Chương 148: 146. Aftershock

Helpless. That's the emotion that has defined my life for as long as I can remember. Even the beginning, the single most pivotal moment of my life—getting my talent—was just helplessness magnified a thousandfold. Every day I woke up helpless, paralyzed by my own mind. And so I worked as hard as I could, I pushed my mind as far as it could go, I trained myself and became one of the strongest people in the world so I could join the Templars…

just to once again find myself helpless when my team tried to take down a vrothizo.

I was helpless when I woke up in the hospital, helpless to prevent my transfer to the Inquisition, helpless to make a real difference at Site 4, helpless when Vita slaughtered everyone on her way out, helpless when she dragged us all through the forest, helpless when Victoria begged for help escaping, helpless when she died for the attempt, helpless when I suffered through decontamination, helpless to stop my superiors from starting this pointless fight, helpless to do anything to stop it, and now…! … Now.

Now I'm wrist-deep in the blood of a Templar under my command. Sweet, beautiful Bently, bisected by a former friend. His legs lie next to me as my hands press his gaping waist, fingers flashing through a healing spell that my triage training says won't be enough. That I should be leaving him to die, because a lost cause is a waste of resources that might be needed healing Melik's concussion, or Xavier's internal damage, or Harvey's broken bones, or Lark's… everything.

But I'm not letting someone under my command die. I can't. If I don't at least try, I'll break. I may be helpless, but I always try. What more can I do, when I'm just a normal woman dealing with veritable gods?

"Come on, Bently," I call to him, pushing as much healing magic into his body as I'm able, trying to staunch the flow of the arteries and veins dumping his blood onto the dirt.

"Stay with me, Templar."

"Help… Lark…" he mutters blearily, because he's too fucking good for this shit world.

"Neck… her neck…" I spare a glance Lark's way, noting a lot more wrong with her than just her neck. Though that is a prominent issue, since it's turned completely the wrong way around. She lies on her back, but her face is still in the dirt, black blood leaking out of her shattered mouth. Both of her arms on the far side of me are missing as well, burned to nothing for the crime of being too close to Vita when Galdra started her attack. The attack, as best I can tell, is going in Galdra's favor.

Vita seems to be trapped and is slowly being… well, annihilated. Melik is still trying to get that damn scythe away from Vita, the tough bastard, but I have to ignore all that and focus on Bently. A High Templar has stepped in and I'm trusting her to handle it. As for Lark's injuries, well, I can still hear her heartbeat. Vrothizo are too goddamn tough to die from something like a broken spine.

"She'll be fine," I promise Bently.

"Just stay awake for me. Can you do that, Bently? Focus. Stay awake." I say that, but my logical mind pushes through my horror and tells me it's a lost cause. Bently is losing blood far faster than I can heal him. Behind me, I hear the scythe finally slap into Melik's waiting palm, and the roaring fury of Galdra's magic annihilates Vita soon after. But I can't spare a glance to care.

"Xavier!" I call out.

"If you're still conscious I need your talent on the blood!"

"T-trying, ma'am!" I hear Xavier's response as nearly a sob, the poor kid struggling to crawl towards us with all the bones he's broken. He's too far away and too low on strength! My team is on it, though, Watcher bless them. Harvey's leg is twisted badly enough for me to know it's shattered, but he still staggers onto his hands and knees, loops one of his arms around Xavier, and starts dragging him closer.

I watch and feel Bently's blood quiver in the broken veins, the flow slowing and diverting enough for my magic to start sealing things up. Holy shit, we're doing it. We're actually going to— An icy chill pulses through my spine as I see a spiritual tentacle flit past my vision. No. No, no, no, no! I keep working on Bently, stabilizing him, sealing his wounds over, but I can't resist glancing around. That was Vita, right? She got away? Where is she now? I don't see her anymore!

Her scythe bursts into action, ripping itself out of Melik's hands and flying off. Shit, shit, shit! No, it doesn't matter for now, focus on Bently. A few moments later, Galdra floats overhead and I suddenly feel another healing spell—a much more powerful healing spell—start doing my job for me. Bently's wounds quickly start sealing up, though it's a patch job that will make it difficult for anyone to regrow his legs.

Not that I'm complaining, of course, because I was going for the same solution and Lady Vesuvius should be able to fix him up either way. He won't be able to survive very long like this—maybe a few days, at most, since too much of his digestive tract is missing—but days are a lot fucking better than seconds.

"Did you see anything, Inquisitor?" Galdra barks.

"Report, now." I sigh. If I lie and say no, will it end this witch hunt or make it worse? I have no idea. I really don't. So I tell the truth.

"I did," I admit.

"At least, I'm fairly sure I saw a tentacle, but…" I look around, checking on the souls of my entire team in sequence, as well as Galdra and myself. Bently's soul is pulsing with his talent, which seems to be contributing its fair share towards keeping him alive. He's normal. Lark's soul is the same as always, woody and beautiful. I cast a quick kineticism spell to retrieve stashed supplies that I left nearby, among which are some emergency rations for her. Hopefully they'll be enough.

Melik is next to her, ripping off his helmet as bloody vomit trails down the inside and the front of his face. Shit, he needs medical attention. And while his soul certainly seems overexerted, he otherwise looks normal. Xavier, likewise, is breathing hard and crying, presumably from some combination of stress and relief, while Harvey has collapsed to the ground beside him, conscious but exhausted and wounded. Their souls also have a distinct lack of tentacles, as normal as always.

Galdra and I are similarly as I remember us to be.

"... Everyone in the general vicinity has their soul intact, as far as I can tell," I report.

"How sure are you that you saw something?" Galdra presses. I frown a little, trying to quantify that as I stagger over to Lark and lean down next to her.

"Sixty percent, maybe," I admit.

"It was a brief flash of a tentacle, which I couldn't follow. I was also busy stabilizing my team at the time."

"I see," Galdra says, scowling as her eyes pass over my squad.

"Where's the scythe?"

"It flew off," I tell her.

"I'm not sure where."

"Shit," Galdra swears.

"She's probably the scythe, then. But of course, we'll have to operate under the soft assumption that you're Vita until we can get another Inquisitor over here to corroborate your claim." I grimace. Yeah, that makes sense. If I'm not Vita, then my observations clear everyone here. If I am Vita, I'd obviously lie about my own soul, but everyone else still can't be Vita. Either way, my team is clear… but I'm not.

"Understood," I nod.

"May I continue to administer medical aid?" Galdra seems to think for a moment, then nods.

"Yes, we need Lark on her feet. You heal her, I'll get the rest." I nod to confirm again, returning to focus on the important tasks in front of me. Namely, what the fuck do I do about Lark? She's missing multiple limbs, she's wallowing in a pool of her own blood, and her neck is broken so hard her entire fucking head is facing the wrong way. The normal medical response to this situation is 'heal someone else instead, that one is dead.' But presumably, as long as I feed her, she'll walk it off? I just…

don't know if I should twist her head the right way around first. You normally do not move the head when dealing with spinal injuries, but I'm not actually sure Lark can swallow anything with her neck twisted up like twine. I carefully, carefully move her head back around, flinching a little as she locks a wide-eyed, feral stare in my direction. I pull out the first of the rats.

"Hey Lark, you're okay," I whisper to her.

"That's a brave girl. Stay strong. That's it." I slowly place the rat in what's left of her mouth, which she struggles to swallow… but thankfully I don't have to stick my arm down there to push it in. I would have, of course, but it's nice to not need to so soon after losing my last one.

The rat doesn't seem to have a noticeable effect on her regeneration rate, but I suspect that there's a lot of serious internal damage getting dealt with first and continue feeding her our supply, which eventually manages to halt her bleeding and reconnect her spine (and that's something my senses can hear happen bit by bit, much to my discomfort). By the time I'm out of rats, Lark is still missing two of her arms, but she's breathing normally and no longer looks like she's a flinch away from biting my throat out.

"You did good, Lark," I assure her, watching Galdra float around and cast magic on my squad. She never drops below twenty feet in the air as she does it, which is frankly a ridiculously long healing range.

"I failed," she croaks back at me. I reach down to carefully scratch the base of her ears the way she likes.

"You got our entire squad through this alive," I tell her.

"I'm not sure anyone else can say the same."

"That… wasn't me," Lark insists.

"She wasn't even trying. She could have killed us the moment she got close. She just let us live… because she knew us." I suppose she's probably right about that, so I let her assessment pass without challenging it.

"She does seem to treat the death of people she knows and people she doesn't know with a world of difference, doesn't she?" I agree.

"But regardless of the reason, you did your duty and we all lived to tell the tale. That's worth a lot."

"I hated every moment of it," she mutters.

"I've done nothing but fight for my entire life and today still had more death than anything I've ever seen before. I don't… I don't think I'm cut out for this, Captain. Couldn't we have just left her alone like she wanted?" The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"We don't get to make those decisions, Lark," I remind her gently.

"Well, maybe we should," she counters.

"Then we'd have to leave the Templars."

"Well, maybe we should," she repeats.

"I never want to have to do anything like this again." I nod solemnly. I've been having similar thoughts lately.

"Yeah," I agree.

"Don't know what else I'd even do, though. Being a Templar has been my goal since I was a little girl. But now's a rough time to be one, that's for sure. I was a lot more proud of myself when I was just patrolling the city and helping people out. I was good at that. War, though… war just makes me feel helpless." There's not much to say after that. Our surviving forces and Vita's surviving undead do a final skirmish before both groups break off, spilling the horrid scent of offal ever further through the forest.

Thirteen Inquisitors managed to survive the fight, and Galdra brings them over to confirm my report: everyone's souls look normal. No sign of tentacles.

"Why are we in full retreat?" Galdra snaps at one of the Templar Commanders.

"Intelligence suggests she still has a base camp. That could be where the Lich fled to!"

"We're not in any shape to search the forest for a camp, let alone fight the Lich again," the commander insists.

"In no small part due to your departure! Where have you been, Galdra? Arden died an honorable death, but they shouldn't have had to die at all! You were expected to be with us!" Galdra huffs in frustration.

"Skyhope was attacked," she announces.

"It was a surgical strike from sleeper agents in the city. The Inquisition has been entirely wiped out. The survivors here and at sites one through three are our only remaining anti-animancy forces."

"Watcher's eyes," the commander swears.

"How did they wipe out the entire Skyhope Inquisition?"

"Well… based on examinations of the bodies, we believe First Lady Vesuvius was involved, and possibly compromised by animancy. Her whereabouts are currently unknown, but we've managed to secure her research lab." Oh, fuck. That's not good. I glance back at my team, or the few of them that are still walking, anyway. Bentley, Xavier, and Harvey are being transported by our medical squad, leaving only Lark and Melik to trail behind me like ducklings.

Melik dry heaves again, his post-combat adrenaline crash having hit him like a truck. He's been without anything to vomit for a while now. Lark looks horrified, though, and I don't blame her. Lady Vesuvius has been a big help to all of us. Though I have to say, I'm not that surprised that she… that she… hmm. Frowning, I back that thought up a little. I'm not surprised that she what? Was a sleeper agent for an animancer? No, that's pretty surprising, and absolutely terrifying.

Watcher's eyes, I need to go home and sleep for a week. With my squad banged up this badly, that might even be what we get to do. A girl can dream, I suppose. We'll need to survive the trip home first, though. Leaving the battlefield happens quickly, but not quickly enough. The stench of blood and gore and death suffuses the forest now, and with the battle over the scavengers have come out for the buffet.

Most ignore us—why wouldn't they, when a smorgasbord of already-slain prey exists in a convenient pile already—but even despite this we're faced with a terrifying onslaught of tooth and claw. Countless monsters swarm us, and while Galdra can incinerate them with a thought she can't be everywhere at once. Since I'm almost entirely intact, I'm one of the people on the front lines trading blows with monsters twice my size.

It's terrifying at first, my mind constantly on the verge of overloading into an episode, but I manage to hold out, if barely. The longer the fight goes on, though, the less I worry about myself and the more I worry about Lark. Unarmed and unarmored except for her tassets and greaves, she steps out onto the battlefield, ignores formation, and just starts ripping monsters apart. She fights like a completely different person, all teeth and rage as she lashes out against the horde.

I watch her tackle beasts three times her side, being clawed and bit and taking wound after wound just to heal them off as she bites back. She is, in this fight, a vrothizo, even more so than when she was gnawing off my arm. I think it's only the fact that she avoids our defensive lines that prevents her from being gutted like the monsters, and when the swarm is finally done she returns to us drenched in blood, with all of her limbs and teeth recovered. She falls in step behind me without saying a word.

"You okay?" I ask her.

"No," she answers simply. Yeah. Dumb question, I guess.

"Hey, Lark?" Melik pipes up, staring at the ground as he walks.

"I wanted to ask you something."

"Go ahead," she allows.

"When Vita grabbed you… you could have killed her right away, right? With your spines? But you didn't. You waited until she threatened me."

"Well, she was threatening everybody, but… yeah."

"Why'd you wait?" he presses.

"Because I didn't want to kill anyone," Lark says simply.

"Not even her." He doesn't seem to react to that, leaving us to march in silence for a while before finally answering.

"If you ever lose control again," he eventually says, "I won't try to kill you. I was wrong. And you deserve more than that." Lark glances his way impassively.

"... Suit yourself." I let myself smile, just a little. At least there's some good to come from this. My squad made it out alive, and they'll grow as people from it. Well, at least hopefully. I'll need to closely monitor everyone and ensure their mental health is taken care of while the biomancers tend to their physical needs. But I think it will be best to wait at least a couple days before I decide who does and doesn't need me to intervene; right now, everyone is just tired.

The trek back to Skyhope thankfully doesn't end with any other Templars dead. The whole city is a mess when we get back, though, no doubt owing to Lady Vesuvius' alleged attack on the Inquisition. The attack sites are quarantined off, which of course means that most of the largest Templar facilities aren't available for use, but I get called for a debrief anyway in a cobbled-together command center within the city.

"Based on your observations, Captain, what would you say are the major blunders that lead to the failure of the operation?" I'm asked during the meeting.

"Attempting it in the first place," I answer immediately, which doesn't seem to make command very happy.

"To clarify, Captain, what tactical blunders lead to the failure of the operation?" one of them answers, entirely unamused. Which is fine, since I'm not exactly joking.

"Assuming that 'not accepting the Lich's offer of alliance against Ars' is not a valid answer," I begin, and the looks I get from command indicate that it isn't, "I would say a delayed and inefficient response to the Lich penetrating our lines caused the most damage, followed by our orders to not allow Lark to engage the undead under the Lich's command. The majority of our casualties were caused by a lack of response to the High-Templar-level threats, which we had no answer to due to Galdra's absence."

"Galdra's absence was unavoidable, given the circumstances," command insists. I find that somewhat silly, since she didn't even make it back to Skyhope before the damage was already done, but pointing that out is worthless here.

"That is why we should have had a proper backup plan," I answer instead. I'm dismissed not too long after that, with orders to 'stand by.' As one of the few surviving Inquisitors I'm apparently quite valuable now. … Now that I think about it, will I even be allowed to leave the Templars if I wish to? I am an animancer, and I'm not sure if any remaining Inquisitors have the ability to remove memories. Shit. Well, reduced options aside, for now I need to return to the barracks and check on my team.

To my mild concern, all of them are in the medical ward… but I quickly relax as I see Harvey, Xavier, and Bently are simply resting next to one another while Lark and Melik hang around to keep them company. I join them, interrupting their current conversation with a brief greeting.

"Are you sure you shouldn't be one of the people in a bed, Melik?" I ask him. He's sitting in a chair next to Bently's cot and looking like he's about to pass out.

"I'm fine," he insists.

"Just tired and hungry, that's all. They're bringing food around soon, I think."

"Of course," I nod.

"Xavier, Harvey? How are you holding up?" I'd ask Bently as well, but he's clearly unconscious. The biomancers have done all they can for now, and they're letting his body rest and regrow before coming back around for another series of spells.

"I've had worse," Harvey grunts.

"I haven't," Xavier mutters.

"Honestly, I'm pretty shaken up, boss."

"Well, near-death experiences will do that to a person," I reassure him.

"It's totally normal."

"I mean, yeah, there was that," Xavier dismisses.

"But I'm also trying to figure out why the soul-reader kept thinking I was a woman."

"Oh, right," I allow, confused.

"She did do that, didn't she? That was odd."

"Oh, uh, yep," Xavier mutters.

"Super weird and quirky and not at all deeply, personally mortifying."

"Something you're not telling us, Xavier?" Harvey asks jokingly.

"No!" Xavier snaps back.

"At least I don't think so? I don't know!"

"If you've been a woman disguised as a man this entire time, I'll be impressed," Harvey continues.

"Especially since we've bathed together."

"I'm a man!" Xavier snaps back at him.

"I'm a man. It's just…" He looks away, muttering the next bit quietly as if afraid of anyone else hearing.

"I just wish I wasn't, sometimes," Xavier admits.

"Do other people not feel that way?" A brief silence descends, each of us perhaps considering our answer.

"Can't say I ever have," Harvey answers first.

"I don't think it's something to be ashamed of, though?"

"Yeah," I agree.

"Women are pretty cool. I can understand being jealous of us." I watch Xavier carefully as I say that, trying to judge how he reacts. This is a new one for me, after all. It doesn't look like my joke worked, though. Damn. I hate having to trial-and-error this.

"I've heard that Lady Vesuvius publicized a series of biomancy spells that could change someone's sex over the course of a few months," Lark comments idly.

"Lady Vesuvius is missing, and probably a traitor," Xavier grumbles.

"... Maybe," Lark admits.

"But this was a while ago. You might be able to find other biomancers willing to do the procedure, but I doubt it will be cheap."

"It doesn't matter anyway," Xavier mutters, looking away.

"Why not?" Melik asks.

"Because it'd be weird! I've already been a man my entire life!" Xavier answers.

"And besides, Bently… Bently wouldn't want to date a woman." He and a few other members of my squad turn to glance at me, since having a relationship with a squadmate is technically against policy. I just shrug.

"I didn't hear anything," I lie brazenly.

"I'm probably going deaf." That gets a few chuckles, at least. The conversation trails off after that, none of us having advice—or even context—for Xavier's situation. I didn't know souls could be male or female, but I suppose if they can, and Xavier has a woman's soul in a man's body… well, I don't actually have any idea what that would be like. Probably very strange, at minimum. My squad and I continue chatting about various things late into the night, though before long most of them start to pass into slumber.

Melik didn't even get out of his chair, now leaning on the foot of Bently's cot as he drools protectively over his squadmate. It's kind of cute. Only Lark and I are still awake, and while we don't really want to leave, we've made somewhat of a silent agreement not to speak either. We don't want to wake up the boys… or whatever it is Xavier's situation makes him. Makes them? Agh, I'll have to look into all this tomorrow.

For now though, I doubt I'll be able to pass into rest any time soon, and especially not in the medical ward. There's too much activity, too many people moving around, and too much stress in the air. There's also been a fly buzzing about, making a nuisance of itself. I watch it with mild annoyance as it circles around the room a half dozen times before finally landing on Melik's hand. It dies instantly, its tiny spirit sucked out of its body, pulled down Melik's arm and entering his soul.

The fly's corpse flops unceremoniously onto the bed as I freeze in terror, trying desperately not to react. Oh Watcher, Vita is alive. She's alive and sleeping peacefully inside my squadmember's body. What… should I do?