Vigor Mortis

It takes a split-second to reorient myself once my soul slots back into place, albeit for two drastically different reasons. Conflicting sets of memories slam into each other, and though they were only separate for a few minutes it's enough to almost distract me from my chance. Almost. Nawra's mana curls around me, dancing around the Watcher's own and bolstering my resistance enough to call on my power. Pushing aside the shock, I let my tendrils curl around my limbs and smash through the door of my prison cell, which flies off its hinges and nearly bowls Ars over as I lunge his way, grabbing his throat.

Except… wait wait wait wait. I just made a deal with this guy! Hold on, you did what? Why am I… you offered to hire Ars? That's completely… why is all this Nawra mana here? Wait, doesn't matter, never mind. We need to break all the enchantments in the room. I mean I need to do that. And I agree. What? Oh, fuck it.

I unleash a massive burst of myself, aiding the black in annihilating the yellow before shaping it all into a spell to rip any metal that isn't part of my armor into an unrecognizable mess.

"You got the situation handled now, darling?" a female voice asks, and I realize it's Nawra, using the mana she's pouring into the area to cast a kynamancy spell. Her voice somehow manages to carry the exact sort of amused haughtiness that I always imagined her speaking with. I'm not actually sure if she can hear me through her mana, so I answer by writing back in the mana ocean.

I think so? I write hesitantly.

Yep, I've got this, I write confidently and at exactly the same time.

Uh. Wait. What? Am I back to being two people? Is there someone else in here?

Yes. Apparently. I'm pretty sure I didn't ask that question. You did.

Fuck.

Is everything alright? Nawra asks.

Shit. Let's not look crazy in front of Nawra, okay? I'll write, you not write? Yep. Cool. Sounds like a plan.

I mean, yes. Probably, I hastily correct. Just some odd dissonance, but I'm sure I'll be back to normal soon. Thanks again, Nawra.

Well, if you say so, Nawra writes back. Have fun torturing that man to death!

God your sister is so creepy. Er, I mean my sister? I… look, this is a terrible time to have an existential crisis. We can negotiate much better terms with Ars now that we're free.

I tighten my grip on Ars' throat, my tendrils twitching murderously towards his soul. Negotiate? We're going to fucking murder this asshole. Why wouldn't we?

…Because he's a ridiculously skilled animancer that's willing to work with us? I keep my tendrils poised to kill, but go no further. He's at my mercy, so there's no reason to escalate.

Most of our entire family are skilled animancers willing to work with us! And they have significantly more ethical sense than Ars does, which is a bit disturbing of a comparison any way you slice it. Also, we promised Nawra some second-hand sadism.

…Which strikes me as a problem!? Fuck. Fuck! Again, this is the worst time to be having a mental breakdown! Who even are you? Who am I?

We need to figure this out later. Ars is about to teleport.

Oh, Progenitor damn it!

He vanishes from my hand before I can scour away the Mistwatcher mana he'd been hiding in his soul, which I almost certainly would have noticed if I wasn't so distracted by… me, I guess. I fail to track him in time but I also don't need to: his teleportation has only sent him about six miles away so I can still feel his soul, giving me time to investigate the area around him for traps.

It also gives me time to talk, I suppose. You wanna do that?

I don't want to risk him teleporting away again, so no.

Good point, me. I ignore the horror of the situation and so do I and we find a relatively safe spot and teleport in. Relatively safe for me, anyway. It's probably not safe for the dozen of bystanders around me. We appear to be in the middle of a small town, only two stories tall. Ars immediately fires a concentrated light ray at me when I appear, but having killed Vita with that trick once already I came prepared. It scatters against the kynamancy defenses in my armor, and my counterattack comes swiftly.

I attempt a debilitating Life art, which he resists, a bolt of lightning, which he redirects, and an ice bolt, which he dodges. It would probably be more effective to get in close and beat his ass, honestly. I signal displeasure with my eyes as I avoid his counterattack. War Queens aren't really supposed to get close to enemies if we don't have to, but I do see the logic in this instance. Yeah, it'd be way easier to swap tactics. Here, let me handle it, I'm used to brawls.

I swap over a bunch of my offensive magic into fueling my flight, bursting towards Ars. He tries to fly away at first before noticing how much faster I am, so he dives towards the ground instead, where a bunch of gawking humans with red-stained souls have been watching instead of running away like smart people.

"Stop her!" he orders them, and they all swivel to jump at me the moment I get close enough to the ground. I try to sneer, but I don't have the face for it.

"Do you really want to play that game, Ars?" I ask.

"I've no qualms pulling out all the stops for a lying traitor such as yourself," he snaps back. "We had a deal!"

"Didn't count; wasn't me!"

"What!?"

"I don't know!" I laugh, and rip the souls out of the people in my way, stuffing them with shards and bringing them from his kingdom to mine. "Capture Ars!"

They ignore me, and keep trying to hold me down.

They ignore me!?

I know! What the fuck! Wait… Nawra did something to me.

Wait, what did she… you let her touch our soul!? Did you let the insane goddess that even grandmama is afraid of touch our fucking SOUL!?

No! I didn't! I just… gave her the opportunity to do so without my permission. But I was dying!

Right, yeah, we were actually dying, probably. I see the memories now. Okay, well, fuck!

She only separated the control system from the reanimation system. I can probably… yeah, I think I see what she did. I'll just add both.

Wait, but what about the ethics of—

Ignoring the naggy bit of myself that doesn't even want to torture and murder my original biological father, I fish some control shards out of my soul and shove those into my new Revenants as well, which gets them off my back.

This is really fucked up.

They attacked me! That means they're fair game! Shut up, weird voice in my head!

Weird voice in your—excuse me!? I'm you! Fuck this, I'm taking control here. Re-removing the control shards, I ascend into the sky and easily bypass the civilians I never should have murdered in the first place. I wouldn't complain about killing aggressive humans normally, but these ones were mind controlled against their will, and we're not making things better by just shoving an even stronger mental compulsion on top of that. I'm going to rule this island, and that means I have to care about the people on it!

Okay, I guess I can see the problem when you phrase it like that.

I really, really need to figure out what the fuck is going on with my mind right now, but I'll take that agreement as a good sign and focus on the more immediate problem first. Ars got away while I was bickering with myself. Another teleport. I weave the necessary art and follow him, ending up over a massive lake.

Oooh, I hope he thinks he can escape from us underwater, that'd be fun.

I suppose that would be amusing, yeah. The Tear Basin was an enjoyable swim. No time to think about it, though. I rocket towards Ars again, ignoring my instincts to just stay back and cast projectiles. I need to get him within my mana field. I do cast a bunch of projectiles though, because that's just good combat sense when you have a soul that can't be strained by over-weaving and your opponent does not.

Wait, you're trying to tire him out?

Tiring out weaker artists is a great idea? Why wouldn't we be tiring him out? Ars has an absurd amount of talents that he's using to drastically improve the efficiency of all the spells he's using, but he still has a limit to the amount of time he can go full-blast, and we don't.

I guess, but it seems unnecessary. Our mana might be functionally limitless, but it's not actually limitless.

Covering fire is good for other reasons, me. Do you have a name, by the way?

Uh. I mean. I'm a combination of Vita and Malrosa. I have no idea who the fuck you are.

I'm… also a combination of Vita and Malrosa? I'm not sure why I wouldn't be.

This is so weird. I hope we merge back together.

I… kind of hope we don't?

Oh boy.

"So! About that job offer!" Ars yelps at me. At us? "Is that still on the table?"

"Well, I was serious about that," I admit.

But he's an insane fucking monster that can't be trusted.

"...But upon further reevaluation it's hard to deny the fact that you're an insane fucking monster that can't be trusted, so no, I'll probably kill you."

And torture him. At least a little bit. We promised.

That isn't exactly what we promised. We just promised to give Nawra the emotional experience of his death.

Yeah but do you want to be the one giving Nawra a disappointing show?

Okay, that's true, I definitely don't want that. Wait, are we afraid of disappointing her because she fucked with our soul!?

Uuuuuh that is a very good question. I hope not? We were afraid of her before this crazy bullshit, right?

Yeah. Yeah, we definitely were. Okay. That's good. But what if the torture makes it all feel fake or something?

Hmm. Okay. He's already losing hope. We keep going just long enough for him to realize he'll die and then finish him off. Pain beyond that isn't needed.

Agreed.

You don't want to do this.

Nope.

Let me?

Yeah, alright.

Cool. I got this. I'll rip him to shreds.

"I want to protest these accusations of insanity," Ars says, protesting my accusations of insanity, "but for the sake of brevity I'd prefer to just insist that I am not untrustworthy, particularly when an individual such as yourself can make trust a non-issue."

I ignore him and don't respond, focusing my attention entirely on catching up to—

Is he offering to become a Revenant?

Who cares! We're killing him!

Well, that is a prerequisite to making him a Revenant, yes.

Fuck. Okay. That's kind of tempting? But we can worry about that later! Either way, we're killing him and we need to actually do that.

Fair point. But if he's offering to become a Revenant, doesn't that mean he'll just let us kill him if we talk to him for a bit?

I… I guess? But that doesn't sound satisfying in the slightest. This guy should suffer for what he's done. Also: you're fucking distracting me! We don't have time for this conversation!

I wrap my tendrils around the spiral hilts of the six anima-tangible daggers on my belt, tossing the one with the returning enchantment at Ars' face in lieu of an answer. He dodges, of course, but we'll see if he can dodge it on the return trip while simultaneously focusing on all the other stuff I'm shooting at him to slow him down.

I am not very comfortable with this whole concept of 'deserved torture,' for the record.

Oh my god this is Penta all over again except I can't threaten you to shut you up.

What the fuck? When did we get this bad?

…Okay, yeah, that might have been too much. I'm just pissed off and trying to concentrate, okay? I watch as Ars flies low again, murdering two random civilians and quickly twisting them into those ravenous, screaming soul-snakes I saw him kill a High Templar with once. I'm not really sure why he bothers; I just snatch each of them out of the sky with a tendril, smash them to bits, and eat them.

Look, I'm just saying, if people deserve a certain amount of suffering based on their past actions, then what the fuck do we deserve?

Excuse me?

What do we deserve? You can't possibly be deluding yourself into thinking that everything we've done is justified, can you? There was a time when we were good, maybe. Back when we hid our powers, fed our family, and did our best to survive. But then we got caught up with Penelope's Pneuma research and then we fucked up Lark's life even though we could tell she'd changed, and then we killed Norah, and then… well. We pretty much stopped trying to do the right thing after Site 4, didn't we?

How can you… if anyone in the fucking world deserved their fate, it was the bastards running Site 4!

For what? Making monsters helpless and beating the snot out of them? Isn't that what we're about to do?

He's Ars fucking Rainier! Look around us! Baldone wasn't doing anything other than minding their own Watcher-damn business and then he shows up and ruins their entire country inside of a month! He has destroyed uncountable lives! Driven villages to starvation! All for the sake of getting resources to do more unethical human experimentation on the populace! I feel like the circumstances are a little bit fucking different here!

Yeah, well, we let him out, didn't we?

My mind goes blank for a moment. All of it. I don't have anything to say to myself for a while, just mindlessly slapping aside Ars' offensive onslaught. I'm really, really not liking this untimely burst of introspectiveness.

And I'm not a huge fan of how we had to be snapped in half by a madman's trap before we started thinking about these things seriously. But what do I know? I'm just you.

We need names.

Well, we already have two of them.

True. But both of us are both of them, so who's who?

You seem particularly inclined to defend Vita's bullshit, so you can be her.

And Malrosa is a saint?

Malrosa is a racist, xenophobic, genocidal child, and I'm starting to suspect those are the parts of her that you embraced most. But at least when Malrosa became part of us we took a second look at her biases. So sure. I'll be Malrosa.

Fuck you, me.

You're just mad because I'm right.

Sure, but that doesn't make me any less mad!

Our teleport is ready. His isn't.

Finally! Twisting my gathered self, I teleport next to Ars and engulf him in mana, cutting off his flight—and all of his other magical abilities—almost immediately, catching him by the armpit to hold him in place. I don't drop my guard, though, because I don't feel Ars lose hope.

"You really think none of my talents are physical in nature?" he taunts, palm-striking towards my body with impressive force. I block with the blade of a dagger, causing him to stab himself.

"You know, I have a particular disdain for fathers that get physical with their children," I tell him calmly, catching his bleeding hand with one of my three empty ones. "The first person I ever murdered was like that. He was also the first man I ever ate."

I grab his uninjured hand and swiftly break all of his fingers, just in case he wants to try anything else stupid. I'll admit, they're far tougher than I'd ever expect human bone to be, but I can smash through solid walls and chew raw metal. I really don't know what he was expecting. To his credit, Ars doesn't seem overly affected by the pain, but I guess living for a decade and a half in Site 4 tends to add that sort of resistance to a person.

I can't even imagine how awful that must have been for him.

I frown with my eyes, uncurling my many tendrils to wrap them around Ars' hideous, bulging soul. You're not going to keep advocating for this man's life, are you 'Malrosa?'

No. He needs to die.

Good. And frankly, I don't want him around either. He'll be a better meal than a slave.

…For an animancer as skilled as he is, I suppose that's wise. Do it.

I nod, squeezing his soul ever harder, giving both Ars and I the time to savor his death. To realize that the damage I'm doing is not just to kill, but to shatter. I wait for the moment his eyes go wide, the moment he realizes he's never coming back, the moment the terror of dreams never realized hits him in full, and then I finish the job.

I rip the man that created me to pieces and swallow the shards. He is unspeakably delicious. An urge takes me and I roar in triumph, ripping his corpse in half with my bare hands and letting it fall on either side of me. The still-mind-controlled people in this Baldonese city look on in horror as their god splatters dead on the ground.

I am their only god now.

Woah there. Are you okay? Maybe dial it back a little? Our complex is showing.

Wh… but I'm pretty literally a god? It's not a complex if it's true!

We're only a god in the sense that we're the same type of being as the Mistwatcher, which is something we've spent quite some time trying to convince people not to worship. So…

Is this my life now? Is someone in my head just going to berate me for every single thing I do? Are you the deserved punishment you were talking about?

I don't think so? I mean, I hope not. I just… I dunno. There was a moment for a while there when I didn't have a soul at all. I was powerless. I thought I might be powerless forever. So I made a deal with Ars to get you back sooner. Then you come back without my help and you're extra pissed about everything and it just… feels different from before.

Not entirely different. Remember when we told Penelope to call us Malrosa?

Yeah, that was weird. We just weren't feeling very much like being Vita at the time, I guess.

Actually, I think that was you feeling not very much like me at the time. I suspect we might have already been splitting.

I expect a response when I think that, and I both get one and don't. Malrosa simply agrees. I just… know that. I guess that makes sense. It's not really something we need to put into words. We're communicating within our own mind, and both of us are already an odd mix of two long-gone individuals and each other. Taking the mental energy to verbalize this conversation is, in retrospect, unneeded effort. Not verbalizing things feels particularly strange, though. Feeling Malrosa's impressions instead of hearing her words immediately has me wondering if I just made this whole mental conversation up.

Nope, you didn't, I'm still here.

…And I don't know if that's reassuring or not. This is strange. Very strange. But I still have shit to do, namely getting back to Penelope and deciding what to do about this mind control plague. I can figure out whatever Malrosa's deal is later. It feels really weird calling her Malrosa, since we're both made of Malrosa, but I know she feels weird about calling me Vita for the same reason so I guess we'll just compromise by being weird together. It's not like there's any way I can get rid of her other than to wait.

A hesitance that isn't my own bubbles forth at that. I'm suddenly aware that we don't know which of us would be 'gotten rid of,' if that's what happens. This isn't like a Lich possession, or a Child of Nawra taking control. We aren't conflicting in that way. We're different people, but we're also somehow the same.

…There are a surprisingly varied number of ways for me to end up sharing my body with someone else, aren't there?

Sighing, I slot in the coordinates of where Penelope originally teleported from and pop back into the lab we first found Ars in, Penelope and Lark mid-turn into combat stances facing my direction. I hold up my hands in surrender, giving them time to see that it's just me before making any major movements. They relax a bit.

"V—Malrosa," Penelope corrects herself incorrectly. "You're back. We were about to come looking for you."

"It's Vita right now," I tell her. "And yeah, sorry about that. Some crazy shit happened, but I got him. He's dead now."

"It's Vita 'right now?'" Jelisa asks before anyone else can.

"Not important," I dismiss, and immediately feel guilty about it. I guess Malrosa disagrees. "Okay, kind of important. Ars tried to trap me by pumping me full of Watcher mana, which almost killed me and ended up clogging the brain-soul link a bit and now I'm… running in parallel, I guess? It's fine though, I'm handling it."

We're definitely not handling it and we should ask our friends for help.

"Okay that's kind of a lie. But! First and foremost! I ate my not-dad and now we have his country to deal with."

Penelope glances to the side, briefly looking at Capita's unconscious form when I mention that I ate Ars, but her focus swaps back to me shortly afterwards.

"This country won't suffer any more than it already has if we take a few minutes to rest," she says. "So frankly, I think this issue is a higher priority. As powerful as you are, it would be incredibly dangerous if you turn out to be unstable."

Wh—unstable!?

"Like you're one to talk!" I snap back at her, causing her soul to twitch in a way that's probably quite uncomfortable.

That kind of talk hurts Operation: Woo Penelope, you know.

I don't particularly like this situation, but I take offense to any implication that it means I'm crazy.

Yelling at someone is a terrible method of convincing them that you're mentally sound. Here, let me handle this.

I take a swift breath, stretching my shoulders and descending to the ground so I can fold in my wings and stand respectfully.

"Apologies," I open with. "What we mean to say is that, while our current situation is distressing, it's hardly outside our range of experience. As strange as it is having two of us in here, we're cooperating and intend to continue doing so. There's no immediate need for action."

"Woah, okay," Jelisa says, her eyes widening a bit. "You'd be Malrosa, then?"

"I'm flattered you can tell so easily," I confirm. "Though I'd like to clarify I'm not the original Malrosa. I am no more the Athanatos that was possessed by a Lich than Vita is the Lich which possessed an Athanatos. We're both… both. We divided our collective names somewhat arbitrarily."

"Well I don't want to… define your identity for you, I guess, but I suspect you're a bit more Malrosa than you are Vita," Jelisa says. "Vita… does not talk like that."

"Well, that's a bad habit on her part," I protest, crossing my lower pair of arms. "We've had the same formal speech training, I'm just actually bothering to use it."

I just kind of forget to talk like that. I'm used to talking how I talk.

"She says she's used to talking how she talks and not thinking about it," I announce for her. "Anyway, I'd prefer this not to be the object of immediate attention; we've yet to really grasp our situation and for all we know it will end on its own in the near future. What will not end on its own is the anima plague, and I have a few potential solutions we can pick from."

I conjure up a few illusions of a close equivalent to how I perceive the cascading Pneuma art, red and pulsing, before changing the color of a few of them and pointing to the white one.

"No matter what we do, it's pretty much going to involve piggybacking on the preexisting structure Ars designed to create a new talent with the effect of seeking out and replacing old versions of Ars' talent, changing the compulsion to love, respect, and obey Ars into something else entirely. The first and most obvious choice is this one: it replaces the compulsion for Ars with nothing at all. The talents will simply be inert outside of providing and spreading immunity to Ars' version."

"You can just do that?" Lark asks. "Why are we even having this conversation, then? That's obviously going to be the best option, right?"

"No," I answer frankly. "It's arguably the most moral option, but my opinion is that it is a terrible option."

"Well of course yours is," she growls.

"Lark," Penelope says kindly but firmly. "Let her speak."

"Thank you, Penelope," I say, sending appreciation with my eyes. "As the animancers here have probably guessed, the reason this is a terrible plan is because Ars' infection has been getting spread for months now. A substantial percentage of people on the island have already adapted to these changes, so while we would be removing the compulsion to love Ars, they'd still continue to love him anyway."

"The end result of which being everywhere from revolutionaries trying to become like him and take his place to insane cults worshiping their fallen god," Penelope grunts. "It solves the moral issue of not using mind control of our own, but it still functionally leaves the populace mind controlled into servitude of a monster. I agree with Malrosa, that isn't an option."

"Which is where things get tricky," I nod. "Because the question just becomes 'what flavor of mind control do we use?'"

"I hate animancy," Lark hisses.

"That's pretty fair," I agree. "It's really fucked up. Still, though."

"Is there any reason we can't just reverse the compulsion?" Jelisa asks. "Hate Ars instead of love him?"

"Other than the fact that forcing someone to hate something is just as fucked up as forcing them to love it? No, I guess not. It'd be terrible to saddle people with negative emotions for the rest of their lives, though."

"We don't have to do the rest of their lives," Penelope muses. "We can compel them to hate Ars, then a year or so later when the spread is complete we replace it with the blank-slate talent. It still has the mind control problem, but we're not going to be able to avoid that and hating Ars is imminently reasonable for any rational individual."

"That's… an option," I concede. "Here's what I'm worried about, though: we instill everyone with a compulsory hatred of a country-conquering animancer immediately before I, an animancer, go and take over their country. What happens?"

"Bloodshed," Penelope sighs. "And a lot of it. Yes, I see your point."

"Are you seriously trying to argue that using mind control to ease your conquest is a good thing?" Lark asks.

"No, it would definitely be evil," I answer. "But we're already using mind control to forcibly reverse an already present mess of mind control, and I'm just not sure it'd be less evil to stack a ton of avoidable deaths on top of that."

"...I think a significant percentage of humans would rather die than be controlled in that way," Jelisa says softly.

I throw my hands up in exasperation.

"Well… humans are crazy!" I snap. "I don't know what else to say to that! Killing humans is something everyone keeps saying I should do less of, and I don't see a better way of accomplishing that here!"

"You can just not take over the island!" Lark counters. "I don't know why that's such a difficult thing to wrap your head around! You need resources, right? That's why you're here? Just take them from the forest and leave the humans alone!"

"The humans won't leave me alone!" I growl, uncurling my tentacles. "They've never done it before and they aren't going to start now! Seriously, you were with the Templars. What happens if I quietly establish a Hiverock colony in the center of the island and just promise to leave everyone alone?"

"...They send people after you," Lark sighs. "That's true. But at least you'd just be defending yourself instead of… y'know."

"Well maybe I don't want to spend my whole fucking life defending myself from idiots that can't take a hint!"

"And you think a solution to that is running a country?" Penelope asks incredulously. "You think being in charge of everyone is going to get them to leave you alone?"

"If it means I can just fucking make them do whatever I want, yes!"

"Um… Vita?" Jelisa says quietly, clearing her throat.

"What!?" I growl at her.

"No, I mean, you're Vita, right?" she asks. "Like, currently?"

"Uh, yes?" I say, tilting my head in confusion. "I guess so?"

"When did you two switch? Sorry, I'm just trying to figure things out."

I flick my wings. When… when did we switch? I don't remember exactly. Malrosa doesn't either, but… I'm Vita. Not Malrosa. But she was definitely the one talking before, right?

"I… I don't know," I admit. "We don't know."

Jelisa tries to give me a calming smile, but I can feel the stress in her soul. I guess that's fair. I'm starting to freak out a little, myself.

"Okay, maybe we should put a pin in things for now, then," Jelisa says. "Before you decide what you want your future to be, I think you need to have a better idea of who you are."