, though!" I counter. "You're saying it's 'not worth the effort,' but if I'm the one making all the effort, why do you get a say in it? I don't doubt your wisdom works, Queen Dalakana. Liriope is glorious. But while it is the duty of the old to maintain what works, it is the duty of the young to seek new innovations."

Dalakana considers that, her eyes twinkling with agreement.

"True," she concedes. "At least in the abstract. I will answer your question in a moment, but first I want to ask: why this path? To seek your own way is well and good, but why do you seek this way, child?"

I hesitate, trying to find the right words.

"I've lived two lives," I say. "Two short lives, perhaps, but they were vastly different. I am a Princess, and proud to be one. I love my people and my colony, built on the backs of our lessers. But at the same time, I've been one of those lessers. I have had my back stepped on. And it would be horrid of me to just… forget that."

I take a deep breath, starting to pace a little.

"What really irks me about our strategy is that it's only about Liriope. Everything else is a number rather than a person. And we do that because it's efficient, because it's effective, but most importantly because it's easy. Killing obarians is easier than figuring out how to get the water we need peacefully. It causes less hassle. I hear that kind of language and I think 'we're just being lazy.' And that's not something I can just ignore, Dalakana."

"Because it does not match some… personal principle of yours?" she prods.

"No," I answer firmly. "It's because of what I am. What I can't let myself be. Dalakana, I am arguably The One Below All's little sister. Do you understand what that means? What I might become one day? 'Lazy with other people's lives' isn't just a policy to me, it's a potential apocalypse."

I hesitate. She's old enough, so she probably also…

"Do you know my other sister?" I ask quietly.

Dalakana hisses.

"The Island of Life and Death," she growls. "Source of the Clear Ones. Birthing grounds of the Black Maw."

Well those are some new names I guess I can panic about later. I've got to table them for now, though.

"Not very friendly monikers, right?" I press on. "That side of my family isn't exactly role model material, but that's a deep part of who I am now. I want to be more than a mouth, but it's hard sometimes, Queen Dalakana. Even a few days ago, I… well, you know what happened. I lost track of time down there, just eating and killing. I need… balance. My fellow Athanatos are great for that. I've never experienced more joy than I have in Liriope. But it can't just be us versus them for me. I don't think that's wise."

The Queen considers me silently for another long moment, then stands up.

"Well-spoken," she concludes. "I'm pleased by your consideration into these matters. The Progenitor has expressed similar concerns, and that you have thought deeply about them is a credit to your character. I am satisfied by this explanation, Malrosa."

I let out a huge sigh of relief.

"Thank you, Queen Dalakana."

"However," she intones. "I still have a question to answer. Namely, if you're the one putting in effort, why do I get a say in your actions?"

She steps down, her thin body towering over me with a weight beyond the physical.

"I could explain how the transfer of rebels into refugees does not benefit me the way you think it does, but that would obfuscate the true issue here. Namely, that I am the Queen of this island, and my word is law."

She extends a finger towards me, pointing imperiously down from her raised platform.

"Your caution demonstrates wisdom, child, but I want those creatures dead. Do you not wish to be a War Queen, Malrosa? Do you not wish to conquer? Do you think you will win a war without a slaughter!? You are unfit for your ambitions if you cannot swallow your fears and kill. And thus I command you: slay them all. Every last obarian in the sewers, every man, woman and child. They die before you leave this place, Malrosa, or I will declare you unfit to the Progenitor herself."

I can't help it. I hiss, dangerously ignoring impropriety in doing so. Dalakana doesn't comment, though, simply waiting for my acknowledgement.

"Out of all lessons," I growl, "this is not one I need to learn. I assure you."

"Then prove it, child."

I'm not foolish enough to continue trying to argue with her. I turn and storm out of her hall, meeting up with a terrified Talanika who had been silently eavesdropping on the whole meeting.

"W-what are you gonna do, Mal-Mal?" she stutters.

"I suppose I have one last question to ask the survivors," I respond furiously.

I don't bother gathering my retinue. I simply get the means to communicate what I need from Go-Speak, and descend alone with Tala. I don't want her with me, but I know I won't be able to leave her behind no matter how much I insist. I grimly walk into the obarian refugee camp, my foul mood obvious even across the species and culture barrier. They all know something is wrong.

"Would you rather be eaten," I ask tiredly, "or enslaved?"

Ever the logical creatures, the obarians all draw weapons. So I draw mine. A scythe of frozen air forms in my hand and I stroll forward, reaping the last harvest of an entire culture. Tala stays close to me and watches with horror as every obarian in the tunnel falls silently into death, a cascade of limp bodies and destroyed lives. Three days later, I offer Queen Dalakana an undead army made from her own enemies. She's amused, but informs me that she prefers them gone. So I eat them all, every man, woman, and child, glowering at the Queen the whole time. She watches me do it, and even in the face of my anger she is pleased.

I hate it, but in the end I'm a daughter of Liriope and a daughter of the streets. I knew it might come to this, and there was never any doubt to what path I'd take.