Chương 160: 158. Superior Master

"Murderer!" the young little vrothizo roars at me, launching herself through the air towards me in a manner I note is not dissimilar to how Vita nearly killed herself by leaping at Galdra. Loyal to a fault, the both of them. Loyalty is a virtue, not a fault. Of course, loyalty is a virtue and not a fault. It is observably beneficial to all parties, and not deserving of mockery. No, the flaws in this situation come from other factors. Lark is arguably not incorrect in her accusations, after all.

I have just performed murder and assassination of a True Lady: while by law her head is quite crushable due to her status as an animancer, I have not yet proved her status as an animancer under a court of law. I am a murderer until I do so, at which point that status is retroactively revoked and officially never existed. All of this is, of course, silly and subjective and pointless, but it's still how things are. Fortunately, my principles trump law.

This fact was often abused by my old self as justification, and so will need to be constantly monitored and adjusted for, but it is still a fact. Anything less would be prohibitively restrictive. The point is, as Lark chips her sword against my scales, I find my principles and my plans in alignment: she is not to be hurt for this. She is acting in accordance with rightness, at least in terms of the information she has available. She is to be handled non-lethally and made into an ally. I catch her by the throat.

"Galdra the Annihilator was a—" I start to explain, but she drowns it out with incoherent fury and twists violently in my grasp, forcing me to throw her towards the ground to prevent her from snapping her own neck. My wings rotate and stretch as my arcane flight organ throbs with mana, increasing my altitude in an attempt to prevent her from simply jumping back up at me.

Yet before she ever hits the ground, she shatters her own gauntlets and fires threads at me from the spinnerets on her fingers, yanking them when they stick to me. Our difference in weight means she gets pulled up to me rather than pulling me down, continuing our battle in the sky with claws out. She crashes into me like a furious beast, roaring and scratching and struggling in maddened grief. But not frenzy. She is still herself. So the time has come to break her.

She grabs one of my wings and tugs, but I do not truly need them to fly. So I take the opportunity to grab her helmet and yank it off hard enough to break the straps. This frees one of her most dangerous weapons, of course, but it is worth being able to judge her expression.

"She was a good woman!" Lark shrieks at me, and I let the temptation to murder her for those words pass over me like a wave at the top of a pond. She's crying. She's hysterical. She doesn't know. I will tolerate this. The desirability of outcomes is not determined by how satisfying they are.

"Lark, listen to me," I order her, resisting the urge to wince as one of her wild kicks strikes me between the legs.

"Shut up!" It seems I will need to take a more expedient approach. There is, after all, still a battle happening around us.

"I am First Lady Penelope Vesuvius, and you will listen to me," I hiss, clamping both hands around her skull and squeezing just painfully enough to remind her exactly what I did to the last skull I got a grip on. Bafflingly, she continues trying to strike at me, causing us to tumble inelegantly through the air but accomplishing little else. Why the… Oh, right. I forgot the girl was suicidal.

I shake her with dangerous force, but unfortunately her vrothizo constitution cares little for trivial things such as concussions.

"She cared!" Lark shouts, tears streaming down her face.

"She believed in me!" Watcher's eyes, I do not have time for this inane, childish whinging. I stick my thumb as deep into her mouth as it will go. Am I a monster or woman to you, Lark? She freezes, finally recognizing me, so I suppose the answer is woman. That probably makes her and Vita the only two in the city. Well, at least until Nugas gets here. I'd wondered, while forming my body, if it was wise to keep my face. It is at least paying dividends here. Galdra always did right by Lark, for all her horridness.

But so did I.

"Only a fool wouldn't believe in you," I say firmly, since she's finally listening and it's what she needs to hear.

"Now. You have my condolences for losing someone close to you. But Galdra was an animancer using me as a mind slave, and I will not tolerate any more arguments about whether she should have lived. There is a battle going on and you are going to fight it as a Templar. Am I understood?"

"Sh-she would never—" she sobs carefully, not letting her teeth draw blood.

"If I am a liar then seek justice later," I snap, cutting her off.

"You will fight our enemy. Am I understood?" She nods slowly.

"Good," I say, and drop her. She cuts the threads binding us on her way to the ground. She is still crying, still confused, still not sure what to believe. It will do for now. I've already wasted too much time on her. I did, after all, just assassinate a major political and military figure in the middle of a battle with one of our greatest enemies, and Lark is not the only person I'm going to need to convince not to kill me as a result.

The rest of her squad is thankfully too occupied with Hiverock soldiers to attack me, although several of them clearly want to. The vast majority of other Templar squads haven't even noticed my arrival, as they are busy for exactly the same reasons. But there is one major threat who has undoubtedly both noticed and declined to ignore, and as always he is, in essence, already here. The illusory strike takes me in the back of the head.

I'm ready for it but it still sends me careening through the air in a quite undignified manner. Of course, the common rules of dignity do not apply to me; I am a masterwork of biological superiority— Arrogance is nothing but a weakness. —I am a creature crafted to the best of my limited abilities, and more relevantly I am still completely naked. One does not get to complain about a lack of dignity while flying around with their genitals out. Hypocrisy is a symptom of failure.

Contradictions do not arise in a properly working system. I cease my uncontrolled movement through the skies, stabilizing my momentum with a burst of magical thrust and a flick of my enormous tail. Braum's manifested 'body' flies at me with fist ready to swing, which has always struck me as odd. Why not simply batter me without the accompanying visual illusion? It should not only be possible, but easier. Prioritization is first priority. One must always know what to be focused on, and remain focused on it.

"I ask for parley, Braum the Ubiquitous," I say, and though I'm struck multiple times during my words I continue to speak them.

"I mean you and yours no harm." The blows stop, and I stabilize my flight once again. The expressionless illusory helmet of Braum the Ubiquitous betrays nothing, but I believe I have his measure.

"It seems to me you have already harmed me and mine, Vesuvius the Inhuman," Braum says, and I can't help but let a little smile touch my face as he speaks the title I have now fully embraced. He is furious and means it as an insult. It is not one.

"Galdra was a traitor," I tell him.

"An animancer. She bent me to her will. I seek only justice for Skyhope and my own soul."

"Justice for Skyhope," he repeats.

"Did you not destroy the Inquisition?"

"My body did," I confirm, and allow him to draw his own conclusions from the vague words. A mistake, I soon decide. Braum is not a man that likes vagueness. He equates it with duplicity. Annoying, since under the circumstances he is correct to do so.

"You claim Galdra forced you under her influence, and yet you killed her?" Braum challenges.

"That is hardly an unprecedented situation," I remind him.

"For another animancer, perhaps," he accuses. Hmm. I've already misstepped once, and truthfully there is not much point in denying that here. Lies are fragile tools, prone to constructing fragile things. It is better to spin the truth more favorably.

"One does what they have to in order to live," I say, sadness and regret in my tone.

"I sinned in your eyes, but I have done so to save you."

"Slaying the strongest living Templar in our time of need is your idea of saving us?" Braum asks, gesturing around. Ah, his mistake. Momentum in the negotiation for my life is once again mine.

"You will find that I have supplied an ample replacement for this loss," I tell him, just as the first of the Hiverock soldiers start to collapse. I have, of course, been seeding custom diseases since I arrived here. The last time I slew an army this way, I had to take many precautions against the spread of my deadly concoctions. That does not apply here. Hiverock denizens have incredibly robust and complicated immune systems, such that my prior attempts to slay them en masse have been met largely with frustration.

Now, however, I have had plenty of time to be around the Hiverock soldier at Vita's camp, and my talent's instincts have come up with countless methods of potentially bypassing their natural immunities, all of which will do absolutely nothing to humans. The biologies involved are simply too different; humans can be carriers of my Hiverock-slaying plagues, but they cannot be harmed by them. Which is, of course, the ideal outcome. The vast majority of my diseases fail.

I haven't been able to test them before, after all, as I didn't want to alert To-Kill of my intentions lest he have a way of secretly reporting to his superiors. This kind of underhanded plague-formation tactic rather grates my principles, but the preparation was done before I bound myself more firmly to them, and now that the plagues exist it is wasteful not to use them.

My principles surrounding my talent are, by necessity, particularly rigid, as the temptation to skirt around them has always been particularly strong. A plague that infects sapients may never be self-propagating. No plague may be capable of existing past the maximum necessary generations of replication. Plagues must self-destruct upon mutation. … And the list goes on, with each and every restriction making my power weaker and more frustrating to use. My diseases are, by necessity, fragile, and it grates me.

They need not be so. Yet these are some of my oldest principles, and without many of them my country would be quite barren, and I would be quite mad. They must never be broken. And now they never will be. Besides, fragile or otherwise, my weapons are still enough to kill. The Hiverock soldiers in town perish en masse as I identify the successful strain out of the dozens of failed ones and redouble my efforts to spread it. The tide falling on us starts to die before even hitting the ground.

"You expect your heroics to pardon your sin," Braum says.

"And perhaps they will. Together, your accusation and contribution are serious enough to stay my hand. But you are both a killer and an animancer, and you cannot expect to return to your former status, even if the investigation into your claims falls in your favor." Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. I blink with disappointment, but not surprise.

"My status is an irrelevant thing," I tell him plainly.

"We are no longer playing that game. I intend to attack Hiverock directly. I will spread my plague through their home and end them once and for all. Will you and Cassia provide support?"

"There is a reason we never do this," Braum says, his false body betraying no surprise.

"Hiverock's defenses greatly, greatly outstrip their offenses. Attacking will provoke them, and you are unlikely to survive it." I suppose breaking and rebuilding my soul has not reduced my dislike for people who state the obvious.

"This likelihood has been accounted for and deemed acceptable," I say out loud. I don't intend to die, but stopping the Hiverock attacks for good is something worth dying for. I can believe in things worth dying for, now. Not in my heart, but at least in my soul.

"W-wait!" Vita says, huffing slightly from running all the way over to where Braum launched me.

"I'm coming too!"

"Obviously," I answer. I need her to control Galdra and provide her own strength. I'm pleased to see her volunteer, though. It is the right thing to do, and much more convenient than having to force her.

"Young Melik!" Braum starts to protest.

"You can't…" He cuts himself off, though, just now realizing the obvious.

"You aren't Melik," he concludes. Most people can't really see her, of course. They just see a normal Templar and not the glorious cerulean soul, the impossibly-moving tendrils, the threads of anima rapidly spreading through her body. So she removes her helmet, shaking out her head before staring up at us with a young man's face. Her eyes are already turning a deep, deep blue.

"Turns out it's hard to kill a Lich," she deadpans.

"So are you actually going to let me help this time or are we going to throw down in the middle of a crisis again?" Braum regards her passively for a moment.

"Was it you," he asks slowly, "when we met in the tavern?"

"Yes," Vita confirms.

"In the fullness of your power?" he presses.

"Could you have killed Cassia while she was drunk and defenseless?"

"All I would have had to do is shake her hand," Vita confirms.

"And why didn't you?" She sighs and puts the helmet back on.

"Being good at killing people," she tells him, "is not the same as wanting to do it. Don't you know that firsthand?" Braum looks up, although the motion is, of course, a purely symbolic gesture.

"Hiverock… will not take Skyhope," he says.

"Even if I turn and face you, even if I try to kill you both during this crisis, we will still win. At least today. But in the long run, we have already lost, haven't we? The report from New Talsi was… grim. Vrothizo of that size will eventually spread across our kingdom faster than we can deploy Templars to stop them, and they will keep getting stronger while we dwindle away and die." I smile.

"And so an offensive is the only option," I finish for him.

"You understand."

"... It is not authorized by Command," Braum hedges. Frustrating. Weak. Principle is a superior master to man.

"Is Command what dictates your action?" I ask him.

"Or is it what you know to be right?"

"I cannot go," Braum says.

"But I will not stop you." And then he vanishes, although I doubt he has stopped watching. Not a bad outcome, all things considered. I give him about a seventy percent chance to back us up at the last minute anyway.

"Well, well, Vesuvius," a once-loved voice sneers at me from every direction.

"You've signed me up for quite an outing." I turn to face Galdra's headless corpse as it floats towards me, slow-clapping mockingly.

"I guess I deserved to go out the same way you did," she continues, a kynamancy spell speaking in lieu of a mouth.

"Slathered and dripping in my own arrogance. I really thought I had you. How'd you trick the animancy?" I turn away from Galdra, and back to Vita.

"Shall I carry you or Lark? Galdra can carry the other."

"Is Lark coming?"

"Lark!" I bark at her.

"Do you wish to stop the murderous ambitions of the people who use your kind as weapons?"

"No, no, it's cool," Galdra grunts.

"Just ignore me. I'm not that important."

"You're not that important," Vita confirms, making the words law. I would have enjoyed that before, but I find pride in the fact that I don't any longer. Galdra's fury is obvious even without a face as she feels the words settle into her soul.

"Fuck you," she hisses.

"Vesuvius got out. What makes you think I can't?"

"You will never use animancy again under any circumstances, even if you think it will benefit me," Vita orders her.

"You will answer any questions I ask you to the degree of detail you genuinely believe I desire. You will immediately inform me if you ever think of a plan to escape my control, or suspect you might be escaping my control intentionally or otherwise. Have I missed anything?" There's a pause.

"Nothing comes to mind at the moment," Galdra intones evenly.

"And that's what makes me think you won't get out," Vita snaps.

"I'm not a fucking cognimancer trying to tiptoe my anima constructs around the limitations of the brain. You are dead. And that means I own you. Come on, Lark! What'll it be? Galdra's corpse or Galdra's murderer?"

"I… I'm not going to go up there and kill people in their own homes!" Lark squeaks.

"Defending Skyhope is one thing, but…" Still incapable of seeing the bigger picture, isn't she? Hmm, she's probably having a terrible time for more reasons than just Galdra and I, come to think of it. She's been killing people. She has killed people despite her conscience for what may be the first time. They're Hiverock soldiers, sure, and she killed them with sword rather than fangs, but this is still something she will remember and likely regret forever.

I open my mouth to try to soothe her, but Vita beats me to it.

"Eh, you won't have to kill anyone if you come with us," Vita grunts.

"There are hundreds of vrothizo up there that need killing instead. We can drop you with them." Hundreds, really? Well, Vita is no liar so I will take the number at face value. It is a frightening amount. Why would… ah. Their defenses purportedly outstrip their offenses by several orders of magnitude. Their attacks, while increasingly risky, seem to only use a bare fraction of their actual power. The power, therefore, is being saved for something.

Their resources, manpower and otherwise, are allocated with uncaring precision. Verdantop must be far from the only island they are invading. We are… merely part of a schedule. Arrogance is nothing but a weakness. But I suppose we'll soon see how warranted that arrogance is.

"I… is that really Galdra?" Lark asks quietly, referring to the headless corpse of the enemy.

"Is she still… herself? Is that really how it works?" Vita regards both of them quietly for a moment, which is a surprise as I expected an immediate answer.

"She is as much Galdra as I am me," my former lover answers calmly.

"If not more."

"I'll… I'll go with Galdra, then." Vita nods.

"Galdra, you will answer anything Lark asks you truthfully and completely, to the degree of detail you believe she desires."

"Goodie," Galdra sighs. Her capacity to emote with spells alone is rather impressive. She is much more appealing to look at without a face.

"Without the metal that was in my head I'm much weaker than usual," Galdra complains, lifting Lark up onto her back.

"And considering how Vesuvius bent it, it's useless now."

"Not entirely," I disagree, and toss it to Vita. She grins and tries to bite it, then hurts her teeth.

"Ow! Man, fuck Melik's body." She tosses the metal back to me.

"Turn this into bite-sized chunks, would you?"

"Of course," I agree, and start snapping pieces off of it with my bare hands.

"Would you be willing to supply me your mana for the journey upwards, Vita? It is much more efficient, and it will allow me to continue casting even if you have to disrupt other spells around us."

"Yeah," Vita says.

"Okay." Ah, the poor thing is distraught. The loss of my love for her hurts her greatly. Alas, I am incapable of mourning it. I remember all too well the efforts I put myself through to win her affections, and still she was slow and timid and quite closed off until after two years of absence. She did not truly love me until I brought the island down for her, but I bloody well did it anyway. If she can handle the role reversal and put in the work to win me back, well… we shall see what my new soul makes of her.

It would be nice to get close to love again, even if I still don't think I'll be able to truly experience it. It is not unappealing to have a… a happy obsession.

"Shall we go up to our likely deaths, then?" I ask kindly, extending a hand down to Vita.

"I look forward to destroying our greatest enemy and still not being thanked for it," Vita answers dryly, taking my hand and allowing me to lift her into a chaste hold. With a flex of wing and magic, we shoot up like an arrow.

"So," I say, deciding to make smalltalk as I dodge falling bug-men trying to intercept us.

"You died." Vita pops a chunk of metal in her mouth and swallows it whole.

"So did you," she points out.

"Yes," I agree.

"Arguably so."

"Our plan didn't work so well," she notes.

"It could have gone much worse," I disagree.

"From your perspective," she asks slowly, "are you still you? Or are you more like Nugas?"

"Even Nugas is not like I expected Nugas to be," I muse.

"So that is a difficult question to answer. But I will say that I believe myself to be Penelope Vesuvius. At least to the same extent that you are you and Galdra is Galdra. I still bear the sins and the dreams of the woman that came before."

"Is that what we are?" Vita grumbles, turning her eyes up at one of the great collections of runes flaring to life on the craggy underside of Hiverock.

"Just sins and dreams?"

"We are both different from who we were before," I say.

"I do not undermine this. But all people, all the time, are becoming different. And there is nothing any of us can do about it. Penelope Vesuvius, like any person, is a creature composed of random chance. I did not choose to be born a noble. I did not choose to have a talent designed to instill death and suffering. And I did not choose to have the philosophy of principle before emotion drilled into me at a young age. But all of these things happened, and they all define who I am. I chose many things, of course.

I chose to be a hunter. I chose to pursue animancy. And I chose you. These things define me as well. But I feel as though we ignore the importance of the way everything we didn't choose defines us. We do not get the option of remaining the same person for our entire life. The world chooses for us. What I had to do to myself was terrifying, Vita, but I am not so sure it is that much more terrifying than the natural progression of life. In the end, none of us get to choose what we are as much as we'd like to."

"Well it's normally not so abrupt as to be noticeable," Vita grunts, covering us in a sphere of her essence as a great blast of concentrated power tries to strike us from the sky. It fizzles to nothing before her.

"It's certainly very different," I agree.

"But is it worse?" A dozen Hiverock soldiers dive at us at once, and then their corpses scatter around us as she rips their souls out of the sky.

"I guess that's a matter of perspective," Vita admits. I smile. She's changed a lot as well, I see. An urge to nestle my face in her hair takes me, but alas I am stopped both by her helmet and my conviction. She needs to work for it this time. It will be good for her. But maybe it won't be as difficult for her as I was expecting. The short-range runic defenses of Hiverock are formidable, but they do not stop us as we approach.

Less than half a mile to Hiverock's open maw, however, Vita freezes with what I can only assume to be terror.

"What is it?" I ask.

"A… a Queen," is all she seems capable of answering. Her attention, after all, is not with me. The minute twitches of her body indicate her full attention is in analyzing this new threat. I can only imagine what she feels. I've not often seen her this afraid.

"Well," I muse, "it is good then, that I brought a Queen of my own." Corrupt leadership is to be replaced, at high priority. Tolerating abuses of power is always a mistake. It's a principle crafted from experience, and it applies strongly here. Though if we actually conquer Hiverock… well, I'm not entirely sure what we'll do with it.

"We'll lose," Vita says with surety.

"We can't beat this." Is she serious? My talent is built for genocide and she knows it. Arrogance is— —Nothing but a weakness, yes, okay. Trust Vita's instincts. We can't win against… whatever it is she's sensing. But if it just entered her range, it's miles away.

"How much time do we have?" I ask her. She shakes her head.

"I… it's hard to say. Maybe five minutes, maybe thirty?" I nod. Well, then.

"Five minutes will have to be enough. We will inflict whatever damage we can and retreat. If we do not at least buy ourselves time, Skyhope will eventually fall to vrothizo without them having to do more than continue to drop eggs."

"Then… we want to go for their worldshakers," Vita says, thinking deeply.

"Pardon?" I ask, as I've never heard the term.

"Huge vrothizo that they use as breeding females," Vita explains.

"They lay clutches of hundreds of eggs at once. If we kill enough of those we'll buy ourselves… I dunno, maybe a year or two while they grow more up to that size."

"You will navigate us to them," I order her.

"Of course," she agrees without argument. The most powerful runic defenses so far flare to life, and for a single moment I gaze at them in awe. The spell before me transcends much of what I know about magic. It is elegant and efficient and deadly in ways that must be a century of optimization ahead of us. It is truly beautiful. Fortunately, I have brought along a lot of raw, brute force.

Galdra's flame melts the stone holding the runes as Vita's mana consumes the gorgeous working, and moments later we fly up through a hole in the bottom of the island and end up inside, thousands of angry workers in every direction. We made it. We're in Hiverock. It's time to start spreading pesticides.