Chương 150: 148. In Plain Sight

Staring down at the calm water of the bath, I find Melik's face staring back up at me, wearing my blank expression. It's both familiar and surreal, as while I've seen this face many times before in two different sets of memories, I don't really see it as mine anymore. It also reminds me a lot of that time years ago when Penta-as-Penelope brought me to that fancy bathhouse and I saw my old body's face for the first time I could remember. How odd it looked. How… not quite me. Familiar and surreal.

"That's quite a stare you've got going." Xavier says, stepping next to me and staring down at the water as well.

"Feeling a little… Melik-choly?" I give her an unamused glower, since it feels natural in the way that means it's probably what Melik would do in this situation. It's been another couple days since I decided to continue pretending to be him, and I've since stopped vomiting, been given a clear bill of health, and mostly normalized my identity. Mostly.

As I both expected and feared, Vita won out; I have Melik's memories, his experiences, his habits, some degree of his likes and dislikes, and I'm sure I've been influenced in countless other subtle ways, but I still feel like Vita. I'm a soul trapped in a meat shell, not a human man with a monster hiding inside him. I'm Melik largely insofar as I'm comfortable pretending to be him and answering to the name. It's… sad. We both hoped he'd live through this. I'd wondered if I could give him his body back.

But I think, at this point, even if I succeeded at leaving this body without killing it, the end result would be leaving something that wasn't quite Melik behind. Maybe even a copy of myself, except I'd be trapped as a human forever, devoid of the freedom that is my soul. I'd never wish that on anyone.

"That pun was shameless," I complain to Xavier.

"But I guess I'll give you a three out of five, since I've actually never heard it before."

"Three out of five from Melik?" Xavier exclaims, bobbing her head consideringly.

"That's not too bad. I'll take it. But anyway, you done looking? I don't wanna disturb the water if you're having a deep conversation with your reflection, but I also wanna get in the bath."

"What, don't want to join me in despondently staring at your reflection?" I tease her.

"Eh," Xavier answers awkwardly, scratching her head.

"My reflection and I aren't really on the best of terms." Oh. Hmm. Being in a male body obviously bothers her. It doesn't really bother me; my previous experiences as a human female make it a bit strange to bathe with a bunch of men, but thanks to this body I'm not attracted to men anymore. It's an interesting detail: it proves that my physical form is a driving element of my attraction, but I'm not entirely sure that means my soul isn't. Like, Melik is very into women, physically speaking.

I don't want to be into women, though, since I still find attraction to be annoying and uncomfortable, and I think I've been experiencing a much lighter version of Melik's usual reactions as a result. Either way, as much as her soul is female, Xavier is physically still a muscular, masculine piece of meat and my new body feels no discomfort at joining her in the bath.

It's kind of strange to think that, before I took this body, I don't think I would have recognized Xavier as 'masculine' even if she waved her dick in my face. My perceptions are all screwed up, now. In a lot of ways, they make things more clear. In most ways, they just make things more complicated. But hey, I can't help with Xavier's problems anyway, and the most Melik way to respond to them matches with the most Vita way to respond to them as well: pretend they don't exist until it becomes immediately relevant.

"So, do you think Lady Tentacles is still alive?" Xavier asks me.

"Probably," I admit, since that's what everyone assumes anyway.

"I fucked up when I let that scythe fly away."

"Are you kidding?" Xavier asks incredulously.

"You saved the day by grabbing it in the first place. Sure, the Lich got away, but if you hadn't helped Galdra kill her we might all be dead." Well that isn't how it went down at all, though I suppose I have to make sure my answer is whatever one Melik would give.

"I doubt Galdra really needed my help," I answer noncommittally.

"I don't think I won the tug-of-war at a pivotal moment, it felt more like Vita just let go."

"Why would she do that?" Xavier asks.

"Maybe to possess it," I answer, shrugging.

"Maybe just so her friend didn't die with her."

"Yeah, I can believe that," she agrees, nodding.

"She was weirdly… I dunno, honorable? Y'know, for an evil monster." I carefully try not to wince at that. I don't succeed, but thankfully Harvey steps into the room and distracts Xavier from my reaction.

"General Vesuvius always said that the enemy's honor is something to be exploited, not praised," Harvey grunts, sinking into the bath beside me. That causes my lips to quirk upwards a bit. Yeah, that definitely sounds like something Penelope would say. But what's with my face moving on its own all the time!? It's kind of dangerously inconvenient.

"Wait, which General Vesuvius?" Xavier asks, to my surprise. Harvey grunts with amusement.

"Senior," he clarifies.

"The current Lady Vesuvius' grandfather. Well, current insofar as she won't be officially removed from her position until she's confirmed to be dead or alive, but I can't imagine her life as a noble will continue even if she's found to be a victim of animancy. Perhaps especially not then."

"Did you serve under him?" Xavier wonders, quirking an eyebrow.

"Not during wartime," Harvey answers, shaking his head.

"I'm not that old. But he'd often roam around military installations after the war, giving speeches and keeping morale up. He was a very charismatic man, if also a very ruthless one. Still, he makes a good point."

"Uh, I'm not so sure that he does," Xavier answers.

"Like yeah, being honorable about things often gives your opponents an advantage on the battlefield, but it gives you lots of advantages off the battlefield. If both sides are trustworthy and honorable, neither holds a war advantage but both hold the peacetime benefits. And like… peacetime is better?"

"That's an overly simplistic way of looking at things," Harvey argues.

"After all, the advantages of being honorable aren't tied to how honorable you actually are, only to how honorable your opponent thinks you are."

"That's where Vita went wrong," I realize, carefully referring to myself in the third person.

"No matter how reasonable her promises, the Templars weren't going to agree to them because they didn't trust her."

"And so hundreds of us needlessly died, even though she totally kept her promises and immediately stopped attacking when everyone else got to retreat," Xavier grumbles.

"Watcher's eyes, we fucked that whole thing up so hard."

"Tactically, I would agree that we called the retreat far later than we should have," Harvey muses, "but the biggest blunder was allowing the enemy to sabotage the Inquisition while we were away. We fell for—and died to—an enemy diversion. But frankly, that's all on our commanders, not us. We followed our orders. Sometimes that's not enough."

"I suppose that's the nice part about not making our own decisions," I respond dryly.

"There's less pressure to take responsibility for them as well." Harvey chuckles at that, to my surprise.

"I suppose if you'd rather beat yourself up about what happened, you can do that instead," he allows.

"But I say we did our jobs as well as we could have, given the circumstances. The Lich took down Arden the Ironsoul, for fuck's sake. What were we supposed to do?"

"Y'know what, that's fucking fair," Xavier sighs.

"Like, we only lived because she was sandbagging us, right? You saw people fall like Watcher-damn dominoes whenever they even got kinda close to her, didn't you? Fucking horrifying." Fucking delicious, is what they were. But okay, I was also pretty horrifying. Still, though…

"What's horrifying is the runes that were designed to blow up our fucking armor if Vita turned us undead," I comment.

"I can't fucking believe they put that in our armor without telling us about it."

"It might not have worked if they told us about it," Harvey points out.

"If we knew, then the moment we were on her side we would have tried to remove it. I imagine Arden could have done that quickly enough to save their own life, and then… well, we'd be screwed."

"I guess that makes sense," I admit.

"But it's still kind of a 'what the fuck,' you know?"

"Yeah, I hear you," Harvey agrees, sighing.

"I definitely hear you. War is awful."

"And water is wet," Xavier mutters, lifting a ball of it out of the bath with her talent and quickly shaping it into a bunch of different symbols, animals, and other configurations.

"Hey Melik, do you think I could maybe cast like you do? By shaping stuff with my talent instead of my fingers?"

"Water doesn't concentrate mana the way metal does, so no," I answer.

"What if I put metal dust in the water?" Xavier asks.

"Then it would just sink, I assume," I answer.

"Damn. What if… what if I got the water moving in a fast current so the metal couldn't settle?"

"Then it would probably get flung out of the water wherever you had to make a curve in the formation, and even if it didn't I'm not sure if it would be worth the effort to learn it," I answer, smirking with amusement.

"But if you want, we can try it when I get more metal authorized for me to use."

"Fuck yeah!" Xavier cheers.

"Let's do it! Wait, you lost your metal?"

"Cut me some slack, I had a concussion," I grumble defensively. Also, I didn't have Melik's talent to grab it all back off the ground.

"Fair and valid," Xavier agrees, thankfully not pressing the issue.

"Honestly, fuck the last tenday in general. You guys wanna go out and get drunk tonight?"

"As long as I don't end up chaperoning a bunch of kids who say 'drunk' but mean 'wasted,' I think I'd enjoy that a lot," Harvey nods.

"Could definitely use it after everything that's happened."

"I… don't think I want to get drunk," I hedge. I've never been fond of drugs or alcohol, since most drinkers in my part of town often quickly upgraded to heavy drinkers, the kind that are dangerous to be around. But now, of course, getting drunk might also mean I say something stupid and end up dead.

"Eh, that's fine," Xavier shrugs.

"I don't think Lark can get drunk and I'm still going to invite her. We can invite the Captain too, make it a whole squad thing. …Well, minus Bently, I guess."

"I can't believe it'll take them two months to regrow his legs," I comment.

"Didn't the Captain get her arm back in like, four days?"

"The Captain had motherfucking Vesuvius the Inhuman to heal her, so that's hardly a fair comparison," Xavier dismisses.

"Our healers are mere mortals." I can't help it, I snort at that. I suppose she's not immortal yet, but she's getting there. My amusement is quickly banished, though, since I don't know where Penelope is. I can't sense her anywhere in the city, and I can only assume that, if she's gone, it means that something went wrong. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Bad time for her to go missing, isn't it?" I sigh.

"Bad time for her to turn traitor, too," Harvey grunts.

"Willingly or otherwise."

"I mean, would there be a good time for the army-slaying plague mage to turn traitor?" Xavier points out.

"No… I suppose not," Harvey admits.

"It feels like this country is completely going to shit and there's nothing we can do to stop it. How do we face the island's most dangerous animancers without an Inquisition?"

"Yeah, if only one of those dangerous animancers had offered to help us, or something," I drawl, unable to contain a hint of annoyance.

"Then we wouldn't be in this mess."

"Perhaps," Harvey answers noncommittally, and we don't speak anymore for the rest of the bath. I'm more than okay with the silence, of course, and I eventually exit the bath feeling refreshingly clean and comfortable. Xavier rushes off to invite the rest of our squad to drinks as Harvey and I return to our room to get dressed in something 'appropriate for a party,' whatever the fuck that… no, wait, Melik's memories know exactly what that means, and I don't like it.

Simple, somewhat showy clothing designed for comfort over function? The shrinking part of me that's still him yearns to get out of the under-armor padding I've been wearing in case I need to quickly get into uniform, but I hate the idea of being less than ready. Still, after rifling through Melik's things I find a somewhat fancy traveler's gambeson, the kind merchants wear on the road to compromise between protection and appearance. It'll have to do.

Bringing my shield along isn't something I'm supposed to do out of uniform, but I do strap my sword to my waist because fuck going anywhere without a weapon.

"Expecting trouble?" Harvey asks, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Call me paranoid," I answer flatly.

"I'm just not comfortable going out unprepared after everything that happened." He nods, patting me on the shoulder. To my surprise, I don't feel uncomfortable at the unexpected touch. I guess Melik's trust in this man spilled over to me.

"I understand completely," he says, flashing me a smile.

"You look like a rich merchant's son that just strolled into town, though, so you're gonna disappoint the fuck out of the tavern owner when you don't buy any drinks." I shrug, about to make a comment about how I'm broke anyway, but I guess I'm actually not broke. Melik gets a Templar's salary, after all.

"Maybe I'll buy enough food to make up for it," I answer, giving Harvey a slight smile back.

"I feel like I could eat enough food for a whole army." Or, for that matter, the army itself. … Hmm, wait. I find cannibalism gross again. Eh, that's probably a good sign more than anything. Though this does lead to a rather important question: what do I do with any human souls I find? I can't store them inside my body without giving myself away. So arguably I should just eat them; it's either me or the Mistwatcher, after all, and fuck the Mistwatcher. Except that's… evil.

I remember back when I knew keeping a soul inside me might end with the Templars after my head, but I did it anyway because protecting people from death was the right thing to do. And I still believe that; it is the right thing to do. But now I've experienced the actual consequences of the Templars being after my head. Now I'm being actively looked for. Now I know what will happen if I get caught again. I don't think I'm a good enough person to risk going through that again. Are you, Melik?

There's no response, of course, but I feel like he isn't. His instincts and his slowly-changing brain concede the point as they soak in my experiences on the matter. Pointlessly sacrificing myself for some random soul would just kill everyone involved without helping anything. But eating the soul? Eating people? It doesn't seem as appealing as it used to, even if I can't think of a logical reason to avoid it if given the opportunity. Am I regressing? That's quite annoying, if so.

Or perhaps if I look at it another way, you could argue I reversed my regression. The Mistwatcher pretty much just exists in a cycle of constant consumption, not seeming to put effort into anything beyond ensuring the current status quo provides steady meals. What if I need a human brain to think like a human, but the longer I use a human brain the less human that brain inevitably becomes? That's frustratingly plausible. I did have mana threads inside my own brain, after all.

Something to keep in mind when I design myself a superior alternative to human bodies, I suppose. … Hmm, Melik has some instinctive resistance to that thought, but it's… weirdly complicated. Eh, whatever. Melik's brain has its annoyances (please stop being attracted to Penelope, it's just going to make cuddles needlessly awkward) but it's altogether not so bad; he's a smart kid and this somehow seems to translate into making it easier to think. Like just… in general.

Thinking about any given topic takes less effort. I form conclusions faster. I'm more confident about my conclusions in a broader range of concepts. It's weird and nice and holy shit my last body was ravaged by malnourishment. Real zero-out-of-ten pick, past me. … What was I thinking about? Oh, right. I need a solution to the saving-human-souls problem. I figure I have a few options here.

Option one: work inside the Templars long enough to eliminate the threats that oppose me, then proceed to use any soul-rescuing method I want. Simple, effective, risky, aggressive. I'm worried about the fact that I simply won't make any progress unless I'm fed opportunities to kill the remaining Inquisitors and High Templars, which is both unlikely and prone to backfire in a number of ways. Option two: fuck off and leave the Templars entirely, returning to the forest.

It's definitely a workable option, but I don't like it since it just resets things to the previous status quo, except now my body is weaker. What I really want is some kind of Option three: a middle ground in which I can maintain communication with my village without needing to out Melik as my new host.

But for something like that I'd either need to be able to make the trip to and from my village without raising suspicion—a task that would basically require teleportation, and that's unfortunately well outside Melik's skillset—or I would need a liaison I could send to and from the village without raising suspicion. But that would require someone who lives in Skyhope and can safely travel the forest and who's also perfectly okay with the existence of undead and oh wait, my mom, I can just ask my mom. … Hmm.

No, actually, I probably can't. As much as I want to speak with Lyn, she's probably under more scrutiny than ever before since she worked for Penelope. I need someone a bit less suspicious. Someone who Melik would actually have a reason to talk to without any red flags. Someone he either knows or is connected to by a degree of separation or two at most. Hmm… Melik doesn't really have friends outside his squad (which is quite sad), but maybe someone else does? Certainly not Lark.

I doubt any of Harvey's war buddies would want to help me. I think Xavier is similarly lonely, despite her gregarious personality. Is there anyone that Bently knows that might be able to help? Wait a second. … Holy shit I totally forgot about Orville.

"I think I might be a bad friend," I mutter to myself.

"Eh, yeah, a little bit," Xavier agrees, walking up from behind and bumping me with her hip as she passes.

"But it's cool, we like you anyway. Come on, let's go get drunk already." I realize, belatedly, that I've been wandering around the barracks as I think to myself. Another Melik habit, maybe? Eh, who cares. Doesn't really matter. I nod to Xavier and start following her as she wanders around and picks up every member of our squad that I haven't previously bisected. (Yeah, okay, cutting Bently in half is also more evidence towards maybe being a bad friend.) We move as a group towards a tavern that Harvey apparently recommends.

"Are you sure I'm allowed to be out here, Captain Jelisa?" Lark whines nervously, hugging herself with one pair of arms while the other wrings their hands together.

"Nope," Jelisa answers flatly.

"But I'm pretty sure Command can't fire me anymore, so I don't really give a shit." Lark glances around, her ears pressed flat against her head as she desperately tries to avoid eye contact with every single person staring at her as we walk down the street. She is, after all, in civilian clothes; ones she apparently knitted (or sewed? I don't honestly know the difference) with her own claws, meaning they're entirely beautiful white silk.

Which, if anything, draws even more attention to her pitch-black skin, hair, eyes, teeth, and so on. She's very obviously inhuman, and worse, very obviously a vrothizo to anyone who's even remotely familiar with them. But of course, walking awkwardly in a group of casually joking humans means that the stares directed her way average more towards confusion than terror. Lark herself is actually the most horrified person on the street, which is rather hilarious.

"Th-that doesn't really seem like a good reason, Captain!" Lark insists.

"It's good enough for me," Jelisa counters, shrugging nonchalantly.

"You're not a shameful mistake to be hidden away from the public eye, Lark. You're a person, you're a fucking Templar, and I'm not going to put up with the higher-ups treating you like anything less."

"Fuck yeah!" Xavier cheers.

"The Captain's right, Lark. Skyhope deserves to know how badass you are!" I can't see Lark blush, but I can feel it happening. She sure won a lot of support, huh? I can't say I'm not a little jealous. Still, I find myself nodding along.

"This is the way it should be," I agree.

"Imprisoning you in the barracks until and unless you're useful? Fuck that. No one should be punished for doing good deeds." Jelisa gives me a look for a moment, but nods. Eh, she probably caught my double-meaning, but whatever. She already knows I'm here. Somehow.

"Well said," Jelisa agrees.

"So don't worry about it, Lark. Make some non-squad friends if you can. If anyone gives you shit, your squad is here to support you. That's what we do."

"And if Command gives you shit, rest assured that your Captain just publicly asserted that she knowingly disobeyed, and is entirely to blame," Harvey adds, flashing a rare grin of his own.

"Such moments are always the best time to violate orders."

"Just don't get drunk and cause a disturbance or I'll kick your asses myself," Jelisa grunts.

"Is there anyone in your squad you could actually beat in a fight?" I ask her, smirking.

"If you're drunk enough, sure," she answers, and we all laugh. The tavern is a modestly-sized wooden building, consisting of a bar counter and a smattering of round tables on which maybe a dozen people are already drinking, laughing, eating, and chatting. It seems like a fairly mellow place, not too loud or too dirty, the former of which I find especially appealing and the latter of which Melik seems to consider extremely important for some reason.

Most people are engrossed in their own meals or conversations and don't bother to even look at us when we come in, but the worker behind the counter and a handful of people at the bar all give us a double-take as we sit down at the counter with a vrothizo in our party. Jelisa waits until I sit down and purposefully claims the seat next to me, leaving me on the edge. I suppose she probably wants to talk, but I think we'll have to jump over the big black hurdle that is Lark first.

"Uh… welcome to… Hearth Ember Tavern…?" the dumbfounded bartender manages.

"What can I, uh, get you folks?" Lark speaks up first since she's being directly stared at, but I don't think he expected her to respond.

"Oh, um, a mug of… water?" she answers hesitantly.

"Um, please. If that's alright." He blinks a few times, before saying "of course" and grabbing orders from the rest of us. I order a meal for myself, everybody else gets drinks, and I settle in to enjoy not being the person everyone is staring at, for once. It's pretty comfy. At least until a subtle little silence bubble crops up around Jelisa and I. Of course.

"A bit conspicuous, don't you think?" I mutter with barely-repressed annoyance.

"We're dressed richly enough that most people will assume we're just making illegal business deals," Jelisa answers quietly.

"As for the rest of the squad, I can just order them to ignore us."

"That sounds like a strategy with a very high success rate," I answer sarcastically.

"There's no way that would make anyone in our squad even more curious."

"Well, it's fortunate that Xavier is sitting on the far side of the counter, then," Jelisa smirks.

"Mmm. I'm not really worried about her anyway." Jelisa raises her eyebrows, recognizing that word choice as the push to end the small talk that it was.

"... Who am I talking to?" she asks quietly.

"Vita or Melik?"

"Sort of both," I admit, putting my elbow on the counter to rest my chin on my hand, covering my lips from curious watchers.

"Mostly Vita. But I have his memories, and a lot of his habits are influencing me."

"Is he dead, then?" she asks. I sigh, taking the effort to look her in the eyes.

"I think for most intents and purposes… probably. It was a rough merger at first, I felt like I was both of us. To some extent I still do. But now I've… subsumed him, more or less. I'm sorry."

"I see," she says softly. The bartender passes her the drink she ordered, and she gulps down quite a bit of it.

"... Why Melik?"

"It wasn't exactly a conscious decision," I answer, shrugging.

"I just flung myself after Norah in a desperate attempt to save my own life. I missed. My turn, then. How did you figure me out?"

"You ate an insect soul in your sleep," Jelisa answers. Shit. Okay, I need to figure out how to break that habit.

"Good to know," I grumble.

"Have you told anyone?"

"Not yet," Jelisa answers, shrugging.

"Haven't decided if I should. What do you plan to do if I inform my bosses?"

"I guess I'll head back to my village and we'll start this all over again," I answer honestly.

"And what happens if I don't tell anyone?" she asks.

"Then I think… Melik will stay on your squad for a while," I tell her, smiling slightly.

"He liked it here. I think I do too."

"Oh?" she prompts, taking another big swig of alcohol.

"Yeah, I mean, I never wanted to be the big scary Lich in the forest," I tell her.

"I want to save people. I want to help people. If I can do that here for a while, then I will."

"And how long do you think you can hide in plain sight like this?" Jelisa asks curiously.

"Well, I managed it for a decade or so in my last body," I smirk.

"So surely I can manage at least a few months without a major… uh." I blink with surprise. Is that… no. This cannot be fucking real.

"... Why is there a High Templar headed right towards us?" I hiss. Jelisa at least seems just as surprised as I am, but the incoming high-speed superweapon in the shape of a person doesn't leave any time to answer before she crashes down in front of the tavern and bodily shoves open the door. My instincts scream at me to rush her, to kill her before she can kill me first, but I manage to keep myself glued to my chair. She doesn't feel like she's after me. She doesn't feel like she knows who I am.

So what the fuck is she doing here!?

"Woo!" Cassia the Maelstrom cheers, grinning as she rips off her High Templar helmet and shakes out her long, blonde hair.

"Let's get fucking wasted!"