Chương 153: 151. Propositions

Walking through the forest with a team is both pleasantly nostalgic and exceptionally frustrating, considering that I have the benefit of good company but the downside of having to be led around by blind people. I used to take pride in how damn good a scout I was, back when I was a hunter. I suppose I didn't realize exactly how much I enjoyed being in charge, choosing routes, and deciding where to go. Jelisaveta does a passable job of it, but I find myself judging her the whole damn way.

A couple times she leads us towards something small that feels dangerous to me, and I end up whispering a suggestion, which she follows. That always makes me feel smug. I wonder if it's similar to how I enjoy seeing my Revenants follow my orders. At least I get a lot more practice doing Melik things. The forest is as impossible to safely traverse as ever, but now that I can't just insta-murder everything in a wide radius without giving myself away, it's back to fighting dirty.

By which I don't mean 'underhanded,' I mean 'getting covered in mud, blood, and monster guts.' It's making me really hungry. Lark too, though I suppose she's always hungry.

"This would probably go easier if you took your armor off, Lark," I comment idly, bashing my shield into the side of a beefy beetle monster and activating a rune on the front to blast it off-balance, letting Bently take a nasty stab at its eye.

"I'd rather practice like this," Lark answers firmly, smashing the hilt of her sword into one of the insect's spindly legs to snap the joint.

"Well, if you're embarrassed about eating monsters, we could all take a few bites of whatever gets killed. Y'know, in solidarity." Something about that makes her pause, though I'm not sure what.

"... No thank you, I'm fine," she answers. Damn. It was worth a shot, though. We keep hacking away at the monster the slow way, eventually bringing it down before once again moving on. I'm breathing hard, still frustrated at my body's weakness as I move my metal dust around, recreating the various metamancy runes on my weapons and armor that got expended over the course of the fight.

"I'd be down," Xavier says, huffing with even more exhaustion than I am.

"To do the monster-eating thing, I mean. This guy isn't poisonous, right?"

"I don't think so," Bently answers, looking as refreshed as usual, the bastard.

"I think we tried cooking one once and it tasted awful, though."

"Wait, you did?" Xavier asks.

"That's pretty great." Bently shrugs.

"Penelope could make the meat safe, so Vita would always eat monster corpses instead of rations when we had the time for it," he explains.

"She wanted to save the rations for emergencies. Never seemed to mind the taste." Both Harvey and Lark briefly glance at me, which I interpret to probably be a bad sign. Come on, just because I suggested it as a joke? Dang it, I thought I'd been subtle enough! Jelisa clears her throat, though, stealing everyone's attention.

"No monster cooking, we're in a hurry. Let's cut the chatter and move on. This way." And so we continue, the journey both frustrating and long. My body needs to sleep every night, as I haven't even been storing or eating souls in fear it'll force me to hatch again. I roil at the idea of Lark serving as the overnight lookout rather than me almost as much as I've been frustrated with Jelisa doing the pathfinding, but exhaustion doesn't let me lament it for long, most nights.

About five days into the journey, though, I find myself struggling to sleep because I'm busy trying to design an anti-bug ward to keep the damn things away from me. Having to consciously ignore them while I'm awake is frustrating enough, but the number of bug corpses I find nearby after sleeping some nights is legitimately dangerous to my disguise. At least Lark either hasn't noticed or hasn't deemed it odd enough to press me on.

Or so I've assumed, but now that we're the only two people awake she hesitantly turns to confront me about… something. Her soul isn't the easiest to read.

"Hey… Melik?" she whispers quietly.

"You tired at all?"

"A little," I admit.

"Not enough to sleep yet, though. What's up?"

"I guess you've… I dunno," she mutters, squirming a little as she looks away from me. I'm already out of my armor, since I'll hopefully be sleeping soon, but Lark hasn't taken hers off since we started the trip. Not even to pee, since she doesn't have to. Lucky duck.

"I've what?" I prompt her.

"You've been… weirdly nice to me," she admits.

"You used to hate me, and now you're just… not being mean at all. You don't even glare at me anymore." I quirk an eyebrow.

"Do you want me to glare at you?" I ask.

"Well, no, I just… I guess I'm just wondering, did something change?" I note with annoyance that our conversation just woke Jelisa, but she continues pretending to be asleep for now. I shrug, trying not to act as stressed out as I really am. I have no clue how Lark would react to the truth.

"All of us nearly died," I say instead.

"I think that changed the whole squad, honestly."

"I guess," she admits.

"Is that really all?" I sigh. Well, here goes nothing. I can't think of a better time than now.

"No," I admit.

"That's not all." She tenses, leaning forward a bit.

"The truth is," I continue, "I was partly a jerk because I find you really, really attractive." She stares at me. I stare back. Jelisa tries very, very hard not to laugh.

"I don't understand how those two things relate," Lark eventually answers.

"Honestly, I don't either," I answer.

"Oh."

"Yeah." Another pause.

"So I don't… I don't want to have sex with you," Lark ventures. I wince at the horrid mental image that evokes.

"I very firmly do not want to have sex with you either," I agree.

"But… isn't that what attraction is?" she asks.

"No. Well, kind of, I guess? But still no."

"Oh." Jelisa unsuccessfully tries to disguise a choking laugh as a snore as Lark and I continue to stare awkwardly at each other.

"Do you think Vita could be one of us?" Lark asks, changing the subject with all the subtlety of teeth to the throat. Fuck, what do I say to that?

"If she is," I hedge, "she must be more interested in staying undercover than fighting us. Maybe she's making good on that alliance offer after all."

"What do you think would happen to… her host, I guess?"

"Jelisa would be a better person to ask about that," I dismiss.

"She's an Inquisitor."

"Of course," Lark answers.

"Of course." Okay, well, I guess she's obviously suspicious. May as well do my own super-subtle inquiries.

"If she is hiding among us," I ask, "what do you think we should do?" Lark looks away, staring out into the darkness as if she saw something. There's nothing over there, though.

"I don't know," she answers eventually.

"I didn't know the right thing to do then, I don't know it now. At least killing vrothizo is something I don't have to feel bad about." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Every vrothizo except one, anyway," I answer, grinning at her. She turns back to me, a complicated buzz of sensations once again spreading through her soul.

"Yeah," she allows.

"I guess I can keep one of them alive, since my squad seems to like her so much." I nod.

"Good. Now I should probably get to bed."

"Okay," she acknowledges.

"Melik?"

"Yeah?" There's another pause, one where she's clearly building up to say something big.

"Good night," is all that actually comes out of her mouth.

"Good night, Lark," I tell her, and curl up in my bedroll before fitfully passing into slumber. I dream of Penelope holding me, up until the moment when she turns to ash.

"Penny," I mumble, eyes fluttering open. Then my heart seizes with terror as I look around, trying to make sure she didn't hear me call her that. She'd fucking kill me! Except… oh, wait. I'm Melik, I'm here on a Templar mission, and I still don't know where my girlfriend is. I just have to hope Orville has good news for me when I get back. So I instead check if any of my squadmates heard my mutterings, and thankfully I seem to have woken up first, despite having gone to bed last. Convenient, but unlikely to last.

I stretch my ill-fitting body and start the day, wondering when the shoe will inevitably drop. We all wake up in short order, packing up camp and setting off once again towards New Talsi… or what's left of it. It's not long before Jelisa gives the first danger call.

"We've got incoming." We do indeed.

"Vrothizo," I whisper.

"It's a vrothizo," Jelisa announces.

"Brace!" Our shields go up, our swords are ready. Trained and drilled a thousand times, the shield wall we form now has already killed a dozen other monsters on the way here, a few of them vrothizo. But to my surprise, the mindless charge of our foe starts to slow. Something in its soul starts to subtly shift, the mindless hunger changing to an altogether different instinct I don't quite understand.

"Something's abnormal," I whisper, and Jelisa nods slightly, seeming thoughtful. Nothing we can do but keep our shields up and find out, though.

"Lark," Jelisa says nonchalantly.

"You smell different, today."

"Um, is now really the time to complain about bathing?" Lark asks incredulously.

"Nope," Jelisa answers. The vrothizo emerges from the foliage ahead of us, not in a whirlwind of teeth and fury but hesitantly, as if confused. It is an odd beast, as all vrothizo tend to be; not much larger than a person, and almost simian-like with large, thick forelimbs that end in spiked, cudgel-like hooves. It has no head, instead simply a massive mouth splitting the area between its shoulders. Its hind legs are smaller, though wicked barbs on the calf lead me to believe they are no less deadly.

And yet, it does not move to attack. I say it's 'confused,' but I feel no thoughts from it, no greater intelligence that could be confused in the way a person would be. It is merely a bundle of instinct warring against a bundle of habits that, unexpectedly, no longer apply. A different stage in the monster's life suddenly calls to it, and it lacks the confidence borne of repetition to act on it immediately. The hunger is quiet for a moment, and that stuns the beast enough that it needs a while to adapt.

It plods slowly forward, its steps lagging until, finally, it stops. It sits down, hind legs spread. And something starts to… expand between them.

"Is… is that what I fucking think it is?" Xavier asks, disbelieving.

"Yep," Harvey sighs.

"That's a penis."

"Why, though."

"Damn, Lark, you've gotten two propositions in two days," Jelisa jokes.

"You're one popular lady." Lark doesn't respond, though, seeming to have not even heard.

"Lark?" Jelisa repeats. My vrothizo squadmate's sword and shield clatter to the forest floor, a roiling mess of activity in her soul blocking out normal motor function. Best I can tell, she seems to be… calculating. Judging. And all the while, the monster in front of us waits.

"Lark!" Jelisa snaps in her 'giving an order' voice.

"Talk to me, Lark! Report!" That seems to catch on her consciousness a little, but the only response Lark has is a single word.

"Weak," she hisses. Her gauntlets creak as she flexes her fingers slowly, crouching low into a stance Melik knows well. It's one burned into his memory, after all, from moments before she shattered his ribs like I would a soul.

"Weak!" she accuses, her voice full of wrath. And then she lunges. The other vorthizo doesn't react in time, but Lark's first blow doesn't kill him so the battle begins. Immediately, the rest of us jolt forward to assist her, but Jelisa holds out a hand to stop us, and I can hardly blame her. The two beasts are a flurry of indiscriminate violence, Lark barely even seeming to realize her armor is on as she tries to claw and bite and scratch with chitin coverings in the way.

Only when one of the feral vrothizo's cudgel-arms smashes open her helmet and shatters her jaw clean off does she start to properly fight back, ripping off her own gauntlets and digging her claws deep into the side of his body so she can scrape off and swallow meat with only her top row of teeth. She starts to regrow, and each blow the monster lands only frees more of her from the armor that holds her back. By the end of it, the monster dies with her on top of his corpse, all six limbs digging into his flesh.

Back arched and quills out, she lets out a horrid, triumphant screech before her rage dies down, leaving her heavy-breathed and horridly lucid.

"Lark," Jelisa says calmly.

"You with us, girl?"

"I… he…" Lark stutters, slowly staggering up to her feet.

"He thought he could… he dared to…" I realize, suddenly, that the cacophony now in her soul is a copy of what it was only moments ago. She has a perfect memory, I realize, and that means these strange flashes in her soul are her reliving a past event.

"Lark!" I shout loudly, startling everyone but most importantly her. She stares at me, giving me her full attention for a moment.

"Here and now," I tell her. She nods slowly, purposefully pulling herself out of her mental memory hole.

"I… I'm okay now," she says softly.

"I think."

"Can you talk me through it now, or do you need to take a break?" Jelisa asks.

"You're not in trouble, but we'll definitely have to report this."

"Yeah," Lark agrees.

"Yeah, I get it. I should be fine in a moment." She turns to the corpse, absentmindedly grabbing it by the ankle and dragging it between a couple trees, which she proceeds to start flicking webbing at, crafting various traps for the monsters that will no doubt come sniffing out blood. With one of her arms she starts tearing off her mostly-shattered armor, her silk clothing underneath stained black with blood.

"So," Lark says eventually.

"Sorry, everyone. I… that was different than it usually is, and it caught me off guard."

"Different how?" Jelisa presses.

"I wasn't hungry," Lark says, seeming awed by even speaking the words.

"I was more… angry. Indignant. That he thought he was enough to… to…" She spares an awkward look back at the corpse.

"... You know," she finishes.

"So," Jelisa grunts.

"Vrothizo puberty?"

"Vrothizo puberty," Lark confirms quietly.

"I think… yeah. Yeah, it was probably that."

"Welp," Xavier declares, "I don't know what I expected that to be like for you, but I probably should have expected the terrifying murder sex."

"That's not… we weren't…!"

"I know, I know, chill," Xavier answers, holding up her hands.

"That was just regular murder. Still, though."

"It's not murder," I correct.

"It's monster slaying."

"Yes, you're right, but can everyone please stop nitpicking my word choice when I'm trying to be funny?"

"This isn't a laughing matter, Xavier," Jelisa snaps.

"Lark, what do you think the odds are you'll lose control like this again?"

"I… I don't know," she answers honestly.

"Less than this time, I think. I just… I wasn't prepared for it. I've never been angry like that before, but I don't think it's that different from a regular frenzy." Jelisa glances slightly at me, and I give her a subtle shrug. I've never felt Lark in a hunger frenzy before, I can't really compare the two things.

But the way her inner soul took precedence over her outer soul for a while is how I'd suspect it to work for her; after all, she's not 'frenzying' so much as 'reverting to what every other vrothizo does all the time.' The Lark we know is the exception, not the default.

"Okay," Jelisa nods.

"Well, we'll know soon enough, because I suspect there will be a lot more vrothizo between here and New Talsi. You tell me the moment you feel any urges of a similar nature, okay Lark? Melik, you keep an eye on her too." I smirk a little under my helmet. Unfortunately, my most useful eye for the job is a bit blinded right now, but I can still make it work.

"Yes ma'am," I agree. The forest doesn't take long to prove Jelisa right, but none of the vrothizo that attack us between here and our destination are male. Probably because the male vrothizo all died having sex (or failing to). I feel like Penelope would have a lot of complaints about this reproductive strategy. It feels like the kind of thing she'd go on a tirade about.

It's a fond thought, and one that carries me all the way until we're a handful of miles from New Talsi and my soul sense starts peeking inside what's left of the city. The answer to which is, of course, 'not much.' As expected from a vrothizo attack, I barely even feel a soul in the city, and the few that I do are so small as to barely even matter. Of course I'm not feeling the entire city yet, so maybe as we get closer I'll sense—"Melik?" someone asks, but I barely even hear the words. Oh, shit. Holy shit.

"Melik! Is something the matter?" Jelisa asks. I realize, belatedly, that I've stopped marching. I shake my head and get back into formation.

"Sorry, just… got distracted for a moment. What was the population of New Talsi, do you think?"

"It was about eight thousand," Lark answers.

"Why?" Eight fucking thousand.

"No reason," I shrug, as nonchalantly as possible.

"Just… it's a lot of people to lose."

"Yeah," Lark agrees.

"Yeah, it definitely is." Jelisa doesn't stop giving me a suspicious stare, though, and I don't blame her. She should know, though, so I tell her.

"Wight," I whisper. What I judge to be an appropriate amount of terror grips her soul. Because, yeah, we might be fucked. The Wights I fought (and made) during the Skyhope perception event had soul shard counts in the double digits. But if vrothizo devoured everything here, that means they'd be leaving a lot of damaged souls behind. I don't know how all those souls ended up in the same corpse, but it feels like they did and that means, well… I've heard stories of Wights that shatter islands.

I'm going to have to be the one to save everyone, aren't I? Fuck. That never goes well.