Chương 126: 124. Reunited

"Well basically," Margarette explains, "while Penelope was really into that cognimancy stuff and Theodora enjoys helping her research biomancy, I figured I'd do what you do and learn a bunch of necromancy! The first question I asked related back to our research about 'what constitutes a corpse.' I wanted to find the lower limit of what the Mistwatcher wouldn't grab a soul out of."

"And let me guess," I cut in.

"Skeletons?"

"Skeletons!" Margarette chirps happily, her massive, bladed legs tapping happily on the floor.

"Or specifically, skeleton. Singular. Every single bone in a contiguous body has to be from the same source creature, with like maybe a bit of wiggle room here and there, or 'ol Misty seems to take offense. Buuut, they don't have to be the same configuration, or even the same shape as they had in life!"

"Huh," I acknowledge as Margarette happily lifts me up onto her back. Well, onto the horizontal part of her spine, really, since she's just bones. It's not the most comfortable sitting position, but it's not that bad either. Being a weird scorpion-person skeleton makes Margarette very big, and there's plenty to grab onto. With Vitamin still on my shoulders, we form quite the power team.

"The real trick was figuring out how to get skeletons to work at all," Margarette continues.

"Because like, y'know, without muscles and tendons and stuff, bones aren't actually connected to each other. And souls need a contiguous form to inhabit. It took a bit of tweaking, but I ended up isolating and modifying the information contained in your shard to mesh better with exclusively-skeletal systems.

My body will break apart if any bones get more than about a quarter-inch away from their connected partners, but I've beefed my threads up with enough tensile strength that smashing the bones themselves is more likely to be an issue."

"Sounds like you made some great progress, then," I acknowledge.

"The results speak for themselves, really."

"Yeah!" Margarette beams, prehensile ribs wiggling with satisfaction.

"It's just really hard to go down stairs because I'm so front-heavy, haha. The tail helps a lot. But anyway, necromancy is super interesting! It's honestly less about dead soul manipulation and more about manipulating anima for specific functions. Like the way your shards act as a form of artificial anima-brain to replace our physical one."

"... Wait, my shards do that?"

"Yep!" Margarette confirms.

"Among a bunch of other things. I suspect naturally-occuring Revenants are the result of some kind of soul-mutation that gives people an inherent anima-brain. But I'm not sure! All I know is that the vast majority of souls won't form natural Revenants, only Dregs after being smashed. If you ever stumble on a natural Revenant, try to capture it for me, would you?"

"Sure, I guess," I acknowledge.

"Oh, that reminds me, though. Penelope! I've gotta show you the animavorous ozoid that was stuck with the prisoners. She's cute, and more importantly she's formerly dead. The slime tried to eat her and failed to digest, so now she's the slime!"

"Oh?" Penelope hums.

"Well, that's certainly interesting. You should take me back to see her when we finish saying hello to everyone." I nod.

"Speaking of, mind taking us to Theodora, Margarette?" I ask.

"Oh, not at all! Away we go!" Skittering along the ground, we race upstairs, passing by rooms far too quickly for me to see what's inside. Not that I really care; I'm just here for the people.

"Theodorrra!" Margarette calls out.

"Theodora, come here come here!"

"What!?" Theodora snaps back, her voice ringing out from behind a closed door.

"I'm busy!"

"You're gonna want to come see thissss!" Margarette insists, stopping outside the room. A resounding groan rings from within, and a frighteningly desiccated Theodora emerges from within, looking incredibly exhausted for a woman who's literally incapable of sleep. Her dry skin is stretched tightly over her bones, the muscles and fat between having shriveled away to nearly nothing.

"What is it, Margarette?" she grumbles.

"Hello, Vitamin. Hello, Nu... uh." She blinks at me, and the contradictory shitstorm I expected from her emotions never comes. Instead, it's all united: surprise, joy, relief… her shard no longer wars with her. She's become fully mine in my absence. I grin, despite the nagging worry that this means I'll break my promise to free her.

"Hey, Theodora," I greet her.

"Long time no see." She grins back, and it's equally glorious and painful to see.

"Vita!" she breathes.

"Vita, you made it! Welcome, welcome!" She actually extends her arms up for a hug, so I hop down and give it to her. She shudders, actually shudders with relief as she squeezes me for a few seconds before finally letting go. It feels like she's confirming something she's been afraid was false for ages.

"You okay, Theodora?" I ask hesitantly.

"Do I feel okay?" she asks me back. I frown a little.

"I… I mean, yeah," I admit.

"You seem to be doing well. Just… not in the way I expected." She shrugs.

"It wasn't worth fighting you anymore, Vita," she says.

"It was too much work to make myself miserable for so little gain. So… I'm glad you're back, and I'm glad to be glad." I glance at Penelope, who sighs and shakes her head.

"Animancy," she acknowledges blandly.

"You and I are up shit creek without a boat."

"Yeah, I guess so," I agree quietly.

"Well, good to see you, Theodora. What have you been up to these past two years? I've mostly been sitting in a small padded room." Theodora steps back towards the room, waving me in excitedly.

"I'll show you." The room is oddly humid and warm, and I quickly realize that's because it's full of shelves upon shelves of pulsating, slightly fuzzy lumps of flesh. The lumps have tiny, beady eyes, hairless tails, and twitching mouths, and such underdeveloped limbs that they can't possibly move.

"What… is all this?" I ask.

"Immortality research, of course," Theodora says.

"These were once rats, but I extensively modified them with Penelope's guidance to my specifications."

"I'm confident in claiming Theodora is the second best biomancer on Valka, now," Penelope confirms.

"She's a quick learner."

"Basically, I'm answering the question of 'why does the Watcher put a soul in a body when it does?' and by extension, 'how can we trick it into not ensouling a body until after it has developed?' If we answer these two questions, we can start making backup bodies for people, and the biomancy half of our immortality method will be solved!"

"So?" I prompt.

"How close are you?" She crosses her arms, smirking triumphantly. Heh, she probably picked that habit up from Penelope.

"It's done," Theodora declares.

"Check the soul count in the room." I don't bother to glance around, since I'm already well aware.

"Literally all of the bodies in the room have a soul in them," I announce blandly, not quite sure what she's getting at. Theodora shoots a smug look at Penelope.

"Told you. It works."

"Look deeper, Vita," Penelope insists, not to be outdone by whatever contest this is. So I do, glowering at the souls in the room. Are they fake, or something? The idea of fake souls pisses me off, but I reach out and poke one to confirm it and they certainly feel real. So then what is… hmm. Wait a moment. The souls are bigger than they should be for rats, much bigger. And there's something inside each soul. Something physical.

"... The trick isn't the number of souls," I realize.

"It's the number of bodies. All of these rat-things are pregnant. But it's difficult to tell without looking for it because the rat soul encompasses the kid's body."

"Exactly!" Theodora agrees, clapping happily.

"There are two things I've determined: one, the Watcher doesn't notice that there's a soul-ready body until some time after it develops a complex enough brain for consciousness. Sentience is the first requirement for a soul vessel; not in the sense that the vessel has to be intelligent but just that it has to feel and experience things. I'm not yet sure how the Mistwatcher detects sentience—Penelope suspects it's some kind of biomancy, I have my doubts—but in any case it does.

Then, a pseudo-random amount of time after a baby is developed enough for at least minimally simplistic thought, the Watcher notices and gifts it a soul. But only, of course, if the Watcher thinks it doesn't currently have one."

"So with a large enough body, a specifically-positioned womb, and a large enough soul, you can put up a screen that makes it harder to see the one body inside the other," I conclude.

"Nice."

"It's very useful information," Penelope agrees, "but it's not actionable. Humans are… substantially larger than rats. There's no way we can make some kind of living human incubator creature with our current resources and knowledge. And the necessary soul size would be prohibitively large for an adult body."

"Bringing people back to life by dropping them out of giant birthing sacs would also be terrifying and gross," Theodora agrees.

"Not impossible, but… you know, it might cause a bit of a bad public image for our immortality venture. Still, though! Progress!"

"Progress," I agree.

"I'm mostly just happy to see you again. I'm glad you seem to be doing well, circumstances considered."

"And we're glad you're back, mom!" Vitamin chimes in.

"Unfortunately, we will need to cut this reunion fairly short," Penelope says.

"Apparently Ars is alive and got released along with Vita, so I really need her to check and make sure he's not somewhere in the city."

"Oh, holy shit," Theodora swears.

"Really? Ars is alive? That's terrifying."

"He's not gonna come after us, is he?" Margarette asks.

"Nah," I dismiss.

"I think he kind of likes me? I'm his weird estranged experimental daughter, or something." Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I have no idea if that's better or worse," Theodora admits.

"It's not important right now," Penelope dismisses.

"What's important is somehow getting Vita into the city without everyone with a danger sense recognizing her immediately. Do we have any ideas?"

"I've got nothing," Margarette admits.

"Haven't done any research on how danger senses work."

"If you know nothing, I'm certainly not going to," Theodora grunts.

"I'm small and I can punch things!" Vitamin adds helpfully.

"Then we have a problem," Penelope grumbles.

"I can't in good conscience not take Vita to Skyhope, but I certainly can't be seen with someone that matches even part of an escaped convict's description either."

"Well, why not just have both of you go in disguise?" Vitamin asks. Penelope blinks.

"Ah. Right, that would make sense. Thank you, Vitamin. I suppose… we'll go ask Nugas for some appropriate outfits." One visit to my doppelganger later, who was just absolutely tickled to be able to help, Penelope and I are dressed in ominous black overcoats and slightly-see-through blindfolds. The outfit is strapped with a ton of not-so-hidden knives. Basically, we look like some horrifying mixture between cultist and assassin, which is kinda ominous and obvious as fuck.

"Look at how lovely you two are when you match!" Nugas chirps happily.

"Oh, you're regular queens of death!"

"Don't these disguises seem rather… I dunno. Distinctive and obvious?" I ask.

"I thought we were trying to avoid attention."

"I thought so too at first," Nugas agrees, tilting her head.

"But then I realized you don't want or need a disguise to hide from common citizens. You're looking to fool people that have danger senses and recognize the distinctive terror of the Blue Girl. We want to give them something new to latch onto, not a mystery to try and puzzle out."

"That's… quite astute, Nugas," Penelope agrees.

"These outfits might not strike a perfect balance there, and having new rumors running around at all is somewhat of a problem, but it's unavoidable in this case. This should do fine."

"Unless Penelope has to draw a knife on someone," I joke.

"You still don't have any idea how to fight, do you?" She chuckles.

"Well… not really. I'll certainly look like an amateur with a knife. But I'm prepared for an undercover altercation."

"Well, hopefully it won't come to that," Nugas says.

"You both look delightfully intimidating, after all. And Penelope can just spoof a different talent by casting with her internal tentacles."

"Wait, her what?" One explanation about custom internal organs later (Penelope is so fucking cool!) we teleport to an old warehouse that Penelope functionally-but-not-legally owns. Once again, I'm slightly stunned by the sudden appearance of tens of thousands of souls in my sensory range all at once, but I rally as quickly as I can and scan for any particularly weird ones.

"Nothing really noteworthy," I report.

"Can you feel the outer walls from here?" Penelope asks. Hmm… yep, there are a handful of people walking up at a height that can't be anything but the walls.

"Yeah. It's about… I dunno, a quarter of my total sensory range in that direction? I feel the tip of the forest too."

"Holy shit," Penelope breathes.

"That's nearly five miles from here."

"Well, cool!" I grin.

"Then we've just gotta walk… what, like three or four miles in the opposite direction for me to feel the other side of the city?"

"I think we might have to do a small loop, but yes," Penelope agrees.

"This shouldn't take much time at all. Let's go, then. Stick to avoiding everyone we can."

"You got it!" I confirm. Geez, it's like scouting for the hunters again. We remove ourselves from the warehouse, and I quickly start navigating us through the streets of Skyhope. It's… weird now. There's a ton of wood everywhere, of all things, and nearly every major street has been completely rebuilt after the sewers collapsed.

Not to mention, whenever we cross a road that's long and straight enough, we can stare all the way down into the center of Skyhope Crater and see the massive, gaping hole that was once the center city. It hardly feels familiar at all. Still, it's not too difficult a task to steer us along, walking in a wide circle as I keep the outer walls at the periphery of my senses. It doesn't take more than twenty minutes to find my first notable soul.

"Hmm, okay, well it's not Ars, but Galdra's definitely around," I say.

"We're gonna want to stay the fuck away from her."

"Well, you are," Penelope corrects.

"I work with her every few days."

"You do?" She snorts.

"Vita, did no one mention that I'm a First Lady now? We're both councilwomen."

"No shit?" I ask, raising my eyebrows.

"Wow, congratulations! That was a major goal for you right? How'd you pull that off?"

"Oh, nothing fancy," she dismisses in that way which means it's very fancy.

"I just single-handedly won the second Valka-Sigulda war by slaughtering twelve thousand men with a plague cocktail." I let out an appreciative whistle.

"Wow," I acknowledge.

"That sounds like a fun time. Just hearing about it makes me hungry." She laughs, and I suddenly pick up on another interesting soul in range.

"Oh hey, Lark is here too," I say.

"... Did I ever mention I spared that little vrothizo?"

"You did not," Penelope accuses.

"But I figured that out when I became her officially-assigned biomancer. She's a templar trainee now." I do a double-take.

"I'm sorry, what!?" I ask.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously," Penelope nods.

"It's hilarious."

"The Templars are training a soul-eating monster from Hiverock," I repeat, dumbfounded.

"And I get imprisoned? That's such fucking bullshit."

"It seems she ended up rather devout," Penelope shrugs.

"And she's happy to do whatever she's told, more or less. I imagine that's why they like her." I snort.

"It sounds like you like her," I say.

"Oh, I absolutely do," Penelope agrees.

"Don't worry, I'm working to slowly turn her against them. But even without that, it's wonderful having a live vrothizo to experiment on. They are absolutely incredible creatures."

"Well… I'm glad it's working out for you, I guess," I grunt.

"That ungrateful little shit better not come after me, though."

"Bah, she's a sweetheart," Penelope dismisses.

"You may as well be afraid of getting attacked by Bently." We laugh at that, and since we're alone I lean in to give her another hug as well. From there, our trip around Skyhope is mostly uneventful; we chat about a few other familiar souls, but as I expected, Ars isn't here.

"One last important stop for the day, then," Penelope says as we return to the warehouse.

"We've got to go visit your family."

"Fuck yeah!" I agree.

"But I assume we're not just going to walk in the front door looking like this?"

"Certainly not," Penelope chides.

"We're going to teleport into their secret basement looking like this." So we do. Fifteen minutes of casting and one disorienting change of location later, we appear in a cellar, a collection of beautifully familiar souls above us. It's pitch black in here, but I waste no time casting a simple light spell, locating the hatch, and tossing it open.

"GUESS WHO, MOTHERFUCKERS!" I shout, scaring the shit out of everyone in the house. It's immensely satisfying. What I don't expect is a wooden sword to suddenly swing towards my head, but I duck it without trouble, grinning wildly. Shit, is that Norman? Norman just took a swing at me! Wow, he got so fucking tall! Ronnie. Basra. Katie. Norman. Rafael. Jari. Dudel. Larkin. Sylvi. They're here! That's everyone except for Sonja and Jarod, though I think I sense them a ways down the street, walking this way with Rowan.

It's hard to tell, because holy dang so many of them grew so much! In like, height and stuff, sure, but also in soul! Some of them have usable talents! To that end, something stirs inside Norman and with an explosive jerk his swing swaps direction, rushing back towards my head when he should still be caught well within the backswing. Neat! I catch the dull practice blade with one hand anyway, gleefully drinking in the look of raw terror on his face. Why's he so freaked out? He… oooh! He has a danger sense now!

"That's not a guess," I chide playfully.

"Basra!" Norman calls.

"Basra, help!" My dull-eyed little sister pokes her head into the room, a nonplussed look on her face.

"Bro," she grunts.

"There's only one person we know who's that freaky and that short." I stiffen, dropping the 'blade' as I whirl on Basra.

"Hey!" I protest.

"I'm not that short! I grew two whole inches, I think! So now I'm… Penelope, how tall am I?"

"Five foot even," she calls up.

"Five foot even!" I declare proudly. Basra snorts, walks right up to me, and then has the fucking audacity to put her elbow on my head and lean on me!

"Five foot even," she grunts.

"That's cool."

"What!" I protest.

"How…. how did you get this tall!? You're like thirteen!"

"Uh, I'm fourteen, and I got tall because of the inherent unfairness of life," Basra answers.

"Deal with it. Also like, welcome home and stuff."

"Vita!?" Norman realizes, finally catching up with the conversation.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

"Vita!" A half-dozen other kids parrot, and soon I'm swarmed with hugs.

"Aah, look at you all! You all got so big and strong!" I coo.

"Have you been okay? What all happened while I was gone?" And so I start getting their stories, hearing how Capita teleported them to safety during the perception event, how Basra and Norman are training to be hunters (which I'm not sure how I feel about, to be honest) and how they and all the younger kids have been going to school. School! Like that thing for rich people! They have tutors! Rowan soon walks inside with the other two kids and the second round of hugs begins.

Apparently part of the reason we can afford tutors for the kids is because he works as one: he teaches kynamancy to rich people now, and also gets contracts from the army and the Templars to help train people against illusory threats.

"That's so cool!" I squeal, squeezing him hard enough for him to start making strained noises.

"Rowan, this place is so nice! I figured Penelope was just bankrolling you!"

"Well, I kind of am, since your mother works for me," Penelope comments, looking up from a currently-shirtless Ronnie that she happens to be working on.

"But she certainly earns it."

"Where is she, anyway?" I ask.

"Probably catching up on the dozens of things she was ostensibly busy doing while she was actually out saving you," Rowan answers, rustling my hair.

"She dropped by to give everyone a heads-up you'd be back and ran off."

"Though Norman just conveniently forgot about that and decided to try to brain you with a stick," Basra drawls.

"Hey!" Norman yelps.

"I just… I didn't expect it, okay?"

"Eh, it's fine, I got to see your cool sword move," I dismiss waving him off.

"It's not like it would have hurt.

"Oh?" Basra deadpans.

"I think that sounds like a challenge, Norman."

"I think it does," he agrees.

"Please don't beat up your big sister, she's experimentally relevant," Penelope calls.

"Also, I love her."

"Is she really my big sister?" Basra asks.

"Anyway Vita, what have you been up to?" Rowan asks.

"You've got to give us your side of the story." So… I tell them. I talk about heading out to help people in the perception event, getting cornered by Braum the Ubiquitous and fighting him off, getting captured and waking up in restraints. I tell them about jail, about my decision to bide my time, about the beatings I endured and the hypocrisy of our nation's so-called protectors. I told the story of freeing Ars, of killing the High Templar, of liberating the prison and of escaping Braum and Cassia again.

But right when I'm about to talk about meeting up with Penelope again, she stops me, mind whirling.

"Wait. You never told me about this entourage of followers you left in the forest. I thought it was just you, Lyn, and the Revenants."

"Oh, nope," I clarify.

"Like I said, Jelisa was the only good one, so it felt wrong not to keep her alive. And then she convinced me to keep three other templars we found alive as well." She gives me that 'you fucked up in some political way you'll never understand' look.

"And you just… left them?" Penelope presses urgently.

"They're still in the forest, alongside the Templar-aligned serving staff, unsupervised?"

"Well, not unsupervised, no," I protest.

"I have a handful of Revenants, some of them crazy strong, not to mention Altrix. And, y'know, like hundreds of dregs. Besides, the three extra Templars are collared, the serving staff are all talentless, and Jelisa's only real talent is getting along with people. They're not going anywhere." Penelope pinches the bridge of her nose.

"Vita, we need to go back," she insists.

"Now."

"Uh, what?" I blink in surprise.

"Why?"

"Because you took a ragtag, disparate collection of shaky alliances bound only by fear of you, and left them alone with the only person all of them like. You handed that woman a coup on a silver platter!" Oh. Hmm.

"... You wouldn't mind teleporting us again, would you?" I ask. Penelope sighs.

"I'm already casting it."