Chương 118: 116. Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

Four fully-sized Templar souls dissolve within me, pulsing my body full of fresh power. Oh, yes. Yes. That's the good shit. It's about fucking time. I step through the now-open exit to my cell, reaching down to rip off the helmet of one of the deceased Templars that has been torturing me for the past two fucking years. I drape it over my head, and while it's a bit too big it'll do. It's certainly better than nothing.

Similarly, I pull off gloves and arm guards, strapping myself up so that I'm maximally covered if I need Norah to protect me. After all, I feel Sky causing havoc up above and I wouldn't be surprised if he's angry enough for a rematch. In addition to Sky, my rescue crew seems to consist of Mateo and Netta (which is great, because I was kinda worried they would starve without me) and, as she once promised me, Lyn. Shit, I just want to run upstairs and hug her as soon as possible. She's here! She came for me!

I love her so much I want to cry. My stay here… well, saying that it has been challenging is about the most respectful way I can put it. Templars may be nice enough at first, but once they figure out I'm not going to buy into their bullshit they slowly but surely start to get nastier, showing their true colors. It's so fucking easy for them to justify hurting me in every way they can imagine when they convince themselves I'm just some insane monster. Bastards.

I could have broken out of my cell ages ago, and holy shit it has been so tempting. So many times I nearly snapped and slaughtered everyone around me. Unfortunately, there are a handful of people in this prison that I'm pretty certain would kick my ass. I could make it pretty far, sure, but only by playing my hand, so when I get caught I run the risk of them figuring out enough about me to counter those tricks.

I will not make the mistake of underestimating how far my enemies are willing to escalate in order to fuck me. But this? This is the chance I've been waiting for. With Sky to keep their heavy hitters busy, this is the best shot I will ever have at getting out of here. The vast majority of the Templars are upstairs trying to deal with the breach, so I'm free to wreak havoc down here until someone particularly nasty finishes running down thirty flights of stairs.

And I'm pretty sure that's about to happen, so I figure I'll stack the deck as much as I can. There are a lot of Templars past the security door down the hall, as well as the strongest person in the prison. He's definitely some kind of cognimancer, but he's been here even longer than I have so I figure whoever the guy is, he'll be happy to help me out. As I start to move, though, Jelisa calls out to me.

"Vita, wait," she blurts quickly.

"T-the closer stairwell is that way." Aww, she's trying to be manipulative. That's cute. Obviously, she just wants to keep me away from the other prisoner on this floor. She's not technically lying, though, so I forgive her. Plus, I have to admit I love her soul. A colorless, spherical vibration, smelling of fresh mulch and fruit.

Like Penelope, her emotions seem to take the form of a song, starting as a discordant chaos whenever she wakes up in the morning but quickly progressing into complicated yet gorgeous symphonies. She also reminds me of Lyn, a warm heat to her that soothes just by looking at it. A lot of Templars can be nice, even are nice, at least for the first few months or so.

What makes Jelisaveta special is that she's nice even to the people that freak her out, she's nice to the people she thinks are crazy and dangerous, and she's nice to the people that she thinks are wrong. And she's not just nice, she respects them. It's super weird. I don't really know how to handle being respected by things I haven't mind controlled. But out of every Templar here, I know she's the only one that deserves to live.

"I know," I tell her frankly.

"I just figured I'd go see why nine different Templars are all trying to make sure the guy next door doesn't get out. And then, you know, let him out."

"Vita, you can't," she begs. I gesture towards the corpses at my feet.

"Pretty sure I can."

"You shouldn't!" Jelisaveta insists.

"Please. If you have any gratitude towards me… I would rather you kill me than go free that man." I frown. Well, if she puts it like that, I'm only going to get more curious.

"Fortunate for you that I'm not negotiating, then," I say, shrugging.

"You're coming with me, and I'm keeping you alive. That's not an offer, it's a statement."

"Vita, please," Jelisaveta whines as I walk over and grab her arm.

"That's... that's Ars Rainier. You have no idea what he could do!" Well she's absolutely right, considering I have no fucking idea who that even is. Guess I'll find out, then. Dragging a still-protesting Jelisaveta, I walk over to the door separating the two halves of the bottom floor. I kick it down just to see if I can, and it blasts into the room, knocking down one of the guards in the hall. Immediately, I'm caught in a kinetic restrainment spell, magical energy surrounding my body and locking down my movement.

All kinds of other spells start probing at my magic resistance, but I just dip into my internal well of mana, drawing on the channels I've been massaging wider ever since I got here to fill my body with my true self. My flesh is my domain, and with sovereignty established their spells shatter against my walls. Only the restraining spell continues to work, since it's locking down the area outside my body rather than trying to do something within it. Although that's also a pretty temporary state of affairs.

"Run," Jelisaveta chokes, as if it would save her comrades if they obeyed.

"We will die before we allow her to free the monster trapped here," one of the Templars spits furiously in response.

"Well, yeah," I agree.

"That does seem to be the likely order of events, doesn't it?" A handful of them are already standing in my kill range, after all; I've grown it all the way up to twelve feet over the past two years. So I prepare four shards before quickly murdering, enslaving, and reanimating those in my range. They stagger, stunned and confused by what I just did to them as their allies cry out, the Inquisitors among them warning the others.

"Kill them," I order my Revenants. One of the undead Templars collapses, curling into a ball and hyperventilating as she desperately fights against my order. The other three burst into action, two of them drawing blades and spinning around to swing at the five still-living guards. The last screams in terror, protests and apologies echoing loudly off the walls as he nonetheless starts casting a deadly ice spell.

To the credit of the Templars, they seem quite prepared for the problem of suddenly and unexpectedly needing to kill their own allies... which I'm tempted to use as evidence for their lack of virtue, but honestly it's just good sense.

I can see in moments my Revenants will lose, as they are both outnumbered and actively attempting to fight their orders, so I let a pulse of mana leave my skin, break the kineticism spell holding me in place, and stroll forward to kill the rest of the bastards myself, tentacles whipping mercilessly through them. Seconds later, the other five stand back up, the internal turmoil of being forced to reconsider all of their life choices raging inside each of their souls.

"Guard Jelisa," I order all of them.

"Don't let her die, and don't let her escape. You should be trained for that, right?" Now then… the prisoner here. I mean, it won't really be hard to break him out since I can just open any lock I want. One of my Revenants has the balls to speak up when I approach the door, though.

"V-vi... Miss Vita," he stutters.

"I don't think you should go in there. D-don't let him out. He might hurt you..." Well, at least this one isn't trying to trick me like Jelisa, but it doesn't change the fact that I need another heavy hitter to deal with the guards I can't kill myself. Sky can only fight so many... and if anything can deal with the threats above, it's this guy.

"I'll be okay," I promise. The soul on the other side of this heavy security door is wild. He kind of seems like a splice, but instead of a bunch of soul fragments glued together it's one fully intact soul with bits of others grafted on like pulsating tumors. Some of them are stuck on with the purple gunk that keeps Capita together, some of them are clamped like a vice and some of them are fused partially through the core.

The core itself is kind of nasty, a tar-like sump of leaching, sucking, flesh-textured darkness. Energy from the core flows through and around the body, outlining a deathly frail and thin figure. It seeps into the kaleidoscope of other souls grafted onto it, a smorgasbord of shapes and colors, half of which seem haphazardly sewn on while the others appear very purposefully positioned, like a carefully-built doll with a dozen random extra pieces.

Yet still, the soul beats with a warm strength, somehow comforting despite its monstrousness. If anything, it seems sad. Resigned to the trap he has been captured in, the nature of this prisoner's cell means he has no idea that in just a few seconds, freedom will be walking inside. I face the door, and open it. Facing away from the door, I exit. Back in the hallway where my Revenants wait loyally in a circle around the one Templar I have deigned to keep alive, I try to decide on my next move.

A powerful, High Templar-level soul has just started descending down the stairs, so I need some way to… wait. There's a powerful soul right behind me. A prisoner. I was just walking in to free him. What?

I turn around, and to my surprise I find that both sets of high-security prison doors are already ajar, and inside— About to push the door to the stairwell open, I try to figure out a better plan than just having nine relatively weak Templars (at least by Templars standards, which I admit are extremely high) rush the target descending to stop me. I feel like there was one right at the edge of my mind, but what could it be? I don't have any other assets. I need Sky to get here first, or I need... wait.

There's a powerful soul right behind me. Why don't I just use that? Wait a minute, wasn't I literally just about to use that? I turn around, and— The massive soul heading my way will be here in less than a minute. Thirty flights of stairs separated us, but that number is rapidly closing. Too rapidly. Still, they don't seem that fast. What's stopping me from just taking the opposite staircase and passing them on the way up? I can meet up with Sky and together we could take them easy.

Of course, that runs the risk of Sky turning on me. Another asset would... wait, fuck!

"What's going on?" I demand, tendrils writhing as I clench and unclench my fingers.

"I-uh, we d-don't know," one of my Revenants babbles.

"Whenever you look at Ar—" I'm in a new place again, but this time I expect it. That huge soul jumped down a bit... so I'm losing memories. Shit! It has to have something to do with the prisoner in that cell!

"Do you guys have a fucking cognimancy spell guarding your high-security cognimancer!?" I snarl.

"We don't," Jelisa breathes, tears running down her face.

"Of course we don't!"

"Then what's he doing?" I snap.

"Nothing. There's no way he can cast anything," one of the Revenants hisses.

"Vita did!" Jelisaveta retorts.

"That's why you're all—""Look, if he was casting on her why would Ars—" Again. The soul in the stairs teleports down just a little. Another skip! Fuck!

"Keep saying that name," I growl, staring intently at my own soul.

"What name?"

"I don't know! The one I can't fucking remember!"

"You mean Ars?" There. There it is. A tiny, innocuous little tumor in my soul pulses at the sound of that name, pulling and twisting the area around it to capture and contain the memory. The spell is amazingly tiny, so cleverly hidden that it's no wonder I never spotted it without looking before. A pulsating knot of magic and memory, almost imperceptibly sucking in miniscule traces of my mana to sustain itself. Some damn cognimancer thinks he's smart, huh? Fuck that.

I shove a tendril inside myself, grasp the tumor that dares, that fucking dares to touch my soul, and crush it to pieces. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Let's try this again," I growl, and walk into Ars' cell. I thought my living conditions were bad, but even I'm surprised to see the security this man is under. Despite the doors to his cell being open, he seems no closer to being free than he was before: he is strapped to the wall, his entire body bound to be fully immobile. His feet don't even touch the ground, and no part of him is visible except for his eyes, which are a deep green. Everything else is bound tight.

His collar has no lock, his jaw-muzzle having never been designed to be removed. Unlike mine, the feeding tube is built in, remaining permanently stuffed down his throat so that the man can be easily kept alive against his will. He regards me with intense interest as I approach, though more than anything his eyes seem drawn to the stuffed bird I hold under one arm. Which is fair, I guess, because Rosco is pretty awesome.

As I get closer, purple threads of soul just like Capita's start seeping out of the cracks where the spirit-gunk hides, and I tense immediately. Is he really going to try? To my surprise, however, they don't reach towards me. Instead, they loop and twist in the air, and to my irritation they force me to use a skill I don't even remember learning: reading cursive. Where did you get that toy? Toy? Toy!? I don't have time for this bullshit.

I grab the threads with a tendril and smash them to dust, slamming my hand through into the wall by his head hard enough to crack it.

"Don't you fucking think about bringing Rosco into this," I hiss.

"The only thing you need to know is that someone as strong as a High Templar is rushing down to greet us. Are you going to help me kill them, or are you going to try to fuck me over?" He can't answer and I don't need him to. As freakish as his soul is, I can still read it. He intends to help. He's excited, curious… proud? Whatever, doesn't matter. There's no duplicity. There's technically a risk that being an animancer lets him spoof what I read from his soul, but…

well, I can't trust his words either in that case and I'm both desperate and out of time. I can't just order his bindings open since they don't, you know, open, but that's fine. It's what brute force is for. Ignoring Jelisa's panicked protests, I grab the chunks of metal holding him to the wall and yank. It takes all my strength and a few tugs, but eventually the entire set of restraints break cleanly off the wall and I set to bending, smashing, and snapping them apart.

The outline I felt from where his spiritual energy flows was accurate: the more I reveal of this guy, the more it becomes clear he's emaciated as fuck. I guess being literally unable to move a muscle and getting fed through a tube for who knows how many years will do that to a person. Worse, when I break his gloves I find that the Templars actually cut off all his fingers, leaving nothing but stumps.

From there I get my hands around his collar—it's a bit loose, presumably because the guy got so much thinner—and with a growl I twist the metal in half with a satisfying snap. I yank the muzzle off, pulling the long, saliva-dripping feeding tube out along with it.

"Vita," Ars chokes out like he's almost forgotten how.

"I almost didn't recognize you." Wait, how the fuck does he… shit. No, he's obviously the person that put the tumor in my soul, so he has to know me from somewhere. When could he have possibly done that? It didn't look like a recent addition.

"Great, good for you," I snap.

"We're twenty seconds to contact, so get your ass up." The thin old man starts staggering to his feet, his soul supporting his atrophied muscles in the same way Remus and most of the Templars enhance their bodies for combat. Ugh, he's so tall! Everyone's taller than me, but this is ridiculous. It's tough to say for certain, but my guess is that Ars is a bit under Galdra's age, around fifty-some years old.

If I'm wrong, he's probably younger than that; the dude looks like absolute shit and he probably has more wrinkles than a normal person from having so much more skin than muscle.

"I'm just saying, it's good you kept my gift," he continues, his deep voice sounding like he expects it to be buttery smooth but forgot that he's been dehydrated for at least a decade.

"I have no idea who you are," I grunt.

"Fifteen seconds."

"I… what?" he frowns, stretching his body.

"No, you should remember now."

"Are you ready to kill a man or not, you old bastard!?" He sighs.

"Sure, I suppose. There's no need to be rude young… er, lady. Hmm. You wouldn't happen to have a spare soul, would you?" I shrug, glancing over to where my nine Revenants are all huddled in terror around Jelisa. I quickly determine the one putting the most effort into resisting my shard and kill her again, letting them drop unceremoniously to the floor as Ars and I exit his cell. The other Revenants freak the fuck out and jump away from the body as I hand Ars what he asked for.

Throughout the entire process, a grin starts blossoming on his face, growing wider and wider as I hand him the valuable morsel. He snatches it greedily, cradling it between two fingerless palms.

"Wonderful. Hmm. I suppose I should probably do a few warm-ups before casting after so long."

"Five seconds!" I snap.

"Ah, well. Nothing for it, then." He takes a deep breath and then, to my surprise, starts… well, 'singing' is a strong term. Claretta casts magic by singing, but Ars just makes a horrible, chaotic din. Deep-throated and powerful, his warbling shapes the mana in the place of his entirely-missing fingers. I feel the Mistwatcher mana around me flowing into him, subtly lessening the pressure in the room as the soul I gave him starts spinning and the person that soul comprises suddenly wakes up.

I'm so startled I almost jump backwards. I've never seen a soul be conscious unless it's controlling a corporeal body! Normally they just hang in stasis, be they floating in the air or safe inside my body. I don't marvel at it for long, however, because Ars' wretched 'music' quickly reaches a peak and is joined by the horrible non-sound of the soul starting to scream.

The person in the soul doesn't actually scream, since she can't, but I feel her wake up only to be subjected to such an all-consuming, all-destroying pain that I have no other way to describe her reaction. The feeling tears into me, and in turn Ars tears into the soul, purple threads shredding her as she spins like he's peeling a fucking potato. One layer of soul is snipped off, like a twisting, whip-like tube of spiritual matter, but it continues to scream in conjunction with the person it came from.

In just a few seconds, the soul is reduced to more and more of the horrible, tortured spirit creatures until there is nothing left. They fly and wail around Ars's body, and as the High Templar blasts into the room—official uniform and all—he sends the soul-things shrieking towards our target. The High Templar doesn't just take it; immediately, strands of congealed mana burst from his armor, so absurdly dense in structure they're actually visible to the unaided eye.

They look like globs of dehydrated piss forming a wriggling, living net, one that I know will spell the end for my escape plan if I make contact. I leap backwards, sending a wall of tentacles pumped with my own mana to meet it. My ability to draw and hold my own mana has drastically increased during my imprisonment—after all, what else am I going to do with my time if not widen an infinitely long passageway—but a horrible screeching fills the room as I rapidly lose the mana battle anyway, the net gaining on me.

The abominations Ars made out of a person ignore the net, however, and soon they connect with the soul of the High Templar. They squirm right inside what should be an unassailable magic resistance, biting down on the core of the Templar's very being with toothless maws. Pain flares through the Templar, his talent faltering as more and more of the blasphemous, necromantic tubes attach themselves to him like leeches, chewing and screaming and squirming inside his soul.

In seconds, they burrow inside, and the High Templar goes limp. Still standing, twitching slightly, his body and soul otherwise do not react. With a self-satisfied smile and a harsh, guttural syllable, Ars puppets the man from the inside, forcing him to draw his sword. The Templar's body spins it once, then twice in a showy, parade-like flourish before swinging it upward and driving it deep through the center of his own skull.

He collapses to the ground, dead, and the still-screaming spirit leeches bring Ars his soul.

"Absolutely fascinating talent on that man," Ars hums appreciatively. Despite the abuse to his own throat, his voice somehow sounds a lot better.

"Certainly optimized for capture, ideal at a prison like this one. Unlucky for him he gave us so much time to prepare, hmm Vita?"

"I, uh… yeah," I allow, my mind racing. What the fuck did he do to that soul!?

"I'd love to keep it but I'm not sure I have much use for it right now," Ars muses.

"Would you like it?" He holds the High Templar soul out to me, his spirit-leeches detaching from it.

"... Sure," I say, accepting it if for no other reason than to not leave it with him. I'm going to make sure to very, very thoroughly obliterate it before I even think about eating it, though.

"Excellent!" he answers cheerily, handing it over.

"I must say, Vita, it is truly wonderful to see you again. Your body and soul are both coming along beautifully."

"Like I said, I have absolutely no idea who you are," I hiss.

"... Hmm. Yes, you did say that. One moment." He stares at me, at the real me, and a feeling of horrid violation shudders through my spine for a moment before it suddenly stops.

"You broke my puzzle box," he grumbles.

"You were supposed to solve it, not smash it! Who raised you to be this sort of brute?"

"I'm an orphan," I growl back, "so fuck you." His face falls immediately, irritation evaporating.

"Oh, Vita, I'm sorry, I… I thought I prepared things for you better than that. You weren't on the streets, were you?"

"Of course I fucking was! I've been homeless my entire life. So is that what this is? Are you gonna claim to be my dad or whatever? Because I promise you, that's not gonna win you any points."

"I would not mind the title," Ars hums thoughtfully.

"Though I can hardly take credit for raising you, obviously, and we certainly have no biological relation anymore. But it just sounds so formal if you only refer to me as your 'creator,' doesn't it?" Wow. He's actually serious, isn't he? I can't help it, I start to chuckle.

"Look at you," I sneer.

"You're like a patchwork dolly that's been ripped apart and sewn back together so often you probably have spare dresses stored with your needle and thread. You're a powerful animancer, I'll give you that. But do you really expect me to believe that you made me?" To my surprise, he chuckles right back.

"My, you've grown up quite feisty. I admit, an argument can be made that you are owed some credit for contributions to your own creation, but honestly… can you really be considered an artist if all you did was fill in the blanks?"

"Come on, don't give me Capita riddle shit," I grumble.

"Oh, you know Capita? Is she here? Wonderful, I was hoping I could take her back." I narrow my eyes. He didn't bother to wait for an answer, so I assume he must be reading it from the souls of the Templars… or from me. I can't say I like being on the other side of that trick. I'm getting wary. Not that I think he's hostile, per se. He even seems to like me. But... I don't know. Sometimes he just looks at me the way Penelope looks at rats. I back away from him, towards my group of Revenants.

He ignores me for a few moments, seemingly lost in thought. But when he finally glances my way, his eyes slide past me and lock on Jelisaveta.

"Oh, you missed one," he comments nonchalantly, stepping forward with cognimancy threads screaming out of him. Jelisa quakes in terror, seemingly on the verge of blacking out but remaining firmly upright as her mind races for solutions. I step between them, glowering up at the far taller man.

"No, I didn't," I say firmly.

"You don't get to touch her."

"Now Vita, we can't just go leaving witnesses around willy-nilly," he answers, pausing but not backing off.

"I won't repeat myself," I warn him. We regard each other silently for a few tense moments, his horrible soul-eels floating dangerously closer. I snap out a dozen tentacles, grabbing and crushing them all just to shut them up. Ars raises his eyebrows, seeming impressed.

"Well, I suppose every girl likes to have a pet," he relents, shrugging.

"Just don't let her off the leash in public, hmm?"

"I don't care what you think your relationship is to me," I respond flatly, "but you don't get to order me around. Not about this, not about anything else." He sighs, waving me off dismissively.

"Fine, fine. Shall we get going, then?" I glance around, trying to decide exactly that. Honestly, with the rest of the Templars busy upstairs, I should prepare however I can while I have the chance. I start systematically smashing the High Templar soul, grinding away anything that could possibly contain some kind of hidden animancy trap that I wouldn't know anything about before slurping it down bit by bit. In the meantime, I wander back into Ars' cell, dragging Jelisa behind me as I leave my Revenants behind.

I'm curious to see if Ars will try to do anything to them while I'm out of sight. Once in the cell, I start sifting through the remains of all the metal that was holding him in place. It's going to be a bitch to carry all of this, but this is a pretty absurd amount of money and power just sitting here in a lump. I suppose I could get my Revenants to carry it, but I don't really want to, for some reason.

I pick up one of the smaller metal bits, a fragment the size of a knuckle bone with now-broken enchantments carved around the outside. It's captivating, in a way. Beautiful. I wonder if it can draw in my mana like it draws in the Mistwatcher's. I don't really have any way to tell, since if I push mana outside my body it'll just get destroyed.

"U-uh, what are you thinking about?" Jelisa stutters. Respect where respect is due, she's absolutely terrified but is still trying to maintain a rapport with me. She's correctly judged that it's about all she can do right now, and it takes a kind of humility that I don't think I have to just own that.

"I am thinking," I say slowly, "about eating this." She blinks.

"You... what? Why?"

"Honestly, the more I think about it the more I want to do it," I admit.

"It's kind of making me hungry."

"What!?" Eh, fuck it. I pop the chunk of metal in my mouth and swirl it around a little. I'm immediately surprised to find that it tastes amazing! So I swallow it, because that's just what you do when something tasty is inside your mouth. An instinctive urge flows through me, vibrating down to my core. The black streak running through my soul from top to bottom, the one that acts as the pupil of my eye, starts to strain.

I rotate my soul, looking upwards at the chunk of metal descending down my esophagus, watching my mana crowd into it, flowing through it as naturally as wind. The strain on my soul rapidly increases, like I'm pulling myself apart. That dark pupil stretches and breaks down the middle, a jagged crack rupturing like a fissure through the earth. My soul opens, revealing a voracious, toothy maw splitting my eye in half. Joyfully, I lap up the metal shard and swallow again.

It evaporates in soothing fire as I pull it between worlds, using it to line the passageway between my great ocean of mana and my corporeal body. Immediately, I can feel myself flow more freely into the world.

"Woah," I whisper, the pleasurable aftertaste tingling through my body.

"So that's why Misty grabs this stuff."

"W-what just happened?" Jelisa asks quietly, her eyes wide. I wonder what it must have looked like to her imperfect soul sight. I don't answer her, of course, because I'm very busy devouring the rest of my new meal.