Vigor Mortis

Chapter 184: Crumbling Away

I turn out of the hallway and into the medical room, taking care that the long, sinuous tail behind me follows my movements like a snake, the bend from my turn flowing down the length of my extended spine so that the thick body part doesn't rub up against the doorframe and carve gouges in the wood. The act still takes a noticeable amount of focus, but I'm getting better at it. It helps that I designed this building for someone with my height in mind, though most edifices are not so well-planned.

My name is Lady Vesuvius the Inhuman, and I think I may have underestimated the inherent inconveniences of having a sixteen-and-a-half-foot long tail. Which is not to say that I regret growing one; the added mass houses numerous essential and practical systems which far outweigh the daily inconveniences of having to micromanage my body parts to prevent unwanted injury and wanton property damage, but it's still something I don't believe I gave proper consideration in the design phase.

Of course, my inability to properly consider my own design phase is primarily responsible for my body having been designed at all, so the fact that this problem will be a trend is becoming increasingly apparent as time goes on. Why did I turn my body into this? Is it because it's what I thought Galdra would want? Or is it because I was so overcome with despair at the prospect of no longer having anything but what Galdra wants that I needed to devote myself to whatever project would prevent me from thinking about it for the longest amount of time? Upon reflection I suspect it is the latter, and that concerns me because it makes the dire nature of my situation most clear: if altering my body was my strategy for disassociation, altering my soul was my strategy for suicide.

And I succeeded.

That doesn't matter, though, because performing the act caused it to cease to matter. Now nothing matters beyond my principles, my code for existence. Yet even they keep falling apart whenever I try to leave them alone! My methods of upkeep aren't long-lasting enough, and once the cracks started to show I've been struggling to plug the holes ever since, let alone locate and deal with the root of the problem. I don't even know what the root of the problem is! These are all lamentations for later, however. My own problems are many, but they do not prevent me from having obligations.

"Lady Vesuvius!" an upbeat voice greets me, and I affect a smile on my face.

"Xena," I greet her in return. How strange it is to know the research that made Nugas would end up doing some good. A kindred spirit in the art of physical self-improvement, my duty to Xena is among my most enjoyable. Insofar as I am capable of feeling joy, that is. As much as her enthusiasm stems from hrm, shall we say 'sources impolite in regular company,' I rather exclusively have irregular company so it bothers me little.

"So, um, things seem to be progressing pretty well," she reports, long since used to my disdain for useless smalltalk. "The soreness and aching have stopped, and I think we fixed that error with my hip structure so it isn't popping anymore. I think we should be good to progress?"

"Hmm," I grunt noncommittally. "May I use a biomancy scan on you?"

"Of course," she allows, a hesitancy in her voice that I know has nothing to do with a lack of trust in my skills. She's tried to get me to stop asking, tried to assure me that she trusts me. She has quite reasonably pointed out that the entire reason we meet is so that I can use biomancy on her. It doesn't matter. I must ask for permission every time. It is what should be done.

So I cast, gathering information from my protege's new body. The hip problem is indeed fixed, at least for now. We'll have to monitor them as they continue to shift. These problems are of the sort that aren't serious, but can become serious if we ignore them. When I was bringing Nugas into being, there were times where the man I was using as materials suffered immensely due to my errors in judgment, his body shifting not just in ways he despised but in ways that didn't work. I tormented him through trial and error, but now Xena gets to reap the rewards of that experience.

It was somewhat of a shock when she asked this of me. I knew it was desirable for some people, but it's still odd to have someone purposefully request something that I'd previously used as a form of maddened, deranged torture. I've often lamented the short straw I feel women tend to get in life, so often seen as objects of desire first and competent peers second. Not to mention all the biological inequalities, from physical strength to the ravages of puberty to just the absurd inconvenienceand ultimate painthat is bearing a child. But never once did I consider solving that issue by ceasing to be a woman entirely. It did not cross my mind, and now that it has crossed my mind I still find the idea quite unappealing. I embraced the social issues and turned them into a weapon. I eliminated my own biological inadequacies. That is the way I thought things were supposed to be. I thought we were expected to play the hand we are dealt, and so I played with ruthlessness and ingenuity, rising to the top. I found great pride in that. Yet Xena chose to ignore that seemingly-fundamental rule. She saw an opportunity to shuffle the deck and draw herself a new hand entirely, and I can't help but be impressed that she took it. She says that I inspired her, that my defiance of my humanity sparked the same desire within her. I am not sure my decision was quite so noble, but her words soothe me nonetheless. At least as much as anything can.

"Alright," I confirm, finishing my scan. "We're safe to continue progress."

"Okay, go for it! You're the boss!" Xena assures me.

"Are you giving me permission to enact the biomantic changes we've previously discussed?" I clarify.

"Oh, um yes," Xena nods. "Yes, you have my permission."

I nod and get to work, my tail tendrils twisting to pull Watcher mana into the forms that I require. It takes a good deal of focus, but not so much that I can't start a conversation, and I do feel well. I'm not sure I feel much of anything, per se, but I haven't been properly keeping up to date on the lives of people that used to be important to me, at least in an asset-maintenance sense. It is proper to ask.

"How has Bently been?"

Xena jolts slightly, looking at me with a surprised expression. She didn't expect me to ask about her personal life. She didn't expect me to care. Do I care? My soul hurts, and it's an alien feeling I know nothing about other than its unpleasantness. I feel my chromatophores start to move on their own, and while I'd normally clamp down on the unconscious movement I let it play out on a whim. Pink. My scales are turning slightly pink. It is a color I chose to represent chagrin, regret, and embarrassment. But that was intended to just be an affectation, a purely conscious display to try and signal emotions that people would be expecting. A manipulation tactic. It's not supposed to occur unconsciously.

Perhaps it's just a random error. I know my emotions are leaking somewhat, but it would be absurd to think that my subconscious is dictating artificial bodily changes it shouldn't have any inherent instinct to use in the first place.

"Um, he's uh, been not doing so good actually," Xena admits, snapping my attention back to her.

"Oh?" I prompt.

"Well, uh, he's actually been doing pretty bad since we started living here?" Xena continues. "I think it's a lot of things. Norah's a really big one right now. Vita, too. And, um me."

"You?" I ask. "Why you?"

"Uh," Xena squirms uncomfortably. "It's I mean, we haven't really talked about it so it's really just speculation on my part. I probably shouldn't say."

"That's your decision to make," I assure her. "But you know I won't share anything you tell me in confidence."

Xena goes silent as I berate myself quietly for being surprised by all of this. I haven't really paid any attention to Bently or Norah or well, most people, honestly. I just interact to the degree necessary to do what needs to be done, and well. Is that bad? There's no principle which specifically forbids fraternization, but efficiency in time and action are essential to doing the most good. Therefore, I shouldn't feel bad for letting personal issues fall beneath my notice; they certainly aren't meaningless problems, but they are personal problems, and therefore not mine. I have an island to fix. I do not have time for these sorts of things.

Except that I have time during these sessions. This very conversation proves I could have had conversations with Xena for a month now. I simply focused on other things. My skin grows pinker. My soul aches harder. I feel like two ragged stones grinding against each other.

"...Bently is gay," Xena says slowly, and I resist the urge to jolt. "And I'm a girl."

"Ah," I answer flatly.

"Yeah, 'ah,'" Xena confirms glumly. "When we started dating it was cool. Just two gay dudes breaking unenforced Templar rules for love. Very uncomplicated. I love him to death, he loves me, it's great. But then I figured out y'know, all this."

She motions to herself. Her horns and tail, certainly, but more so her shape, the way her breasts have been growing, her face has been rounding out, her body has been storing more fat and keeping it in her thighs, around her triceps, and in her posterior. The physiological differences between man and woman are both more complicated and more subtle than most people care to think about, the designation between the two often left as an instinctive reaction that our minds are trained to notice without ever becoming consciously aware of. Xena has long since stepped past the threshold of androgynous, her femininity obvious to the deep levels of the human psyche that care for matters such as sex. And Bently's sexual attraction triggers off of men. Of course, the best response to this concern seems obvious.

"I've found that there is more to a relationship than simple sexual attraction," I tell her. "Bently hasn't expressed any desire to break up with you, has he?"

"Well, no," Xena answers. "Not overtly. But he's a huge wonderful teddy bear of a man! What if he's ignoring how he feels to support me?"

"Then you should talk to him about that," I answer easily. "Bad communication is a far worse issue than bad sex could ever hope to be."

"Yeah, I guess so," Xena chuckles. "Gosh, I, uh did not expect to be getting relationship advice from Vesuvius the Inhuman today."

"I have faked enough relationships to understand how to have a real one," I answer, to which Xena gives me an odd look. Doesn't agree? Doesn't think the experiences are comparable? Hrmph. Incorrect, but understandable. Fine then.

"...And I also had a real relationship for a while, I suppose, and it wasn't reliant on my partner's physical attraction to me," I say, ignoring the twinge of pain in my belly that I knew the topic would bring. "Vita was very adamant about never wanting to have sex with anyone, but we loved each other all the same. If Bently wants to stay with you throughout a change that negatively alters his attraction, then that speaks well of other parts of your relationship which are frankly far more important."

"I guess," Xena mumbles. "I like the sex, though. Is it shallow if that's important to me?"

"No, and if that ends up as a problem then that's okay. You can remain good friends. But there's also the possibility that Bently is attracted to you, you know."

"Huh?" Xena blinks. "Wait, no. Bently is definitely attracted to men and not women. I know that for a fact."

"In the general case that's likely true, but physical attraction is often influenced directly by emotional closeness. It's entirely possible that, even though you no longer look like someone he'd conventionally be interested in, he has simply retained prior attraction to you because he loves you. It's hardly unheard of. Think of it like someone still finding their partner beautiful even after that partner becomes horrifically scarred."

"I'd, uh, rather not think of my changes as comparable to being horrifically scarred," Xena grimaces.

"I don't mean it like that," I huff. "I'm just saying that attractiveness is far more nuanced than whether or not he prefers a penis to a vagina. There are countless examples of this."

"But what if it's not like that, though?" Xena whines.

"Well again, that's why you should talk to him about it," I answer flatly. "Maybe he does think you're hideous and is just looking for a good time to break up with you. Better to rip that leech off sooner rather than later."

"Oh Watcher, you think so!?"

I sigh. This is why emotions are terrible. My scales start to turn orange but I ignore that.

"No, I do not think so," I assure her patiently. "I'm just pointing out that there is literally no scenario in which open and honest communication is a bad move. It is always good and it should always be your go-to action when you are feeling unsure. If you ever find yourself with legitimate reasons for this to not be the case you are either being abused or your partner is too immature for a serious relationship and you should leave the situation immediately."

"I feel like you might be oversimplifying things," Xena grimaces.

"No," I insist. "Contrary to popular opinion, relationships are not complicated. They are merely extremely difficult. Those are different things."

"If you say so," Xena grunts. "It sure seems complicated to me."

We'll agree to disagree, then. Blissful quiet returns as I focus on my work, coaxing the cells of Xena's body to multiply in new and exciting ways. I'm very tempted to test some of what I've learned from the Athanatos manuscripts on biological immortality, but no, wait, what am I even thinking!? That's not what Xena and I agreed on. I shouldn't even be considering that! As in, literally, it is not a thing that I should be capable of thinking about in a serious manner!

And now my scales are yellow. What is happening!?

"So, um, why haven't you and Princess talked yet?" Xena asks, and I nearly miscast my spell.

"W-we have?" I stutter. I stutter. I haven't stuttered since I was a child!

"Well then what's up with your relationship, then?" Xena asks. "You talk about it in the past tense but Princess says you two never broke up."

"I I mean, not officially, but I had my love for her scooped out of my soul by a madwoman!" I protest. "I feel like that puts a fairly obvious wall between the two of us."

"...But you never officially broke up with her," Xena presses. "Even though communication is so important."

Grind and scrape, grind and scrape. Emotions spill from the walls of my soul: irritation, frustration, embarrassment, anger. But not love. I'm broken and I'm breaking further. I have a job to do and I must do it. Pink and red swirl around my scales as I try to focus on the biomancy, my talons twitching enough to dig gouges into the floor.

"I would like to ask you to stop talking about this," I nearly growl.

"Oh, uh. Okay," Xena agrees. "Sorry."

"It is fine."

Because it is fine. My principles say as much. People must be able and encouraged to question my decisions and call out my hypocrisies. And when my hypocrisies are called out, they must be fixed. This is what I am. This is immutable. I must get back to work, and then when Vita returns I must speak with her.

There isn't much to think about in regards to Xena's transformation, unfortunately. It is not mentally engaging, it is merely a repeat of treatments that have been applied all week, the entire plan of her body already set in stone and the spells necessary to accomplish it already designed. While our preliminary work was far from perfect and corrections have been needed every step of the way, none of those problems occur today. It feels like drudgery, boring pointless work that wastes my time. I'm not sure I've felt bored since I was stuck in Galdra's home with nothing to do.

I miss her.

The thought hits me like a cart full of bricks, and I feel my soul crack further from the impact. I miss her. I miss her. I know this to be true and I despise it. That insipid, arrogant monster killed me, crushed me more thoroughly than anyone could ever achieve, and I miss her. Perhaps I should have kept her alive after all, if for no other reason than testing some creative tortures. Just working on Xena has me thinking of a hundred different flesh-eating

Wait. No. No! I how have things gotten this bad? I've been repairing myself! Except it obviously isn't working. I I'm not safe. I'm not safe to be around. I have to stop.

"Xena, I need to end our session early," I announce with a calm in my voice that I don't actually feel. "An urgent matter has come to my attention. You can maintain functionality on your own, yes?"

"I yeah, I should be good to go," Xena nods. "Everything okay?"

"No," I answer simply, and swiftly turn around to leave. Having a giant tail is even worse when turning around is involved, but I'm not quite so out of it as to do something ignoble like trip over myself. Not that not that appearances should matter. Fuck!

I storm out of the medical research building, needing to isolate myself for proper maintenance. The moment I step outside, however, Nugas falls into step next to me. Was she waiting this whole time?

"You're looking rather worried about something, my Lady," she hums.

I avoid an urge to scowl. My posture is under control.

"What makes you say so?" I ask.

"You're bright yellow," Nugas smiles.

Ah. Right. That. Well, no sense lying to Nugas.

"My soul seems to be crumbling like a house made of gravel," I tell her frankly. "I need to perform emergency repairs."

"Shall I fetch former Inquisitor Jelisaveta?" Nugas asks. "Just as a second opinion."

"No," I insist. "I'm mentally unstable. I will be isolating myself."

"I will be joining you," Nugas insists.

I glance down at her, consider ordering her to leave, then hate myself for it. It is one thing to make requests of her, and another thing entirely to order her in opposition to something she has decided.

"...Very well," I allow. She grins. I ignore it.

I rush home, Nugas having to jog to keep up with my stride. The house I had built for myself is nearly identical to every other house in town, with the notable exception of the quarantine room. A basement dug out and reinforced both physically and magically to be impermeable to diseases, it was built precisely for an event such as this. I should not allow Nugas to enter with me. I should not deny Nugas' free will. The resolution to this contradiction would be obvious if my soul wasn't damaged, but as-is I struggle to make a decision. Not making a decision is a decision. Nugas enters with me, and I lock us inside.

"Tempted to kill us all, my Lady?" Nugas giggles, clearly not taking this situation seriously. I should not have brought her. It is too late now.

"Any amount of temptation is too much," I answer. "It is indicative of failure."

"My Lady always has such high standards," Nugas hums.

"I have the fate of the island on my shoulders, Nugas," I sigh. "I cannot afford mistakes."

"Oh I know, my Lady," she chuckles. "That is why I shall always be here to help you avoid them."

I curl my tail under me, resisting an urge to scowl as I sit down and start casting the requisite spells to diagnose the issues with my soul. Nugas, as she is wont to do, climbs up onto my lap. I do my best to ignore her and focus on the absolute mess that has become of me. The elegant strata of my soul's walls crumble and break. The defenses I built to house evil, to contain it and reroute it into something productive, are all seemingly useless in the face of whatever erodes it from inside. This is a far more significant problem than I expected.

Souls are complicated and messy. From the initial seed the Mistwatcher plants in us, they grow with wanton purpose, budding pseudo-fractally as they expand and develop into the shape best suited to the mind they symbiotically latch onto. The Mistwatcher does not design people's souls, except perhaps for their talents. If any design was involved in the first place, it is a mere template, a seed with no purpose beyond growing. This growth can manifest itself in unique ways, leaving even souls that look similar on the surface with dramatic differences beneath. To understand a soul's function, one must start at the initial growth, the first roots latched into the target's mind, and read the pathways from there. In all people with talents, the talents are simple to find along these pathways. It is easy to see their influence.

They hang just on the line between brain and spirit, suckling on conscious thought and shitting out twisted urges. My talent made me strong, made me feared, made me skilled. My mastery of biomancy is certainly in part due to my dedication and hard work at the craft, but it cannot be denied that I also had talent, that things simply came easy to me where others would have to put in twice as much effort to achieve half as much progress. Because I had this thing leaking into my soul, whispering hints and nudging thoughts to help me learn everything I could ever need to know about filling someone's blood with bacteria and turning their organs to sludge. My whole life it has pulsed inside me, telling me to hurt people and then laugh.

And I cannot be rid of it.

It tangles through everything, invariably growing into where it was just pruned. I have no way to pull it out at the root, not if I want to survive the experience, and though it should be hypothetically possible to remove a talent, its influence insists that I don't even wish to learn how. To my endless irritation, I realize that this is something that would have been very useful to keep Ars alive for, if he could be persuaded to teach anything that wouldn't be steeped in the stench of a trap.

But no matter, it's too late now and I am nothing if not inventive. I could not remove my impulse to hurt, so I rerouted it. Avoiding talent use, avoiding growth, would misfire the sadistic impulse and instead cause an impulse to obey my principles. It was a bit of a hack job, so to speak, but it worked. At least for a time. But the ever-growing unfulfilled impulses remained, budding and bubbling inside me, and when I cracked my soul fighting Sky they found a foothold to infect the very walls I built to contain them, dissolving them from within. It's broken, now. It's all broken and only going to keep getting worse.

The walls of my soul are cracking like an eggshell and I don't have the slightest fucking clue what's been going on inside.

That was the whole point, after all. Everything I used to be was supposed to be bypassed, locked up, made irrelevant. I am a torturer, a war criminal, a mind rapist, an inhuman monster, and I should not be allowed to exist. So I removed myself, locked myself away, and became my own warden. As long as I held it all inside, I never needed to look at it again. It was not a priority. It was an embarrassment, a mistake, a horrid, horrid evil to be rejected at all costs. But now it's festering, infecting the walls meant to keep it in. I need a new way to fix it, and I need one now.

Galdra only left me with so much blank anima to form walls with, after all.

"Hmm. Why aren't you casting anything, my Lady?" Nugas asks. I blink, turning my attention to where she's cuddled up against my chest. I suppose I can hardly blame her for being so obsessed with touch, considering what I did to her.

"My methods were insufficient," I answer. "I have to plan and test new ones."

"I volunteer to be a test subject, my Lady," Nugas grins, already knowing I'll deny her.

"No," I say anyway, because clarity is important.

"Oh, very well," she sighs. "I'll just have to test things on myself without you. Much less fun, but we do what we must."

I jolt at that, my wings spreading instinctively as my bodyagainshifts from white to yellow without my input.

"Well, you keep refusing to finish me," Nugas pouts in explanation, and I know she intends the double entendre but now's not really the time to think about that. "I've told you many times I want to forget who I was before, but since you won't kill him for good I've taken to learning animancy on my own."

"I Nugas, that's"

"What's wrong, my Lady?" Nugas coos, circling her finger just under my collarbone. "You seem rather concerned at the prospect of me taking my soul into my own hands."

I open my mouth, then close it, glowering at her. She returns my look with a smile of perfect innocence.

"Hypocrisy again, is it?" I grumble.

"Oh no, my Lady," Nugas disagrees. "I think there is a significant qualitative difference between your situation and mine that makes them incomparable. After all, I'm trying to embrace myself and be happier, whereas you are doing your utmost to be as miserable as possible."

I let out a frustrated huff of air, looking at the back of my own hand. Pink and red again. Wonderful. Nugas snuggles up closer to me, her arm resting between my breasts in a way that almostalmostcrosses a line. Any other day and I think I would have stopped her.

"I am an amateur compared to you, my Lady," she says softly. "So perhaps my theories do not hold much weight. But you and I are your two greatest works, and only one of us is breaking. Why do you think that is?"

"Well, I thought it was because I had so much more time to work on you," I scowl, trying to focus on the disgust I felt after her creation more than the perverse joy I had in the moment. "I altered your soul over the course of months. I altered mine over the course of hours. But that should have been offset by the constant upkeep I've been performing since then. My brain should have adapted by now, it simply hasn't."

"Well I can't comment on that," Nugas hums. "But I know that I love being myself almost as much as I love you, and I think that same joy would be beneficial to you, my Lady."

"So what, then?" I sneer. "I should just drown my soul in pleasure activators until it stops wanting to have other emotions? Dope myself up on joy until I can't see how fucking horrific I've become?"

Nugas pulls away from me at that, propping herself up on one arm, back arched so she can glower at my face.

"Is that all you think I am, my Lady?" she snaps, her tone more serious than anything I've ever heard from her. It shakes me, and a few more shards of myself flake off as a result.

"I no," I breathe. "I'm sorry, Nugas."

"Hmph," she pouts, settling back in against my chest. "I should think not. You're clearly upset, so I'll let it slide."

A laugh falls unbidden out of my throat, my scales briefly flashing blue.

"You'll let it slide?" I ask incredulously. "I thought you considered me a goddess."

"I do," Nugas confirms with certainty. "But my goddess has always been a known proponent of blasphemy."

She closes her eyes, a self-satisfied smile on her face as I'm once again left speechless. The ache in my stomach just grows and grows, the horrid feelings I tried to lock away leaking out in fetid bursts of animantic pus.

"Do you know how I know that I love you, my Lady?" Nugas asks.

"How," I prompt, almost automatically.

"Servitude," she answers. "It is the act of putting all I am into bringing you happiness. It is the unflinching knowledge that any time I devote to that is beautiful and joyous. I have friends. I have acquaintances. I enjoy telling jokes and teasing goddesses and cooking food and designing clothes. But it is in serving you that I find my most joy. Not just being with you. Not having your attention, not my admittedly enjoyable fantasies of laying in your bed. It is the act of making you happy that brings the greatest light to my life. The act of putting you first is the most selfish thing I am capable of doing, for nothing else is as fulfilling. That, I think, is love."

"I see," I answer, not sure what else she expects me to say. Honestly, she shouldn't even be here. I'm breaking apart. I'm becoming dangerous. I know I could break my principles now, if I was moved to. I have that power again, and it is not power that I should ever wield. What should I do? Remove her from my home and wait for Vita? Hope her skills and mine can form a solution? I feel hot, anxious, and increasingly unstable. I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to do a hundred thousand things I haven't wanted in months because I needed them gone, I needed to not want what she wanted from me, I needed to be nothing but logic and axiom made flesh because she was my only reason for existing and now she's dead, she's gone, I killed her, I forged myself into a weapon specifically to kill her! And Nugas convinced me to do it. She enabled me. She set this all up on purpose.

I want to hurt her.

Galdra took everything from me, but at least I had Galdra. No. No, stop, this is insane. This is literally, actually insane. I'm suffering a severe breakdown and I don't care she's right here I want to hurt her.

"Nugas," I hiss. "Run."

She smiles, vulpine and far too knowing.

"Is that an order, my Lady?"

I open my mouth but I can't respond, wanting to order her away but not wanting to order her at all because she's not a slave, she's a person, she's a mistake I made, she's a victim and I haven't had a good victim in months. I haven't used my talent in far, far too long and it aches, it hurts and the walls are crashing down and I need something to blame, anything to hate, to hurt, to crush under my heel until the world remembers that I am motherfucking Penelope Vesuvius and I do not take shit from anyone. Not Galdra and certainly not my own. Fucking. Toy.

"I don't want to hurt you," I choke desperately.

"Come now, my Lady," Nugas coos, reaching up to cup my cheeks. "We both know that's a lie."

Fuck her. Fuck her schemes. Did she set all this up to finally break me? Is this revenge? Does she think she bested me?

"You made me," Nugas says softly, scooting up to reach my face, "because losing her hurt so much. Because all you ever wanted was someone who understood you, who knew you in and out, at your best and at your absolute worst, and loved you anyway."

She pulls herself closer and plants a kiss on my cheek.

"You got your wish," she says, her breath tickling my scales. "Isn't that a beautiful thing?"

My body turns jet black, and disease floods the room. A horrid cocktail of death, slow and painful and maximally horrific. A disease designed to kill, certainly, but more than that it's a disease designed to torture. To end a life in the most inhumane possible way.

Nugas is a woman with terrifying pain resistance after all I put her through, but even she staggers the next time she inhales, the inside of her lungs attacked first. It's just enough damage to feel it, to shake every breath with agony but not quite suffocate. Things move on from there as the bloodstream picks up my abomination and carries it through her body, distributing it around so organs can fire off warning signals and skin can start to dissolve away. In barely half a minute, I watch as her arm starts to shrivel, the skin opening up with bubbling pops like sauce on a hot pan. She chokes, a thick yellow fluid dripping down her chin as the horrid, leaking disfiguration of her skin crawls up her shoulder and onto her face. She lets out an involuntary cry of agony and my whole body tingles with delight, especially between my legs. It has been so long.

"There you are," Nugas coughs quietly. "That's the smile I haven't seen since then."

What? Oh. Oh fuck, what am I doing? No, no no no, not like this. I halt my talent immediately, twisting my tail to heal her instead, to cure her, to save her from my horrid, horrid mistakes. She collapses to the ground and I reach forward to catch her, magic running through her body as fast as I can send it to her.

"Was it as good for you as it was for me?" Nugas asks groggily, her eyeball leaking out of its socket.

"Shut up and let me heal you," I hiss.

"Is that an order my Lady?"

"Yes," I snarl.

She grins, looking like she wants to laugh but staying perfectly silent.

It is not hard to save her life. The disease is fast-acting, but not on anything vital. The cold fear in my heart has nothing to do with any risk to Nugas. Nugas. That that fucking I can't believe she wanted me to do this! Why? Why? Why do I have to keep proving myself a monster? Why, time and time again, do I have to slip up and fail and turn out to still be the same fucked up little girl who tortures ants in her mother's garden?

I fix her almost as rapidly as I tore her apart, though repair is always a more difficult task than destruction. Especially so when my whole body shakes uncontrollably, my soul crying out in agony as the Watcher mana I channel hardly even understands where it's supposed to go in my abominable mess of a core. It's broken. It's all broken. I watch her skin mend itself back together and wish I could keep watching it in reverse. What if I use my body instead of my magic? I could so easily slide my claws into her flesh, open her up from belly to breast just to watch the red bloom out of her. It would be so beautiful.

Nugas licks her lips, a sultry smile parting her still-repairing face. I ignore it. I must. With the last bit of myself, I must. I cast a few quick spells to ensure she'll be able to heal the rest on her own, then turn and run out of my house as fast as I can. I take to the air the moment I'm able, shooting off into the forest, looking to be anywhere but around people I could hurt. I've failed. I've failed and I've fallen apart and everything I've done is for nothing, nothing at all. I spot an animal below me and barely even acknowledge the species before a scream rips itself from my throat and I fall on it from above and stomp it into paste. My scales are still black. Black is not an emotion I decided upon, but I suppose is the natural consequence of trying to display every color at once. Anger, fear, joy, hatred, shame, pleasure, pain, relief, despair it all pours out of me like blood from a severed limb, and I indulge it with violence.

Like the creature I took my scales from, I devolve into nothing but a terror of the forest.

Catharsis, in most cases, is a moment of calm. It is defined as a relief from repression, and I feel something like it as I rip through the forest indiscriminately, my howling roars nowhere near enough warning for the monsters I mash into paste, reveling in the indulgence of my every inhibition. Plague. Plague. Plague! Even as I work my body, use my talons and tail to smash flesh into fluid and bone into powder, I unleash a far more potent death into the world. Plagues designed in my darkest moments, genocides hidden within my flesh and begging for release. Not all of them, thank the fucking inevitability of decay. What little sanity remains in my screaming prison of flesh holds tight to the island-enders, the human-killers, and the never-made hypotheticals that are theorized to be far worse. Death still sweeps out from me, cascading through the forest and leaving countless corpses to rot. So of course, the vrothizo start to come.

Their food falling in droves around them, instinct drives the maddened black beasts towards the most powerful thing they can smell: me. I welcome it. Let me kill them all. Let me do something good for once. To slaughter these tortured creatures as a fraction of my penance for becoming one far worse. I'm mad. Utterly broken. I know that I will have to be put down. I will fight to the end regardless. I will kill all who oppose me, no matter how just their cause, because I do not want to die. Even though there is nothing left of me, I do not want to die. I cannot even spare the world that much.

But as I knew she would, death inevitably comes.

"Hey there, Penelope," Princess says.

Perhaps the monsters I am fighting drop dead when she arrives. Perhaps they were already dead, and I have simply been screaming at corpses for the last hour. It does not matter. I turn to stare at her, my body breathing heavily even though I can use magic to forgo breathing at all. She is armed and armored, her custom dragonscale outfit imposing outside of the reality that just my skin is far superior. Six daggers float in the air around her as she rests Norah on one shoulder, two arms holding her shaft, while her other two arms hold a second scythe made of frozen air. I, meanwhile, am naked and covered from head to toe in blood and viscera of countless colors, a maddened barbarian of gore standing in the refuse of her legacy. She stares at me, and I do not recognize what expression she is making. It's possible I've never seen it before. It's more likely that my mind is gone.

"Damn," Vita sighs. "You really need a nap."

Every Athanatos-targeting plague I have is unleashed on her in a single moment. Their immune systems, though both alien and advanced beyond measure, are still easily picked apart by the pulsing, evil thing in my soul, the part of me that survived more wholly than any other. Their breathing vents fail to filter out anything small enough. Their immune systems can be confused and delayed by specific protein configurations. Their organs only have so many redundancies. Their abnormal acidity does not protect against specially-designed cells. She will die in a hundred ways, broken and bleeding and burned away from the inside, dead in mere seconds of agony.

"No," Vita says, and a raging wind pairs with an ocean of blue. My offense is repelled, and my magic is sealed, all in an instant. "Just give up. I'm not going to hurt you."

But you should. But you must.

"But I don't have to," Vita shrugs. "So I won't. If you don't like it, come do something about it."

I leap forward with a roar, and our dance begins. Physically, I am stronger than her, even with her soul supporting her body. But she has four arms, invincible armor, weapons held by tentacles that can strike from any direction, and far more hand-to-hand combat experience. I don't stand a chance without magic, and we both know it. At any point she could end this, but all she does is try to keep me inside her mana bubble, deflecting my strikes and reinforcing my powerlessness. Taunting me. Proving that she's better.

"Arrogant little bitch," I hiss.

"It's probably better if we talk about you after the fight," she quips back.

I scream and double down on ferocity, though all it seems to accomplish is increasing the burn in my muscles, the exhaustion I could wipe away with a single spell if I had access to my magic. My body is not designed to go this long without magic. I was never made to be Vita's enemy. Never.

It hurts. I fight on. I don't know why. I suppose there is no why. I'm just a beast, a thing of unchecked emotion and fury. I tried to hold it all in. I tried. All for nothing. I start to slow, to flag, until eventually, I collapse, panting and exhausted. My body will no longer move. I have nothing left. Vita sits down next to me, and the two of us wait in silence. Despite my rage, my fury, she seems utterly implacable. She lets her scythe of ice sublimate away, dissolving into mist and air as her tendrils sheathe her barely-used daggers. She stares out towards the battlefield we just carved through the forest, her posture somehow casual and regal. A reclining Queen. A force of nature that just swept over me like it was inevitable. There isn't anything to say, and yet there are endless things to say, all of it far too much.

"I don't love you," I decide on, since some part of me still wants to see her hurt.

"I know," she answers. Because of course she knows. I'm a fool to think that truth is a surprise.

"You wanted this, didn't you?" I cough. "You and Nugas both."

"I mean, we didn't conspire for this specific outcome or anything. This was, uh, a pretty big surprise when I got back from Skyhope. But did both of us want you to stop being an idiot? Yeah, of course we did."

"This," I hiss, "is what you think me not being an idiot looks like? This death?"

All around us, green leaves fall from dead trees, their branches and stems decaying away faster than the color can leave them. The mound of other corpses I've left nearby festers in the afternoon heat, the smell of rot coming quickly as my diseases continue to devour them. Monster blood soaks into dirt, turning it into a thick, repulsive slurry of mud. It's just death, mindless and wasteful. The sum of me made clear. Vita sighs, lets go of Norah, and motions her away. The scythe that was once something close to a friend flies off, leaving the two of us alone.

"This," Vita sighs, "is the obvious consequence of you trying to pretend you don't have feelings. The mind runs off of feelings, emotion is the very core of consciousness. Of course your brain couldn't adapt to the changes you made, you were expecting an impossibility."

"You should have said something," I hiss.

"I was gonna!" Vita snaps back. "But you didn't want to listen! You kept ignoring me and pushing me away when I tried to talk about your soul!"

"Because what was I supposed to change!?" I shriek back at her. "You want me to be who I used to be, but I can't. Not just on principle, I can't. She's gone. I'm not that Penelope anymore."

She glances down at me, giving me an odd look.

"...Do you really think I'm 'that Vita?'" she asks. "You're enough of you for me to still love. That's what matters. You're still brilliant, you're still driven, you're still a terrible, terrible person that's struggling to do the right thing. You're still the Penelope that will pick me up and dust me off when I get my shit kicked in. You're still the Penelope that built a safe place for my family. You really think that I, of all people, give a fuck if that's not exactly the same as it used to be?"

The ache. Oh, the damn ache. Don't say those things to me. I can't stand what I've lost.

"You could have put that love back, if you wanted," Vita says softly. "Why didn't you?"

Shakily, my muscles still burning, I make the effort to prop myself up on one elbow. To stare her in the face.

"I wanted to see if I could fall in love again," I admit, my voice a whisper.

"Yeah?" she asks, reaching out to grab my face. "Then let's see."

As she leans down, she also brings me up, pulling us closer and closer. It starts with our foreheads touching, the hard chill of her chitin pressing up against the top of my head, and that alone is enough to spark something inside me, something I can barely remember. But soon we lean in so my nose touches her, and then finally my lips. It's an awkward kiss, one-sided against her blank, porcelain face, unmoving and ungiving. Yet it fills me nonetheless, a warmth entirely unlike that which I felt when soaking in Nugas' agony. Calmer, richer, no less enjoyable but still profoundly different. A gift of love, from a woman that does not like to be touched. There's the slightest, quietest snapping sound when we pull apart, her face now sticky with monster blood, but neither of us think to care. We just stare into each other's eyes, breathless and warm.

"...Huh," Vita murmurs, utterly ruining the moment yet somehow making me amused rather than annoyed. "You turned blue. Why did you turn blue?"

"I it's the color I chose for happiness," I answer.

"You chose the exact shade of my mana and soul as your color for happiness," she presses, an amused tinge to her words.

"Um. Yes?" I manage, trying to ignore how I am now also turning pink.

"I see," she says, helping me sit up a little straighter.

"It is an arbitrary choice," I insist.

"Of course," she agrees without believing a word of it. "Would you like to kiss me again?"

"...Yes."

This time, I pick her up, lifting her in my arms so she can be the one to reach up to my face. It's still awkward, still strange, but I don't want to let go. Neither, it seems, does she. I feel her mana questing inside me, pushing into my sore and battered mess of a soul, so I open the doors for her. Casting spells in my madness was painful, the Watcher mana fighting me and aggravating every crack and break within, but Vita is like a soothing balm, gentle and ready. I already know what she wants. I form her into an anima tangibility spell, and she embraces me in truth. Tendrils wrap around my body and we hold each other like we haven't held each other in so, so long. Minutes pass like that in blissful peace, filling me with a joy I had forgotten was possible.

"So," Vita prompts quietly. "Girlfriends?"

"Maybe," I admit.

She squeezes me a little tighter and my heart skips a beat.

"...Probably," I amend. "I am still unstable. I do not know who I am anymore. I do not know what to do. I don't think I'm safe for most people to be around."

"We can work on all of that," Vita assures me. "Together, and with help from friends. We should, uh, probably start with all the plagues you just dropped everywhere. We still need some of the forest to stay alive."

I grimace, trying and failing to banish my horrid episode from memory. Another regret for the books, I suppose.

"I am not actually sure I can stop what I've done," I admit. "The diseases I've used are beyond the bounds of what I would have ever considered acceptable while sane, and they have already cascaded out of my control."

"Then do what we did with Ars," Vita shrugs. "Make a disease to kill the disease. Like an airborne immune system."

"It could just as easily add to the problem," I argue, shaking my head. "The number of generations it would need to survive to keep up with an exponentially-accelerating plague could easily enable it to mutate, and if it mutates into something that targets beneficial microbes, then"

"Then you'll handle it," Vita insists. "You don't need to hold yourself back. I trust you."

"You are a fool to do so," I insist, but I'm already thinking of counter-plagues.

"I am cuddling a naked monster woman who killed a High Templar with nothing but her tail, drenched in blood and self-professedly insane, and there is nowhere in the fucking world that I would rather be. I'm willing to admit that I might be at least a little bit of a fool, and that's fine by me."

"I can't help but find myself surprised by that," I murmur. "As much as I cared care for you, I never found you particularly self-aware. Or particularly humble."

She makes a noise somewhere between a scoff and a laugh.

"Yeah, well, I like to think that we can become better people if we try," she says dryly. "No matter how awful our starting point is."

Oh. Fuck. That makes it clear, I think. Even more than the kiss. Vita's eyes crinkle into a knowing smirk, a tendril wrapping around my hand and giving it a soft squeeze. I can't help but squeeze back.

"I love you," I realize.

"I know," she answers. Because of course she knows. I'm a fool to think that truth is a surprise.