"That's quite a glare you have, little Princess," Dalakana muses. "You wouldn't happen to be holding a grudge, now would you?"

I flinch and look away, doing my best to ignore the squadron of soldiers dragging the many obarian corpses out of the plaza to be burned.

"...I'm not planning to take revenge against you, if that's what you're asking," I mutter.

Dalakana's smirk grows more pronounced.

"You know that it isn't," she says.

I grind my mandibles together in irritation, not at all in a good state of mind to have a heart-to-heart with some smug bitch who just made me eat a bunch of children for her amusement. I clench all four of my hands into fists, then slowly let them relax. Focusing on the physical still isn't comfortable for me, but it's a habit from my Malrosa side which I have to admit is helpful for evening out my mood.

"I'm furious," I admit. "This was wasteful, cruel, and unnecessary. Both to me and to them. So yes, Queen Dalakana. I'll probably hold a grudge over this."

To my ever-growing annoyance, Dalakana actually laughs at that. Bitch. Is she dumb enough to think she's going to be stronger than me forever?

"Ah, I suppose that's only fair," she chuckles. "After all, I was using you to pursue a grudge of my own."

"What!?" I snap, turning on her. "Is that all this was!?"

Her amusement dies instantly, a dangerous pressure settling suddenly around me.

"Don't forget yourself, child," she warns.

I swallow, schooling myself and my expression as best I can.

"Apologies, Queen Dalakana," I manage to answer.

She emotes forgiveness and acquiescence, settling back into a more casual mood once again.

"Of course that's not all it was," she explains. "Surely you're intelligent enough to see that?"

I sigh slightly.

"Yes, of course," I answer evenly. "It was a test. Everything I do here is a test. You want to know if I'll obey you when we disagree, and I have, Queen Dalakana. But you should be intelligent enough to know that's not a binary trait. I'm more than either a slave or a threat, and I'm insulted to be treated that way. I'm Athanatos. I have no intention of being your subordinate forever, and there are lines you could have drawn that would have strained our relationship less."

I'm prepared to be chastised quite a bit for that answer, but no matter how foolish it is to say it I want her to know who she's fucking with. It's difficult for me to play the demure little follower, dancing around with games of power and words like a good little Princess. I don't need this. This doesn't help. Yet out of all the reactions I was expecting and dreading from Dalakana, I never expected the flash of what is unmistakably love to bloom up through her soul.

"Oh, little Princess," Dalakana sighs, a melancholy yet strangely happy sound. "You and your sister remind me so much of my daughter. Hate me if you must, but it's better than letting you die the same way she did."

I come up short at that, for once my expression going blank because I actually have no idea what to emote. Her daughter is… dead? Was she killed by obarians somehow? These guys are kind of pathetic, though. Even the fighters.

"Ah, it's so easy to forget that you don't remember," Dalakana murmurs. "It's not a story I particularly like to repeat, but… well. Suffice to say she was a lot like you. A powerful War Queen with a loving soul, fierce in anger but fiercer when she had something to protect. Her plan was much like yours, Malrosa. Rule with a gentle hand. Take the resources we need, but nothing more. Negotiate, placate, nurture, protect. It is a beautiful thought, it truly is. My daughter grew to be wisened, aged, and powerful, ruling this very island for hundreds of years with both might and mercy."

"But then she was killed," I conclude. "And you took over in her stead, obliterating the species responsible."

"Well not the whole species. The obarians breed like rats and live on countless islands. But I'll not tolerate them in my territory, no."

She approaches me, laying a hand on my head and ruffling my setae.

"No matter how kind you intend to be, you will be a tyrant, Malrosa. You will be hated. You will have enemies, and they will come for you. The first may not succeed, nor the second, nor the third, nor the hundredth nor the thousandth. But the reality of our nature is that you will keep living until one of them finally succeeds. The path you've decided on is one where you purposefully cultivate the engineers of your own downfall, allowing them to breed and spread and sharpen their knives as you give them the very meals they subsist on. Every obarian on this island wants me dead, Malrosa, but there are far fewer obarians on this island than you will have trained assassins on yours."

"I'm not particularly afraid of assassins," I protest lamely.

Dalakana pulls me into a hug, and it's so unexpectedly genuine that I let her, my face buried limply into her chest-fuzz.

"Oh, darling, I know you aren't," she whispers. "But the rest of us are. We already almost lost you, once."

Something about those words tugs painfully at my heart, prodding one of the wounds no amount of biomancy can heal.

"Do you not think you lost me?" I ask her. "I don't remember you. I'm not the same Malrosa you knew."

She chuckles at that.

"I am very, very old, child. I have known Queens far stranger than you. Couples that have become one in body and soul, Athanatos that have purposefully driven themselves mad for the novelty, those that have made clones of their mind rather than true daughters… so you tell me, darling. Are you Malrosa?"

"Yes," I murmur quietly.

"Then you have the only answer that matters. I'll never argue against it."

"I'm also Vita, though," I protest.

"I know," Dalakana answers simply.

Hesitantly, I uncurl my tentacles from my soul. The War Queen doesn't react, so slowly and carefully I wrap them around her. She's anima-tangible, meaning the hug is truly complete. I wonder, idly, if this was calculated. My rage drains away in the embrace of a mother who lost her child, strict and harsh but loving in the ways that touch me deepest. I want to remember the cruelty she forced me to enact on innocent people—on children even—but I need the acceptance more than I need the fury.

I suppose that, whether it was a ploy or not, it worked. So I have the only answer that matters.

"Thank you, Queen Dalakana," I murmur into her chest-fluff. "I really needed to hear that."

"I know, Vita," she coos gently, patting my head over and over. "There's no one quite like you in the world. But as unique as you are, there are those who come close. Those who have the same pains, the same worries, and the same problems, at least to some degree or another. Liriope has seen it, and Liriope understands. How could we not love our youngest Princess for who she is?"

I squeeze her more tightly at that, relishing in the strangeness of hearing a fellow Athanatos call me 'Vita.' It's oddly pleasing, if profoundly jarring.

"I'm still not gonna genocide my second home," I tell her softly. "I know you're right. A lot of people will be trying to kill me. Killing them first is safer. But I'm still worried about the long-term consequences of that, especially if I'm going to be living on that island rather than in Liriope. I'll need people around to help me stay myself."

"Well there are middle grounds between genociding the entire island and cultivating the instruments of your own future demise, I suppose," Dalakana muses. "They are not how I run things here, of course, so if you sense any other obarians during your stay I expect you to kill or at least report them. But when you are in command there's nothing stopping you from, say, cultivating controlled communities and slaughtering everyone else."

That's a thought, I suppose. I have more enemies than I have people I want to protect anyway. I'll have to run that by Penelope when I meet up with her again.

"I'll think more on it, Queen Dalakana," I answer seriously.

"That's all I ask, darling," she says, releasing me from the hug. "And again, it's just Dalakana. Thank you for assisting me with my island tasks, even if it was under orders you disapprove of."

"You're welcome, I suppose," I mutter, pulling my tendrils back into my soul after fixing my thoroughly rustled head-setae.

"It was quite fascinating, watching you eat," she continues. "Particularly the way your soul opened up like a mouth. Even as old as I am, I continue getting to see new things."

Again, I feel a need to blush that my current body can't make good on.

"You should watch me eat metal," I murmur, embarrassed. "The digestion there is extra funky."

She chuckles at that.

"Perhaps I'll find some I can spare for a snack," she says. "I should get back to my duties, Princess Vita. Though you're welcome to come find me if you need anything, of course."

"Of course," I sigh in agreement, suddenly feeling profoundly exhausted. "I'll stay alive, Dalakana. I promise."

For Verdantop's sake as well as my own. I've now seen how Liriope mourns, after all.

Ignoring the workers rolling away the many spherical stones my recent meals rode in on, I return to the mostly-empty residential area and let myself into Tala's room after a brief knock. She gets up to greet me, pulling me in for a hug which I happily reciprocate.

"How did it go?" she asks.

"Well she talked me out of a blood feud," I sigh. "So… good, I think? I don't know. She's weirdly likable when she's not ordering me to murder children."

"I guess… she probably doesn't think of them that way?" Tala hedges. "If I'm being honest, I don't really think of them that way."

"In a weird way, I think she does, actually," I mutter. "She just… has decided not to care."

"Is that different?"

I give Tala one more squeeze before letting her go.

"Yeah," I confirm. "It's… pretty different, I think."

The rest of our vacation isn't terribly noteworthy. We teleport back to Liriope after ten or so more days in the Tear Basin, which I now know is named for the grief the island represents as the grave of an immortal Queen. It's funny; Athanatos can't actually cry, but obarians can. I wonder how many of them mourned their leader when she was assassinated. Was she liked, overall, and slain by a group of radicals? Or was she hated, despised and reviled, slain to the overwhelming cheers of her own subjects? I'll never know. No obarians that actually lived under Dalakana's daughter are still alive. It has simply been too long.

It feels like no time at all before the first month of my time as a Vita-Malrosa fusion is up and I'm called to see the Progenitor once again. I've spent my time well, enhancing my custom armor and crafting new weapons to take advantage of my strengths. I wear it all to the meeting with her, because I figure things are probably going to go well and I should be ready for my promised training to start… and if things don't go well, I'll definitely want to be as armed and armored as I can get.

Though it doesn't escape my notice that the guards have absolutely no problems letting me be alone with the Progenitor while armed to the teeth. Geez. If they have so little faith in my ability to hurt her, why does she even have guards? I enter her audience chamber, looking up at the functional goddess of our species and note that while she's visibly grown over the past month, she is still tiny and absolutely adorable. Of course, I'm not crazy enough to let that stop me from kneeling respectfully before her throne.

"Malrosa," the Progenitor hums. "Vita. Princess of Blue. You've come before me looking like you intend war."

"Is that not what a War Queen does, Progenitor?" I answer easily.

The horrifying ancient thing in a painfully adorable, positively boopable body barks out a high-pitched laugh of mirth and malice.

"Then let's make you one, child."

I spend the next few days with the Progenitor basically non-stop, demonstrating everything I know and being berated for it.

"Why do you weave arts like that, child?" she grouses, zipping around my head like an oversized fly. "It's beneath you."

"What?" I grumble, pausing my four-armed dance. "This is how I was taught! Didn't you come up these techniques?"

"Well… maybe a thousand years ago I codified something as crude as that," she answers, waving me off dismissively. "But either way it's beneath you."

"Your techniques are beneath me," I deadpan.

"Yes," she hisses. "You are mana itself. You don't need to wave your arms around to shape your form!"

"Well, I mean I guess I could adapt these forms to tentacle casting," I admit.

"No!" she snaps, a telekinetic force bonking me on the back of the head. "It's you, child! Just move it! You don't need to shape it step-by-step like a corporeal being. Skip to the end. Manifest your sculpture all at once, by your will alone. We will start with a basic light spell."

"Aww, that's the spell Penelope taught me to cast with! …And also the spell mom taught me to cast with."

"Cease your nostalgia and move your essence, child!"

"All right, all right!"

Moving my mana is easy. It's the easiest thing in the world, in fact. It's absolutely no problem whatsoever. No, the issue is that I don't understand what I'm supposed to form with it. I cast spells all the time, sure, but that's a complicated step-by-step construction process, most of the memorization going to my motion itself with only a basic understanding of what that motion is doing. Now I'm being asked to twist part of me into a complex multi-dimensional structure that will, upon completion, slowly consume itself by turning into light. I basically need to understand the element of reality itself that defines light at its most fundamental level, and then… become that definition.

Vita's limited magical knowledge is useless here, even though that part of me supplies all the potential. Malrosa and, to a surprising extent, Melik are the parts of me which rule this task, as they're both trained in the skills needed to understand magic on the level of complexity required. It's still hard. I almost blow myself up a dozen times, and would have if the Progenitor hadn't barked a correction at me each time. I feel like a child again, figuring out magic for the first time… but when I finally cast something without moving so much as a tendril, it feels like learning to fly again.

The Progenitor boots me out after that and tells me to master ten other spells this way before coming back. I head to the Pneuma practice grounds and devour some of the training souls there to help me work through the night. I return to the Progenitor the next day able to cast twenty-five, and I actually get to see the architect of our race smile.

"Teleportation magic is the most obvious solution to your issue with range," the Progenitor tells me days later. "And you should be able to cast it near-instantly when you comprehend the spell well enough. The problem is that you lack the power for it, as of yet."

"I'll need to eat a lot more metal before I have the mana output for speedy teleports, yeah," I confirm. "I was going to augment that weakness with my armor. Have it set up a lot of the power storage for me."

"A decent enough stopgap," the Progenitor concedes. "But the most obvious solution should never be your only solution. You know plenty of projectile spells. We're working on your aim today, child."

…And so it goes. I can't say I hate it. The Progenitor is a firm teacher, without being aggressive the way Remus was. She prods at my limits and I voraciously try to surpass them. She's making me powerful, and that's all I've wanted for a long, long time.

Souls are officially added to my standard diet, as well. Whenever a man dies somewhere on the island, his soul is taken and fed to me… and that's hundreds of impressively-sized souls, every day. The Progenitor makes it very clear that this is temporary—I can't expect this treatment when I return to Liriope. Denying the Mistwatcher his meals for too long will apparently cause a perception event. That is a big part of why the men are kept mortal in the first place. I'll definitely have to inform Penelope about that one.

The massive influx of souls does a lot to increase my power, of course. Enough that I start outgrowing my body again. I feel the first twitches of eyes and flesh tendrils start to emerge, though I suppress them as best I can. The Progenitor and I talk about me, about what I want to be, about how to use this mostly-uncontrolled biomancy to my advantage. We talk about forming a body of anima. She shows me things which spark my imagination, beautiful possibilities and glorious what-ifs. My body stays the way it is for now, because I'm starting to get a clear picture of what I'll actually become.

I need to save energy for it.

"Our next pass over your island is soon, child," the Progenitor reminds me.

"Yeah," I agree. "I'd like to go."

"You aren't ready," she protests.

"Grandmama, I won't be ready for a hundred years by your standards," I sigh. "Which would rather defeat the purpose of me returning at all."

"An unconditional win, then, in my book," the Progenitor pouts. Actually, genuinely pouts.

I can't help it. With a chuckle, I do something I've been wanting to do since meeting her months ago. I pick her up and give her a hug.

"Ack!" the god-queen architect of our species sputters indignantly. "D-don't handle me so frivolously! Princess Malrosa!"

"You're not making me explode," I note, nuzzling her chest-setae. "That means you like it."

"Curse you, child!"

I laugh again, giving her another squeeze… which she even deigns to return.

"We will all be worried for you, Malrosa," she sighs. "To return so soon to the very place you nearly died… if you were not a budding goddess I need to coddle, I'd have never considered allowing it."

"You're just happy the goddess embedded itself in a member of your family," I tease her. "All this power is now yours to shape!"

"Not if you go running off!" the Progenitor snaps. "But that's why I'll let you. I do not chain my family. That is a promise I made to myself. Liriope is only worth it if the Athanatos can enjoy each other's company. What would be the point of an eternity together, if we are stuck scheming and feuding? You will love us, Malrosa, so long as we are worthy of love. And in turn, we shall love you."

"This is, undoubtedly, my favorite society of genocidal bug monsters," I assure her, finally putting her down. "Thank you, grandmama. I love you very much."

"Get down there and prove us wrong, child," the Progenitor insists. "Don't you dare die on us."

"I won't," I assure her. "I promise."

On the night of our pass over The Plentiful Wood, I find myself strolling through the lower levels that Penelope turned into a mass graveyard when we first came up here. There's no sign of that anymore. The corpses have all been converted into biomass and replaced. Everything is working with the efficiency that it once was. Even down on the lowest level, the vrothizo pits are full and ready to drop. Though they won't be dropping on Verdantop, of course. Never again.

"Last chance to back out," Tala half-jokes. She's here to send me off, because she's wonderful, but she won't be joining me. She doesn't really want to take over an island, and I don't really want her to be in danger with me.

"Declined, I'm afraid," I smirk at her, giving her a shoulder-to-shoulder squeeze. "Thanks for putting up with all my weirdness, Tala."

"Hey, don't underestimate me," she prods back. "Someday I'll be weirder than you can even imagine, and you'll have to pay me back the favor."

I chuckle, glancing down the drop tube I'll be making my entrance from. The tips of Skyhope's walls are visible below. We'll pass over it soon.

"I look forward to it," I tell my sister honestly.

"You'd better. Drop by to visit when we pass by, okay?"

"I will," I promise. "Whenever I have time, anyway."

"Make time! I'm your sister!"

I laugh.

"I'll be busy, Tala! And hey, you can always come visit me. Just make sure to come armed, because I'll put you to work."

"You're impossible," Tala groans.

"According to the predominant local religion, yes!"

I look down the drop chute again, even though I can already feel with my soul sense that Skyhope is close enough for me to take the plunge. I linger a bit longer anyway, adjusting my armored gloves, double-checking the six metal weapons on my belt, filling up the last possible concentrations of my body's mana capacity, preparing all the spells I think I'll need, and most importantly of all, staring at my sister for the last time in what will doubtlessly be far too long.

"I'll make it work," I tell her. "Before you know it the whole island will be under control and you can visit safely whenever you want."

"I believe you," Tara sighs. "But I'm still allowed to worry."

I pull her in for one last four-armed squeeze, hugging her almost tight enough to crack her chitin before finally releasing her.

"I love you, Tala."

"Love you too, Mal-Mal."

I jump, letting gravity take hold as I drop through the air, wings out to stabilize myself in the moments before I take control of my speed. Thousands of souls look up when I do, their focus on me and only me. Hiverock nights are often brutal slugfests, soldiers and eggs dropped in countless numbers and sent to a desperate slaughter. The incomprehensible might of an alien nation collapses upon Verdantop on days like this.

But today, Liriope sends only me.

It doesn't take long for me to clear the range of my island's hull defenses, meaning an answer from my other island will be incoming soon. I wonder what they'll do in the face of something new like me. Just a single person, dropping slowly and making no aggressive moves. Of course, the first line of defense is the Templars, so it'll probably be violence.

To my surprise and mild annoyance, it isn't. One of Braum's clones manifests a good distance away and manually flies towards me, presumably since just appearing beside me would likely seem aggressive. I stop falling and hover in place, putting on my most imperious expression as I let him come to me. …Not that the humans will be able to read my expression, of course, but it's the principle of the thing.

"Greetings," Braum says. "There wouldn't happen to be any possibility of negotiation or communication, would there?"

"There would, actually," I confirm. "Hey, Braum. How's things?"

It doesn't take long for me to pinpoint his real body down in the city and taste his delicious surprise.

"Have we… no. The Lich?"

"In the flesh," I confirm. "Though I expect you to address me as Princess Vita, or Princess Malrosa. Either is a proper title."

"You really did possess one of Hiverock's spellcasters, then," he concludes. "So what is your purpose here? You fought with us against Hiverock just a few months ago."

"Well, things have obviously changed," I tell him. "It's not so bad up there. In fact, it's way better than the shit city you protect. So I'm here to fix things. You wouldn't happen to be willing to surrender, would you?"

"To the living fusion of our two worst enemies?" Braum spits. "A Lich and a Hiverock caster?"

Ah, there it is. Now things are familiar again.

"I suppose if that's still all you can see, that answers my question well enough. Will I have to remind you of your impotence, then? You couldn't even touch me when I was still mostly human."

I float to the side to dodge a compressed air projectile from below, the smile in my eyes growing wider.

"I know I cannot fight you, Lich," Braum intones, "but Cassia has no such—"

I teleport, not bothering to listen to the rest of his drivel. Appearing directly in front of Cassia the Maelstrom, I activate one of my favorite new spells, etched into the metal of my armor. It's a mana control spell, a simple bit of metamancy designed for one thing and one thing only: repelling any mana it detects, pushing it away to form a wide, magicless bubble around me. But of course, like most magic-detection methods, it only senses Watcher mana. So I fill the remaining space, making my own little world of blue.

I've made bubbles of mana before, but they only last for a split second, enough to disrupt any spell cast around me before being inevitably annihilated in a thunderclap of destruction. The Mistwatcher is simply too massive, too omnipresent, and I could never keep up with him for long. But now, there is no annihilation, just the creation of a false barrier which keeps Watcher mana out and my mana in. The bubble only extends about six feet in every direction, but that's more than enough. The moment Cassia's momentum flings her inside of it, she becomes utterly powerless. Her soul tries to channel, tries to use its talent, but my mana won't simply obey some drunkard. Why would I let her use me to attack myself? Her flight, her whirlwind, her offense, her defense… all of it is stripped away in an instant.

I catch her by the neck, since I'm kind enough to not let her fall.

"Hey, Cassia," I greet her politely. "Braum was just bragging about you."

Her only response is a bunch of weird noises, though, gurgling sounds and panicked clawing at my hand. That's kind of out of character for her. Why… ooooh, right, she's choking, humans choke when you grab their neck.

"Whoops, sorry," I apologize, loosening my grip a bit. "I just didn't want you to fall."

A dozen Braum clones materialize just outside my barrier and try to strike it, but I ignore them since there's nothing solid for them to strike and they obviously just dissipate whenever they touch my mana. The dude never learns.

"What are…" Cassia coughs. "How are you… doing this?"

I laugh.

"Let me answer your question with a question. Back during Skyhope's perception event, did you ever try to cast something on the Mistwatcher directly?"

"...What?" she hisses.

"You heard me. Did you try it? Just to see what happens?"

"...Nothing happens," she hisses. "You can't use a god's gifts against—"

She cuts herself off, terrified of the words that were about to come out of her mouth. I laugh again.

"...Against a god?" I finish for her, drinking in every beautiful moment. I've wanted this for so long. The chance to humble these smug fucking bastards. To utterly and completely crush them, to see their damn faith drain from their eyes and get replaced with terror. It's intoxicating. I look deep into her soul, greedily indulging myself in every fear, every draining hope of the smug drunkard bitch who put me in prison all those years ago.

Then I scowl, because I find something that shouldn't be there. A red, pulsing segment of soul that I could have sworn wasn't part of her the last few times I peered into her. What the heck is this? It's in the emotional attachments section, growing like a tumor. And it's also connected to… where mana is channeled? What? It's like half talent, half animancy scar, which…

Oh, god damnit.

I do a quick check through the souls of the countless people below me, finding that nearly a third of them have a similar red pustule leaking wretched subtleties into their higher brain functions. Yet there's no sign of the man himself, the only culprit on the island I can imagine to be responsible for this particular brand of cascading soul tumors. Wherever he is, he isn't in Skyhope.

My line of thought is swiftly tangled, however, when an agitation of mana near me forces me to prepare for an incoming teleportation spell. I turn to it and watch, my body tense and heart racing, as she appears before me. Her white and blue scales glimmer in the spotlights being directed up at us through the darkness. Her wings dwarf mine, each one extending farther than she is tall, the interlocking plates looking more like one of my metal automations than anything truly alive. Her powerful tail curls underneath her, its hundreds of scaled tendrils twisting with seemingly chaotic intent, yet in reality each grasps and shapes Watcher mana with unparalleled precision. And within it all rests her soul, a fortress of horrifying efficiency. No… not a fortress. A prison. Its defenses all point inwards, after all.

"Penelope," I greet her, my heart tearing asunder.

"Vita," she answers professionally, the small shade of longing in her soul expertly quarantined away.

"It's good to see you," I say honestly, "though I think you have an Ars problem."

"I know," she growls. "He has picked the most disruptive possible time to make his move. So I need to know: are you here to help us?"

"I'm here to conquer you," I answer. "So yes."

She's displeased by my answer, and even goes so far as to clench her fists to show it. The blue in her scales fades away, leaving only white.

"What?" I ask. "Mad because I stole your plan? Don't worry, I've talked the gals upstairs out of the whole genocide bit. There will be no more vrothizo heading our way. We'll take over like we always intended, trade resources to Liriope in exchange for peace, and everything will be peachy keen."

Penelope glances at the High Templar in my grasp and the nearby manifestation of Braum, floating carefully into my bubble of mana. Naturally, I allow her to transfer over to using it, happily filling her soul and admiring her shell from the inside.

"We should talk about this elsewhere," Penelope declares. "With both of us here, Interitus is likely to make her move."

"Who's Interitus?" I ask, and then the sky explodes.