Vigor Mortis

"Wait!" Vita calls, rushing out of the room after Nawra and I. "Wait, just… hold on a second. Can we talk about this?"

She steps around my tail, which undulates silently behind me even as I twist to face her. Poor Vita. I know it hurts her to see me side with her sister like this, but this isn't a matter of personal loyalties anymore. I can't abandon this chance at a win. The need to cure death is the one noble goal that survived my old self. To deny it now would be absurd, especially after everything Nawra told us.

Still, it's not like I'm going to tell the woman I love 'no, we can't talk about this,' so I stop regardless. Nawra—or her avatar, at least—stops as well. Having no expectation of changing our minds is no reason to not explain ourselves.

"I just… there's got to be a better plan to stop the Mistwatcher," Vita insists desperately. "This is insane."

"Darling, if you have a better plan, I'd be overjoyed to hear it," Nawra sighs.

And Vita… hesitates. Because of course she does. She has no plan, no alternative. She's just here, stopping us in a half-panicked mess, because we're walking off to discuss complete omni-genocide of the entire known world, and that's a rather fucking absurd thing to throw on anyone. I feel for her position, achingly close to stepping away from Nawra and changing my mind. But no matter how I rotate the problem in my head, no matter how I grasp for alternatives, I find myself thinking that Nawra is right. That the wider world, of which we've just been introduced, is doomed to suffer as ever-dying food unless we burn the slaughterhouses and salt the crops. The Mistwatcher's head start is too massive, too overwhelming, and our only hope comes with delaying it as long as physically possible. I want to side with Vita, I truly do, but no matter how I look at it, Nawra is right.

…And that makes me frown, my scales shifting to a suspicious hue. Finding myself agreeing with a master animancer, am I? Vita doesn't seem to believe foul play, and I certainly haven't detected anything, but that's no excuse to be lazy with self-assessment. I need to review my thoughts and memories and look for inconsistencies. My principles may be shattered things, but they were less than that when I used them to break free of my last bout of animancy manipulation. If my feelings can be manipulated, then the obvious answer is to not let my feelings be the sole rulers of my judgment.

So. Who was I, in the months before today? Would that Penelope Vesuvius have sided with Nawra? Hmm… at least insofar as I can quickly review in the span of this conversation… yes. It's likely she would have. Immortality for all has been my greatest goal since long before I even met Vita, and the knowledge that it is inherently impossible so long as the Mistwatcher continues to exist is… crushing, to say the least. To have to kill a god to realize my ambitions… it is a heavy thing, beyond even my arrogance. But I suppose I would not be a noble if I could not swell my arrogance to fit whatever vessel dared to contain it, and the knowledge that Nawra has a path forward is… invigorating. She may be a madwoman, but she's a horrifically sane sort of madwoman, callous but intelligent, paranoid but predictable. She does not fail to see the world for how it is, she simply does not hesitate to smash any part of it that is in her way. And that is something I feel I can respect most easily, even if I know I cannot trust her completely.

The more I think back, the more confident I become. I'm not finding any inconsistencies in my thoughts, feelings, or inclinations that lead to interference by Nawra. That more or less completely rules out the possibility of any animancy affecting me since our arrival here. For my thoughts to feel this internally consistent, I would have had to have been mentally manipulated weeks ago, which… well, is obviously impossible for Nawra, unless she has infiltrated our island with animancy-capable minions (something she has insisted is a terrible idea to even have in the first place) and altered my mind far in advance of this event, somehow without me or Vita or anyone else even noticing. And that's not only ludicrously unlikely, but even if it is somehow true, it means we are so ridiculously outclassed that considering the matter further is somewhat pointless either way.

So. Probably not mind controlled. That's good.

"...What if we recruit the other mana oceans?" Vita asks. "You made yourself into what you are, right Nawra? So you know how to connect with mana oceans. We could… we could make non-sapient souls and program them to just crash into the Mistwatcher's ocean directly, annihilating as much of its mana as possible."

"Mmm," Nawra nods. "It's not a bad idea for doing as much damage as we can, I'll give you that. Two issues with it, however: one, it's too risky. Making a living organism that both has enough of a mind to house a soul and doesn't have enough of a mind to do anything is difficult work. If we only cared about making sure it did nothing in this world, we could just craft the body to be immobile. Easy enough. But we have no such way to prevent an ensouled mana ocean to not move the ocean itself, and the moment the Mistwatcher detects that kind of thing, he'll go on high alert, killing everything that moves. It's too risky, far too risky. If any step of the process goes wrong, in any of the non-sapient siblings you're suggesting we create, we die for nothing."

"Any plan has risk," Vita insists. "Every plan has risk. The Mistwatcher is damn well going to react when you kill everyone, too! You seriously think the difference in risk is so great it justifies worldwide genocide?"

"Yes, absolutely," Nawra answers without hesitation. "But that brings us to the second problem with your plan, Vita: if I didn't think it would be more likely to get us killed than work, I would simply be doing it and also killing everyone in the world to harvest their souls for myself. They're hardly mutually exclusive plans. In fact, they complement each other extremely well."

Vita just looks… lost, every other plan in her head likely crumbling for the same reason. If Nawra can deal even more damage to the Mistwatcher, she will, and there's nothing that ends up with the Mistwatcher being set back farther and the people of the world surviving.

"Why… why are you even doing this now?" Vita sighs helplessly. "Didn't you tell me once that you were hoping for more time before your big plan? That the Skybreak came too early and you'd have to wait?"

"I don't have to wait," Nawra frowns. "But it's true that it would be best for my plans to wait. Still, I'm not going to."

"Why?" Vita begs. "We can figure something out if we have a few extra centuries of time! Or, well, who knows? Maybe I'll end up thinking like you and wanting to help. Isn't that better than… than this? I'll hate you for this, Nawra. I… I have to hate you for this. No matter how many people I bring with me, you'll still be destroying my home. You'll be destroying Liriope."

"I know," Nawra says. "I'm sorry. I don't want you to hate me, Vita. But… it's better than having to watch you die."

Nawra reaches out, gently grasping one of Vita's semisolid anima tendrils, glittering a brilliant gemstone blue.

"You've made yourself so beautiful," Nawra sighs. "So… fantastical. I've never even thought of doing something like this with anima. Never even considered it, because why would I? I can make flesh do anything I want. But you want something beyond even flesh, so you made… this. With Progy's assistance, certainly, but still. You've not even lived two decades and you've made something like this. It's wonderful. And if you stay here, you'll die for it."

"...What?" Vita breathes.

"You'll die," Nawra repeats. "I know you will. You've done a wonderful job fashioning this to prevent our brother's automated detection from picking it up, making it just physical enough to evade his notice, but it's a shallow camouflage, sweetie. The second you're spotted through the mists… he won't just swat at you with a tendril. He'll see what you are instantly, bring his full attention to bear against you, and you'll simply… cease to be."

Nawra drops the tendril, which falls limp as Vita stares in shock. Oh, poor Vita. She's been so, so excited to wear her new form, and now she's being told it will end her? I want to scoop her up in a hug, but Nawra beats me to it, stepping forwards to put both hands on her sister's shoulders.

"I'm sorry, Vita, but considering the trouble you've already caused, I can't trust you to go half a millennium without something happening," Nawra insists. "So unless you can reverse the fundamental fusion of flesh and anima you've started, unless you can undo this… spiritual physicality without killing yourself… it happens this Skybreak. I'm saving you whether you like it or not."

Vita's horrified expression is all I need to know about whether or not she can undo what she's done. And just like that, a tension I didn't realize I was holding disappears. Whatever doubts I had about this are nothing in the face of her survival. I… don't like to believe that I'd destroy the world for her. That would not match the person I desire to be. But to destroy the world in order to save the universe, and my girlfriend in the process? Yes. A thousand million times yes. My dream and my love, rescued in one single, irreparable, unimaginable act of untold evil… it isn't even a choice.

"Make your list, Vita," I tell her gently. "I know you can. I know you won't actually agonize about who to take and who to leave behind. So just… let us save the future, and you with it."

"The fact that I'm a bad person who won't actually be sad about people I don't know dying doesn't mean their deaths will be okay," Vita says helplessly. "That's like… the entire thing we've been working towards, right? The entire idea of principles and morality and shit. You don't kill anybody just because it's the easiest way. What's the point of any of the progress we've made, if we don't at least stick to that?"

"It's not the easiest way," I insist. "It's just the best way we have. And sometimes, that still involves death."

"Penelope," Vita presses, the hexes of her eyes and the glory of her soul all narrowing to stare at me in all their intensity, "are you sure you're okay?"

I am. So I nod. She lets out a shuddering breath, and turns away.

"...Alright, then," she says, and she walks off.

It hurts to see her go. Some paranoid part of me wonders if this is the last straw, if this will pull us apart permanently. But I've committed. It's the one thing I have to commit to. Surely Vita, of all people, will understand that.

"...I have to admit, I'm surprised to see you side with me," Nawra says conversationally. "I'm even more surprised to see that it's genuine. It is reassuring to see someone so forward-thinking among the young."

"Mortals are always obsessed with short-term pleasures, perhaps by necessity," I agree. "It is part of why I have always strived to cease being one."

"I understand completely," Nawra smiles. "People like us are too greedy to be mortals, aren't we?"

"Yes, I suppose so," I nod sadly. "So, not to be presumptuous, but if there is a manner by which I could assist you, I'd be happy to do so."

Nawra considers that, motioning me to follow her puppet body away from the guest quarters. I do so, the two of us strolling through her giant, hollow bones in contemplative silence.

"You lack knowledge, experience, and skill," Nawra concludes bluntly. "You have wonderful potential, of course, but potential isn't helpful in the short term, and we are unfortunately moving on a timescale that is far more short-term than I would ever normally allow myself to function at."

Hngh. I can't say it doesn't hurt to hear such a frank dismissal of my abilities, but I suppose I am speaking with the world's foremost master.

"I understand," I nod. "Perhaps I can assist by running damage control with Vita?"

"Perhaps you can," Nawra agrees. "Though I actually had something else in mind. Knowledge, experience, and skill you may lack, but what you have is a powerful gift from my brother. Microbe generation and comprehension, yes? I could likely put such a thing to use."

Oh? Interesting.

"I admit, I'm surprised to hear that. I didn't think you're the type to allow yourself to have any use for the Mistwatcher's scraps," I answer carefully. Not overly carefully, of course; Nawra has, for all her omnicidal tendencies, appeared to fairly consistently appreciate frank conversation, and seems to possess a realistic assessment of her own flaws. And indeed, she responds with a good-natured chuckle.

"What my brother lacks in creativity he makes up for in raw ability. Perhaps more importantly, any mana you burn via the use of your talent spends his power, whereas any mana I burn spends mine. You're not in any way necessary, darling, but I won't reject a good opportunity for optimization. We have a lot of microbe work to accomplish in short order, after all."

"Oh?" I press. "And why is that?"

"I'll show you," Nawra smiles. "Just know, of course, that deviation from my plans in any way will not be tolerated. It matters not to me whether your failure is motivated by accident or deliberate sabotage. If you desire to help, you will do so perfectly, Penelope Vesuvius."

"I understand," I nod.

"Do you?" Nawra muses, a smile quirking at her lips. "You've witnessed the results of my callousness, dear. I've felt your fear and disgust. And yet, do you have any comprehension of what I'd do to someone I was trying to hurt?"

Ah. I'm being threatened by someone dramatically more powerful than I am. I wonder what it says about me that I find the situation largely nostalgic.

"I will take your words to heart, Nawra, but they will not be relevant. My work will be to your specifications. One does not bring anything less than perfection when plotting the end of the known world."

Nawra grins.

"Well said. Now, let me show you where you'll be working."

Like a broken spell, her happy expression falls, completely slack, and the puppet just starts to walk. I almost wonder if she's been attacked at first, but… no. Nawra is simply done with pleasantries, done with manipulating the minutiae of expression. It's time to work, so I follow her.

She leads me deeper within herself, our walk swift but measured. She's in no hurry to get me onboard, and who knows what she's using the time for. In the silence, my talent churns within my soul, dancing automatically over everything around me, whispering how hard it would be to infect, how challenging to corrupt. But not impossible. Anything can get sick. Anything can break. Wouldn't it be beautiful?

It would. It really would. But I've thrown my lot in with my lover's sister, for the promise of an eternal tomorrow. For a world where anyone can live their life as they choose, for as long as they choose. For a destiny that is ours to seize until the end of time, not snuffed short by a so-called god.

And right now, that feels like it's worth any cost. Even a cost so unfathomably large that I will never be able to comprehend it, let alone repay it. In that way, I suppose this is how I have always been. What is the difference, exactly, between twelve thousand and twelve billion, to a mind that has only ever cared for the lives of five?

The depths of Nawra's caverns are strange indeed. …Hrm, that euphemism passed through my thoughts entirely unintentionally. I should clear my head; I am not thinking at my best. The potential for crass humor is even particularly apt; the deeper we go, the less the tunnels are made of hard enamel and the softer they become, actively pulsing with veins of blood beneath their thick skin. Many times, we step into a pliable area of the tunnel, turn a corner, and then a feeling of movement shakes my balance, the entire area reconfiguring itself as we walk through it. The possibility of me navigating myself back to the others has vanished, and she's making sure I know it.

"Almost there," Nawra promises, her first words after nearly three hours of walking. Hmm. Less than expected. There's no chance we're far enough away from Vita for her to be unable to locate my soul. Is Nawra underestimating her range? The idea sounds ridiculous, but I have no way of knowing what a normal sensory range for Vita's kind would be and Nawra probably does. Whatever it is, Vita is probably above it; it's always been the aspect of her unique nature that she's focused on the hardest. Her capacity to sense souls has been her greatest asset all the way back since our hunter days, and her soul even hatched into the likeness of an eye. Still, there's always the possibility that Nawra simply doesn't care about obscuring my location from Vita, only the reverse.

"Now then, the project itself," Nawra announces. "Here we are."

A membrane in the wall next to me opens up like a pair of curtains, utterly identical to every other part of the wall until it moves. I automatically suppress any surprised reaction, calmly turning to behold a large room containing what appears to be a bulbous mass of fungus. Approximately ten feet in diameter, though its irregular shape makes it hard to specify, the orange-gray mass looks somewhat like a giant cluster of tumors, with fuzzy fronds extending upwards into the ceiling and mycelium threads twisting into the flesh-walls of the room to feed on the nutrients within. It's rather beautiful, though I doubt the average person would agree.

My talent is also desperately attempting and failing to figure out a way to inoculate myself against the near-instant death that would occur if it ruptures.

"Over the past several millennia, I have been seeding every island in the world with one or more of these," Nawra announces casually, as if it is not an unthinkably massive undertaking of apocalyptic proportions, "depending on the island's size and proximity to its neighbors. Because of our earlier time scale, I've only hit about ninety-nine point two percent distribution. Not unworkable by any means, but far from ideal. In order to ensure ideal coverage with acceptable levels of emergency redundancy, we'll need to overpressurize the relevant buds—based on island configuration—so that they can unleash overlapping payloads in uncovered areas. That's where you come in. I want you to analyze the microorganisms inside and produce more of them, inserting them into a receptacle I will provide for you."

I let myself passively absorb her words as most of my mind focuses on realizing the implications of what she's saying. One of these… on every island in the world? More and more of its nature becomes apparent to me: this central structure is just a storage area, possibly one that, until very recently, was empty on every other copy of this fungus in the world. Nawra is implying that these went unnoticed by any civilization for millenia,

and while that's an absurd claim to say about an obvious bio-weapon, it's quite an easy claim to make about a seemingly harmless, seemingly useless fungi. Hiding them all over the world, propagating via her agents or spores, lying in wait for a trigger of some sort to activate and turn them into deadly weapons… yes. That's doable.

Spores. Pressure. She talked about pressurizing and propagation and… of course. That's how it will kill everyone. There's at least two agents contained within, or a single agent performing double duty: one that will rapidly devour and destroy any and all organic material it contacts, rapidly melting all life it touches into dead paste, and one that, upon being detected by another copy of this fungus, will activate it as well, unleashing its payload in a chain reaction. Each and every island will be devoured in minutes, and by the time any neighboring island realizes what is happening it will already be too late.

I wouldn't call the plan itself genius (though the structure of the death-spores is absolutely a work of unparalleled biological mastery, one my talent is still screaming itself half to death over attempting to find a method of resisting it). Rather, the plan is straightforward and horrifying entirely in its simplicity: it requires nothing elaborate, only thousands and thousands of years setting up a network of bombs all over the entire world, with the care and precision to ensure they are never discovered. Does Nawra have agents guarding them, I wonder? Grovetenders? Do her zealots know they will be killing themselves and everyone they have ever known? Are they capable of caring anymore?

I suppose it doesn't matter. Nawra has crafted a biological bomb that can spread death over an entire island and beyond, launching an insane quantity of spores at dramatically supersonic speeds to kill everything that breathes, settle into the soil, and then kill everything that doesn't.

"I understand," I tell Nawra. "I suspect I'll be able to replicate these spore-structures within the hour. It would be faster with a sample I could manipulate directly, of course, but… I know better than to ask for one."

Because letting it come anywhere near me would kill me in seconds. Nawra smiles and nods.

"Then I will leave you to work. You will know where to place them, when you have the ability to."

I nod back, knowing better than to take 'I will leave you' as anything but politeness. She is watching me. She will always be watching me. I am deep within her womb, and she guards her child with nothing less than all her strength.

It says much about the difference in our abilities that she even allows me here in the first place. I am simply… not considered a threat. At all. Even this close to her prized creation. Something about that nettles, but… well, I will not sabotage her for the sake of my ego. I will do the work she requests of me.

And so I do.

It's tedious work. After I finish using my talent to cheat out an understanding of the microorganism Nawra requires, I simply spend the rest of the day making it. The 'receptacle' Nawra provides is interesting, at least: a hand-sized black void of anima, similar to the core of Lark's soul, that acts as a bridge to Nawra's mana ocean, where she presumably manipulates and redistributes the obscenely dangerous mass of organic sludge I'm generating with my body. Not, for once, within my body: I have to magically manipulate the compounds out of my flesh and assemble them in the air in front of me, because if I let any of the finished product touch me I will die. And even after a day of nonstop attempts—my talent will never stop, even if I want it to—I still have no counteragent available to me.

Nor do I have one the next day. Nor do I have one the day after that. This is all I do with my time, now: eat, and produce disease. I am bored, certainly, but boredom is something I know how to deal with and so I deal with it without complaint. It is near the end of the third day that one of Nawra's puppet bodies returns to speak with me. This one does not look like a facsimile of Vita's older sister at all, but rather a nude human woman with scarlet red hair, pale skin, and a sharp face. Even her ears are pointed, and she drips with a sticky, high-nutrient embryonic fluid, like she just emerged from an egg.

"...Your girlfriend has begun to make her move," she says, frustration tinging her words. I also note the choice of words: 'your girlfriend.' Not 'my sister.' Not 'Vita.' Your girlfriend. She's implying an association between myself and whatever problems are occurring, if not in culpability then at least in responsibility.

"May I assist in some way?" I ask.

"It will likely be of more use to me than additional payload," Nawra nods. "She is more of a nuisance than I expected her to be. I could easily snuff her out, and she knows that, but…"

"...She also knows you don't want to," I conclude. "And she's using that against you."

"Yes," Nawra grumbles. "She certainly has no qualms about tearing apart whatever chunks of my soul she can get her tendrils on, of course. Ungrateful brat. Kidnapping her friends hasn't even worked, she is… adept at protecting them. She's even blocking me out from accessing my own vrothizo. I'd be proud of her if it wasn't so annoying. And painful."

"I'll see what I can do," I agree amicably, standing up from where I'd been sitting on my coiled tail and stretching out my sore limbs. "Would I be correct in assuming that delaying her is sufficient? Is there a specific timeframe we need?"

"Not long now," Nawra shrugs. "Only around four hours."

Oh, 'not long now,' she says. I only need to delay Vita for four hours. Watcher, how am I even going to do that? Hmm. It doesn't even matter, does it?

"Vita can't stop this, can she?" I muse.

"Of course not," Nawra dismisses. "She's not doing anything but throwing a tantrum and she doesn't even realize it. Even if she made it here, what would she do? I have dozens of backup sites to unleash my plan from. She's just being annoying. Go convince her to stop."

Hmm. That might be doable. I just need to break her morale, show her the reality of what she's up against.

"Lead the way," I encourage Nawra, and her puppet nods and starts to awkwardly jog down a hall. I follow.

It still takes us over an hour to get to Vita—Nawra is an entire island, after all—but I hear her long before I can see her. As I sprint down one of the enamel tunnels towards her, I feel a distinct change in atmosphere. Not just in the sense that my girlfriend is clearly in combat, the sounds of violence echoing down the hall, but also in my talent's passive sense of everything around me. I am no longer surrounded by things to infect and subsume. This hallway, thanks to Vita's rampage, is dead.

…Which I suppose makes the hallway a bit more normal, since the average hallway tends to not be alive, but I digress. The idea of Nawra dying—even in part—is still remarkable to me. Somewhat disturbing, even. Certainly this may be little more than a single necrotized finger in the grand scheme of Nawra's body, but… hmm. Necrosis. I have been thinking too much about immunization. Nawra's spores propagate and consume flesh at a faster rate than anything I've ever encountered before, after all, and consequently there is no time to protect a body after infection. Designing a sporophage has been equally ineffective, since it simply also gets eaten. But the spores don't consume or destroy each other, and it should be possible to spoof whatever enables that. Rather than inoculate my body, perhaps it would be simpler to develop something unconventional to attack the spores?

…No, I don't have time to think about this right now. I'm close now, and Vita knows it. Just a minute later, I turn a corner and there she is, my radiant love, battling Nawra and her servants in a beautiful whirlwind of violence. Blue tendrils emerge from her broken chitin like twisting sapphires, plunging into both weapon-wielding servants and the hallway walls to tear out morsels of life and being to devour. The walls attack back with tendrils of their own, fighting furiously onwards even through complete local soul death.

Watcher, she's beautiful. …And the others are here too, I suppose. Jelisaveta hangs near Vita for protection, rarely doing more than cutting the occasional wall-tendril that gets too close. Lark is more mobile, staying within Vita's bubble of blue mana but bouncing from edge to edge at blistering speeds, ripping tendrils open with her teeth. While Jelisaveta avoids fighting any of Nawra's servants mainly due to lack of opportunity, Lark avoids them on purpose, likely not having the stomach for killing sapient life.

Nugas has no such qualms. I'm shamefully somewhat surprised to see her there, fighting alongside Vita. I almost forgot she was here, having spent three days without her. I'm so used to having her either by my side or completely out of reach that I just… didn't consider a middle ground. I certainly never considered that she would side with Vita over me. The very idea feels impossible. Yet… there she is. She foregoes spellcasting and even weapons, simply waiting demurely at the edge of Vita's bubble and viscerally disemboweling any of Nawra's servants that get close. I watch her punch clean through the torso of a human man, grab his intestines in her fist and rip them out of his body. Then she stares directly at me and winks. I feel a flutter in my chest, and quickly return my focus to Vita.

"Hey, honey," I greet her as Nawra's naked puppet body quickly turns tail and flees. Sensible. No point wasting resources.

"...Penelope," Vita scowls at me, her eyes narrowing in a pattern I'm loath to see directed at me. "Come to your senses yet?"

"Come to stop you, actually," I shrug, slapping my tail anxiously against the ground. The fighting stops, Nawra's forces all dying and my… friends? Respected comrades? All turning their attention to me. "I've seen what Nawra has in store, Vita, and there isn't much point in causing problems for the sake of it. The world is already doomed. Have you given Nawra your list of people to save? Have they been brought here?"

"No and no," Vita says, and my heart aches. Oh, she'll be devastated. "After all this… I'll stop her, Penelope. I have to. I can't accept this solution and still call myself a better person than I was."

Hmm. That's a thought.

"...Why do we have to be better people, Vita?" I ask.

She stops, the last of the souls in the area already picked clean.

"What the fuck kind of question is that?" she asks me.

"An honest one," I shrug. "I'm not necessarily saying we shouldn't be better people—I am, after all, helping your sister because I believe she is right, in the long run—but it's something I've been wondering about, these past few days. Why have we been putting so much effort into this? What's the point of putting so much effort into becoming 'better people' if you and I can't even agree what that is? It's just… an idle thought, really. Perhaps I've just been cooped up alone for too long."

The question is a distraction, mostly. The more I can keep her talking, the less damage she'll do. But it's also an honest question. Why try to save the world instead of the universe? What makes that choice better to Vita? To anyone?

Vita gives me somewhat of a lost look, and she turns to Jelisaveta. Hmm. Not an encouraging response. We have been taking our moral cues from Jelisa, I'll admit, but this reaction indicates she might be stifling our introspection by providing the answers for us. Notably, however, Jelisa doesn't respond. Perhaps she's noticed the same thing, so she stays silent, returning Vita's stare as an indication that she should answer the question herself.

Vita sighs.

"...Because I want to," she shrugs. "I dunno. Why does anyone do anything?"

I blink.

"That's it?" I ask.

"Why is that a surprise?" Vita asks. "Some people kill because they want to. Some people stop others from killing because they want to. I've done both. I've found myself happier while I'm on the side that helps than when I'm on the side that hurts. I get frustrated when I hurt people. I get mad. I hurt myself as much as I hurt anyone else. I didn't really notice it at first, but I do. And that's why it sucks that I'm so prone to hurting people anyway."

She shrugs.

"I just want to break the habit. Like a drunkard seeing alcohol drain his life away, or a gambler tossing his fortune away to cards. I'm addicted to being selfish. And I wanna quit. Don't you?"

I roll her words around in my head, inspecting them from every angle. Addicted to being selfish. It's… apt, I think. I'd personally call it an addiction to short-term desires, though. Doing whatever is immediately fulfilling to my current emotional state is tempting, it always is. But having the self-control and self-discipline to pull back from that and force myself to consider the future leads to far greater satisfaction. It leads to accomplishment, to pride, to joy in one's self that feels deserved. And in the long term, cooperation is superior. Kindness generates interest, cruelty generates debt. Allies bring help and joy, enemies bring strife and hardship.

But this task will not leave enemies. It will not leave anyone. And it will save a universe from being reduced to cattle.

"I agree," I decide. "I simply think Nawra's plan presents the more altruistic option. The universe is more valuable than the known world, as it is incalculably more vast."

"Well I think we don't have to pick one or the other," Vita answers. "If the universe really is that big, we can find another way out there. It might take another several thousand years, but I bet it's there."

"Mmm. For someone comparing her own vice to gambling, you're strangely interested in leaving fate to a bet," I counter.

"And for someone spouting their position as altruism, you're strangely interested in slaughtering billions of people," Vita scowls. "This conversation is stupid, Penelope. Quit being an idiot and help me figure out how to win."

"You can't win," I shrug. Though maybe if a sporophage could self-propagate using whatever system transferred the activation signal from one fungal colony to the other… no. No, I need to focus. Vita's eyes twist into a grin, doubtlessly having felt my pondering. Curses.

"I don't believe you," she says. "And I'm not going to let you get in my way. We'll have make-up cuddles later, honey, but for now we're going to kick your ass."

Oh dear. Well. It's a good thing I've been preparing spells this whole time. So, of course, has Vita, but her first move is obvious: teleport into my space and smother my magic with her mana. I counter-teleport, retreating back down the hallway a moment before she appears where I once was, and then I fill the air around me with plagues. A second attempt to approach would go badly for her.

Unfortunately, Lark shoots after me instead, my Athanatos-specialized disease spread not able to do much to her Nawra-designed biology. Lark practically runs on the walls, her powerful legs letting her leap around the tunnel in any direction at any time.

"Sorry!" she yelps, and somersaults at me, extending her quills as I make the mistake of trying to slap her away with my tail. I fail to pull away fast enough, her back-blades slicing through me in deep gouges. I heal the wounds almost immediately, but it causes a split-second of extra delay to my spellcasting speed that Vita takes advantage of, she and Jelisa approaching behind a barrage of soul-bolts.

Soul-bolts. Vita fires shells of plundered anima, filled with her mana and designed to detonate on impact, eating any ability I might have to counterattack. My large body makes it difficult to weave around them, but even if I do she can command them to detonate mid-flight! Gah. This is pointless. I'm not going to be able to win a magical battle with Vita, not anymore. So instead, I fight defensively, letting her fizzle my spells and disperse my diseases as I defend myself from Lark's constant harassment, up until the moment she decides to teleport in to cut off my magic entirely… and then I wrap her up in my tail the moment she appears.

I'm fast, exceptionally so. I wrap her arms up and hold her in place before she even realizes what's happening. I know Vita doesn't need her hands to cast, but in the same way that Vita is using Nawra's reluctance to hurt her to her advantage, I can use Vita's reluctance to permanently injure me in the same way. And with her caught, I can use her as a shield against Lark, keeping Vita between us at all times. Vita grunts in annoyance, her kineticism spells not powerful enough to overcome the raw muscle in my tail. I can't really do much to her in this position, but that's okay. I'm not trying to win; I'm only trying to stalemate.

"It was just an idle thought, Vita," I grunt. "You know I don't have any desire to help you, even if I had the capacity. Which I do not."

And I'm very pointedly not thinking about it, in case I accidentally find a way to stop Nawra's scheme.

"Well, maybe I have a little more faith in you than you do," she grunts. "Or maybe I just can't do this without you. I can't believe I have to do this without you! Come on, Penelope, I thought we were on the same page with this kind of shit!"

"Vita, I love you more than anyone in the world," I tell her firmly. "But that doesn't mean I'll side with you when I think you're wrong."

"I don't understand why you think I'm wrong, though!" she snaps. "What has gotten into you? Didn't we just do the whole 'find a better way that works without killing everyone' thing? Didn't we already agree that's the right call on Verdantop? Why the fuck is this happening again?"

"Yes. It is a little strange, isn't it, My Lady?"

I blink, turning to the speaker. Nugas gives me a misleadingly vacant smile, her innocent expression not matching the blood and viscera all over her body and uncharacteristically practical clothes. Hmm. It's so odd that she came here in armor. So unlike her. Was she expecting to have to fight?

Why didn't she come with me when I left?

"Nugas," I greet her, somewhat hesitantly. "It's good to see you."

"Now we both know that's not true, My Lady," she grins, chuckling as if she just made a joke. "I'm afraid it's time to end our ruse."

I narrow my eyes at her.

"What exactly are you implying?"

"Is it not obvious, My Lady?" Nugas asks, tilting her head to the side. "This conflict was planned from the beginning. By you, I may add."

Hngh. Really? It's… unlikely, but not entirely implausible. With what I understood of Nawra's personality, her current plot is somewhat predictable. Obviously I couldn't have known specifics, or really anything of any certainty, but it'd be nearly impossible to not suspect that Nawra had some sort of plan in the works that Vita and I would get unwillingly roped into. She had, after all, been frustratingly coy about the reason for our visit, and awfully insistent about getting Vita to owe her a favor. And yet, for any of this to make sense…

"You're implying that I used animancy to alter myself to be inclined to cooperate with Nawra—days or possibly weeks in advance of us ever even coming to the island, as the tampering would otherwise be obvious—in order to gain her trust so that I could subsequently betray her. That is, in a word, absurd."

"And yet you did it regardless," Nugas shrugs. "I was there. To be specific, you made yourself more positively inclined and respectful towards Nawra in general, so that any idea she had would seem more appealing to you. You were betting on her ego."

Hmm. Not a bad play, if true. Still, though.

"It hardly matters, Nugas," I sigh. "You're saying I used animancy on myself to forget using animancy on myself so that I could let someone use animancy on me to change my mind later. That would never work, and I would know that, because obviously the me of now doesn't want to have my mind changed, because I believe in the cause I'm fighting for! Only Vita has the power to force a change in my soul, and she has no idea whether or not this actually happened or if you're just making it up, because if she did know, then Nawra would know, and that would defeat the entire point. Also, she'd never alter my soul without my permission like that!"

Vita shrugs, indicating agreement in the general sense, though leaving room for the fact that she probably would alter my soul without my consent if she knew I was compromised by someone else with certainty. But she doesn't, so she won't.

"Hmm," Nugas muses, tapping her chin in a vaguely condescending way. "That's quite a good line of logic."

"I know," I growl, not taking being condescended to lightly. "So I'm not really sure what you're trying to accomplish here, Nugas. I'm not just going to let you cast animancy on me however you want."

She looks up to me, a wide, bright smile creeping its way onto her face.

"Yes you will," she declares with absolute certainty, and I find myself needing to suppress a fear response.

"...And why would you say that?" I ask hesitantly.

Her smile doesn't change, but it suddenly feels more cruel.

"Becauseif anyone in the world deserves to, it is I," she intones. "And you know it. You have always known it. Look me in the eyes and tell me I do not have that power. Deny me my right, Penelope Vesuvius."

I stare at her in terror, my grip on Vita slackening. No words come out of my mouth, and she takes it for the consent that it is, reaching a hand up to my belly.

"W-wait," I stammer. "Nugas, please, I… don't make me lose my love for her again."

Nothing else exists in this moment. But Nugas only looks to me with something like pity.

"You have no right to ask for something like that," she declares. "That man had a family too, you know."

I shudder, closing my eyes in acceptance. Has this been her plan from the start? Am I really going to let her do this? …No, of course I am. It's the whole reason I keep her around. I tell myself it's because I'm responsible for her, because I have an obligation to see to her happiness, but in reality it's because I hope she'll enact her revenge. Why else would I let her learn animancy, of all things? Damn it. She knows me far too well. And all she's ever wanted was for me to love her. I suppose I deserve to have that wish granted.

What a pair of tragic monsters we will be. Never let it be said I don't have a type.

"There," Nugas declares. "Done."

I blink, memories of setting up this very plan suddenly filling my head. I look at Nugas, fearing for the feelings I expect to enter my heart, but only the usual regret and shame bubble up within me. I look to Vita, my usual joy and love warming me as before. Then I think about Nawra, and feel vaguely embarrassed about how easily I went along with her plan.

"...What?" I choke out.

"Why the fuck are you surprised?" Vita asks, glowering at me. "I'm standing right here. She cast with my mana! I'm not going to let her soul rape you, no matter your martyr complex."

"My martyr… no, wait, seriously?" I sputter. "That's it? That's all she did?"

"Yes!" Vita groans. "Why is that hard to believe?"

"She gets stupid around me," Nugas answers sagely. "I take pride in being her greatest weakness. Not even you can steal the title from me, Lady Vita."

"Well duh, I'm way too strong," Vita answers, crossing her arms.

"What!?" I manage.

"Honestly, My Lady, I've only ever wanted what's best for you," Nugas chuckles. "We both know that's not me, not until you get over yourself. You killed a man! So what? You kill men all the time, and I never liked him anyway. My life has been quite nice, and I thank you for it. Now then, shall we save the world?"

"You shall not," Nawra's voice intones, vibrating the entire hallway. "Penelope, I can't say I'm surprised you have betrayed me, but I'm certainly disappointed."

"Well," I respond, standing up straight to try and collect some of my dignity back, "personally I can't say I'm disappointed, but I'm certainly surprised."

"Cute," Nawra responds flatly. "But in all seriousness, dears, could you just save everyone the trouble and stay out of my way? You can't stop me. I've been putting failsafes and redundancies into this plan for millenia. You're not doing anything other than being poor guests."

"Hmm," Vita muses. "Are we sure about that, Penelope?"

I think as fast as I can, rushing through every memory still tinged with the absolutely wild assumption that killing all life in the only world I've ever known would somehow be a good idea. Yes, it's a more sure blow against the Mistwatcher's power than any other, and yes, that matters to an unfathomable degree. But while it is a more sure strike, it remains a gamble, and if we're going to gamble we may as well go all-in on doing the right thing. We'll kill the Mistwatcher and save the people living on him. Somehow, we'll find a way. Still, though…

"...We are, ah, actually pretty sure," I stammer hesitantly. "I could maybe develop a counter to the death spores, but distributing it would be… impractical. We'd need to co-opt the delivery system here in Nawra's island, but even if we fight our way there and somehow manage to do that, she could just activate a different colony to be the trigger instead."

"Exactly," Nawra grunts. "Listen to your girlfriend and be good, Vita. We still have time to save your favorite mortals if you just behave."

Hmm. No wonder Vita didn't give her sister that list. Nawra would just be using them as hostages, wouldn't she?

"So… Nawra is presumably using her soul tunnels to transmit the activation commands, since she's also been using them to move the microbes you've been working on for her, right?" Vita asks. How does she know… oh, wait. I glance towards Jelisaveta, who seems to be doing her best to mind her own business. I wonder how many miles away she can hear in these tunnels.

"That's right," I confirm.

"So… hypothetically," Vita muses, wrapping an arm around Lark and causing her to squawk, "if we had a direct line to the middle of Nawra's mana ocean, how big of a payload of your counter-agent would we need to escort through the tunnels?"

"I… well, not that large," I admit. "Only a few thousand microbes. Maybe even as little as a few hundred could achieve exponential growth."

"But it doesn't matter!" Nawra snaps. "Your subverted vrothizo is not relevant! Your beachhead inside my mana-self is a grain of sand. I only have so much patience, child! I could crush you in an instant! Consume and overwhelm you entirely! I don't want to, but if you ever actually pose a threat to my life's work, I damn well will."

"So you're saying that I could actually pose a threat," Vita grins.

"I AM SAYING THAT YOU NEED TO STOP TESTING ME, SISTER!"

Vita laughs, relief and melancholy in her expression. She turns to me, stepping in close for a hug. Surprised, I reciprocate, wrapping my arms around her as she wraps hers around mine. Her head turns up, her face coming forwards so the lower half brushes up against my lips. We kiss, or as close to it as we can, and as we do she guides me hands to the cracks in her chitin, where her tendrils spill forth into the world.

"It's time," she says quietly. "You only ever get to do this once, so make it count."

Oh? Oh. I see. I bring my tail up and around her, guiding her head forward into another kiss, this one deeper, more passionate. And as we hold one another, I dig my fingers into her cracks, wrapping them back and around the inside of her shell, feeling the cold, nearly frictionless form inside. Vita shudders, tiny tendrils forming to wrap around my fingers, to hold me closer, but we both know we can't hold this moment forever. I grasp harder, straining her shell more and more, feeling her breath quicken and her muscles—or what's left of them—seize in pain.

Oh, her pain. Beautiful. Enticing. Invited. We talked about this moment, her and I. She knows what I am, the sorts of things I like. And she welcomed it. The last moments of her flesh will be delicious agony, pain I get to inflict on her without a shred of guilt behind it. Because I love her, and she loves me, and this moment is in every way for the both of us. Her chitin cracks under my grip, spiderweb fractures dancing up her back and eliciting a delicious whimper from her lungs. With a snap I break off two entire chunks of her shell at once, and the blue within streams into the world, writhing with joy.

Through the holes in her lower back I reach deeper, the blue within shifting to make room for me. My arms reach up inside her to grasp where her wings are anchored, and I press and twist and tear, enjoying every visceral moment, every pained twitch of my beloved. And soon, I split her entire back clean open from the inside. The blue explodes, dead wings of flesh rapidly replaced with brilliant wings of soul, a thousand thin tendrils weaved together, patterned with eyes, stretching and flapping and feeling the joy of freedom for the first time.

Next, I shatter her arms, twisting and smashing the chitin until it is completely unrecognizable. Her new hands are almost identical to her Athanatos set, though of course rather than white chitin they are a deep, slightly translucent blue. Her legs are next, crushed into splinters by my tail, and what emerges looks almost human but for the color. Everything but her head is free now, and with exquisite slowness and care do I peel the final piece of her apart. Her complex jaw, multi-segmented and alien, falls to pieces joint by joint, her twitches and trills of pleasure and pain made all the sweeter when coming from her new form. I loosen what remains of her skull, and save the final, most precious piece for last: her eyes.

I have always loved her Athanatos eyes. Like a hundred sapphires, they shine with her every emotion. Eyes have always been special to Vita, and Vita's eyes have always been special to me. So it is with great care that I weave a final spell to tear them from their sockets like the core of a peach. In one final, beautiful moment, I rip her eyes out of her head, and Vita dies.

But Vita lives, and she is beautiful.

Free from her flesh, my girlfriend's idealized form floats in the air above me. A semi-solid anima structure, birthed of genius and hope, comprises her body. Her humanoid shape is smooth like a doll, androgynous and lacking both breasts and genitals. The spherical eye of her old soul still rests in her belly, and tendrils still emerge from wherever she chooses, twisting impossibly and shifting uncountably. The majority of them form her wings, winding together like vines into a shape halfway between bird and dragon. Tendrils also comprise her hair, flowing down her back in messy locks that remind me of the day I first saw her, letting Remus kick her half to death just for a chance at daily stew. I didn't understand her then, but I am so, so glad I understand her now.

She smiles at me. Not just an Athanatos smile, although she does do that, her beautiful alien eyes still shining on her face even though more humanoid eyes are visible here and there around the rest of her body. Yet she also gives me a human smile, with a human mouth that seems to flicker in and out of existence as her expression warrants. She lifts up out of my arms, twisting once in the air and letting the unadulterated joy of weightlessness fill her form, every part of her finally feeling right.

And then she floats back down into my arms and gives me a proper kiss. Our lips touch, and I feel myself start to cry. We hold each other for that immortal moment, together in joy and purpose and love. I am hers and she is mine, her final apotheosis tied inextricably to our love. It's a perfect memory, one I will cherish until the end of time, but all too soon it comes to an end.

"...Are you done?" Nawra asks. "Because if you two want to finish in a private room I'm happy to arrange that for you."

"If only we could," Vita sighs. "Unfortunately, Nawra, I still have to stop you."

"Well as happy as I am for you regarding your new body, Vita, it doesn't actually change the fact that you are nowhere near powerful enough to pose any threat to me whatsoever."

"I know," Vita sighs, taking to the air again. "But I know someone who is."

Silence. I can feel the terror and fury fill the air, the weight of the threat two gods are presenting to the other.

"...You would not dare," Nawra hisses. "I would devour you in an instant."

"Oh yeah?" Vita asks, crossing two of her arms. "How's that escape tunnel coming, sis? The hole you're drilling through every other mana ocean to get away from big brother? The one you said you needed half my mana to complete?"

"You brat! I do not need you, I just—"

"You just won't have enough mana to complete it if you waste it all on killing me," Vita finishes for her smugly. "So if I do get Misty's attention, well… you're not really going to have enough time or attention to spare on countering whatever we get up to, are you?"

"You childish idiot!" Nawra shrieks as Vita starts rising upwards, reaching an arm through the ceiling. "He'll kill us both! You get that, don't you? You'll die too!"

"Well I guess that's the difference between us, isn't it Nawra?" Vita asks. "I'm willing to risk that."

The island shakes, a quake of unparalleled fury nearly sending us to our knees.

"My wrath will burn eternally for this, child."

"Meh," Vita shrugs. "I'm sure you'll find it in your heart to forgive me in a few centuries or so."

I can't help it. I start to laugh.

"I love you, Vita," I tell her, having never felt it more fully than in this moment.

"I love you too, Penelope," Vita smiles, and then she vanishes.

I let out a shaky breath, tears still wetting my cheeks. Not the most creative, I'll admit, but they're still good words to have been our last.

"Alright, everyone," I tell the others. "I suppose we should go save the world."