"All right! Well Jelisa, while Penelope's making you produce more melanin, I'm gonna inject a new language into your soul, if that's okay?"

I take a deep, quick breath, a sharp inhale and exhale. Slower breaths tend to hit me with too many unpleasant smells and tastes, and I think I'm close enough to being overwhelmed that the little minimizations matter a lot. I'm sitting in my underwear in Lady Vesuvius' horribly sterile home-slash-research-facility-slash-medical-ward, trying my best to ignore the fact that she is doing a lot more than making my skin darker and my hair whiter. I can feel the bones inside my face disintegrating and reforming in slightly different configurations. It doesn't hurt at all, but I still can't describe the experience as anything less than excruciating.

And now I have a moth-Lich asking if she can stick something into my soul. Which is just… fantastic. Truly, my life has reached a new low. At least Vita looks a lot better than she used to, her chitinous exoskeleton a beautiful lattice of startlingly ordered microfibres, devoid of soulless mites or horrid, sweat-vomiting pores. And her eyes, oh Watcher. Like perfect hexagonal gemstones, utterly without flaw. They are the most beautiful things I've ever seen since I got my Talent.

Not that this makes her suggestion any more appealing.

"Vita, please leave my soul alone," I insist.

"But Jelisa, you're not gonna do a good job coming off as Baldonese if you don't speak Baldonese!" Vita whines. "And there's nothing to worry about! I'm like, ninety percent sure this is safe for humans."

"It sounds like I have a solid ten percent to worry about," I answer patiently. "In terms of the integrity of my soul, I think that's an excessively high number."

Vita groans.

"What kind of newborn amateur do you take me for? If there are immediate problems, I can just revert things."

"I'm a bit more worried about long-term problems," I insist.

"Well, it is entirely up to you to determine if you're comfortable with the procedure," Lady Vesuvius chimes in. "Vita will not be touching your soul without your permission. However, in the event that you decline, we will have to find someone more willing to assist us to take your place, and I won't be able to spare the time reverting the changes to your body because I will be too busy preparing a different human to do the job for you. You are our first choice, especially Lark's, but I understand if you'd prefer to remain here and leave her with someone else."

…Fuck. Nothing about her principles stops her from playing dirty, huh? I don't want to leave Lark alone with the two people she's most conflicted about. I don't want to have my soul modified either, but… well, it's not like this would be the first time. Decontamination was a profoundly horrid experience, but if there's some sort of line you cross when you get your soul fucked by animancy I've already crossed it twice for an orginization I no longer trust. Is Vita more trustworthy? No, not really. Is she more knowledgeable and skilled, though? Yeah, definitely. I've already had more than enough hypocrisy in my life, I don't want to let myself drift too close to it.

"Fine," I sigh. "But I'll be getting second and third opinions on whatever you're doing, Vita."

"Don't give me that," Vita huffs. "If I intended to invalidate your autonomy I wouldn't be asking your permission in the first place. I don't require it, Jelisaveta."

"How reassuring," I answer flatly.

"So glad you think so!" she answers in a chipper tone, and honestly I have no fucking clue if she's having me on or not. I know she can read emotions—she can damn near read minds—but she's one of the least socially competent people I've ever met even when she bothers to use that skill at all. Which she usually doesn't!

I'm disappointed but not the least bit surprised that Vita's general regard for other people seems to have dropped as a result of becoming a member of the species trying to wipe out all life on our island. That said, while she's clearly far more dangerous in both thought process and power level, she's nowhere near as bad as I was afraid she'd be. Low standards, I know, but I take my victories where I can get them. I'm curious as to what that means, in terms of the people of Hiverock. To-Kill-From-Above is startlingly personable, a strange man but undeniably a considerate one. If the people of Hiverock are so capable of empathy, why are they killing us?

…Bah, that's a stupid question, I suppose. I could ask the same about humans. I often do, in fact. Now isn't the time for philosophy anyway, I need to pay attention to my soul. I watch as Vita sticks one of her own tendrils into her spiritual eye and extracts a mass of raw anima, the same kind that she uses to turn people into Revenants. That sends a bit of panic through me, but she places it in the palm of her hand and squeezes, smashing it to dust. Gathering it with a spell, she starts to craft, tendrils and motes of mana dancing together at incredible speeds, gluing the shimmering anima fragments into a small, condensed collection of sludge.

"Come here," she orders someone, but Penelope still has her hands on my bare shoulders so I assume it isn't me. Sure enough, a dead Baldonese man approaches as instructed, not even flinching as Vita burrows into his soul, blue splashes of mana ejecting out of the tips of her tendrils and cutting out a chunk of his very being like a scalpel.

"So, you humans have pretty disorderly souls," Vita comments, slathering the sludge-like anima goop off of the shard of soul stolen from another man. "Not your fault, really, just the consequence of unmanaged development. But your memory centers and emotional centers are all mixed together, so this is going to have some weird side effects."

I take another quick, deep breath. I can't believe I'm doing this.

"What side effects would you consider normal, and what side effects would you consider worrisome or dangerous?" I ask.

"Excellent question," Vita compliments, her eyes widening a little and focusing more on me. "So what you're going to be looking out for are emotional associations and memories. Like, say, you might say a word in Baldonese and suddenly feel happy or sad for reasons you don't understand, or you might start talking about a location and feel flashes of familiarity for and memory of that location, even if you've never been there. Because you're not just learning the language here, you are specifically being given direct access to Duhn-Kall's experience with his native language. That's this guy, by the way. Say hi, Duhn-Kall!"

"Hhhhi," the Revenant slurs.

"Oh, haha, sorry, he's a little braindead right now since I'm holding his capacity for language. Also because his brain is dead! Anyway though, if you get flashes of memory and association that explicitly feel foreign and alien, that's good. I'm designing this to be modular so we can just remove it after the mission if that's your preference, so this sticky layer of anima here is intended to act as a buffer that lets your brain read the information, but not store it. Brains are really, really good at recording information, though, so you want to keep on the lookout for memories and associations that you know you never actually experienced but feel like they're 'you.' That means we have leakage, and I'll need to give your soul a checkup. Does that make sense?"

"I… think so," I nod. "This entire process is kind of existentially terrifying, though."

"Yeah," Vita says with a startling amount of seriousness to her tone. "I get that."

Honestly, I kind of want to let that slide and get this over with… but I've been working with people way too long to see that as anything other than an opening to have a really important conversation, the kind of conversation that I'd never forgive myself for missing. Even if this goes nowhere, I have to try just because people need to talk. The more I look into it, the more I find how essential it is to talk about things, to work out problems, to have friends you can vent to, to just know that people can and will listen. But that's hard, because most people won't listen, so we're trained passively from birth to hold the important things in and let them fester. I want to change that. That's the positive difference I can make in a world run by monsters and demigods, so no matter how terrified or exhausted I am I need to reach out a hand and lend an ear.

"Yeah, I guess you've had a lot of experience merging with other people's memories, huh?" I ask. "What's that been like?"

The breathing vents on Vita's sides huff out a burst of warm air, her focus seeming to zero in on the details of the partial soul she's working on, but I don't need to be hyper-perceptive to see that she's gathering her thoughts for a response. The way she expresses emotion now is fascinating; she's certainly much more expressive than she used to be, but it's an odd mix of human reactions poorly transliterated onto an Athanatos body and completely alien emotive responses. By seeing where the two of them meet, though, it's not too difficult to use the former to figure out the latter.

"It was really, really scary with Melik," Vita admits quietly. "I thought I was just dead, you know? When I first woke up in Melik's body, and I still mostly was Melik, maybe even more Melik than I was Vita? And I had that moment of horror where my talent was gone, I was no longer truly a Templar, no longer truly my mother's son, but instead just a hollow soul with a monster in the middle. Someone that had to lie to all my friends, someone whose head kept pounding with contradictory thoughts, where everything felt like a lie and a violation to one half of me or another… I don't know. I certainly never want to go through that again. I don't think my experiences are going to be anything like what happens to you, to be clear, but trust me when I say I get it. But we can't use the Baldonese people Penelope captured because it'll take too long for their brains to wash out the indoctrination now that we've de-tumored them, and we can't take Duhn-Kall because he's fucking dead. We need you to be able to speak the language."

"I understand. I did agree to this, after all." It was under duress, but I don't think it'd be productive to belabor that point right now. "What about your merger with Princess Malrosa?"

She hasn't been correcting me to 'Princess Vita' like she does with most of the camp, but I have a hunch that it's the Malrosa part of her that's so insistent on that in the first place, so she'll likely appreciate the formality. Again, Vita is quiet for a while before answering.

"It doesn't really feel like I merged with Malrosa," she says quietly, fidgeting with her lower set of hands. "I just… am Malrosa. I'm Vita and I'm also Malrosa. Or at least I think I am. Sometimes I don't really feel like Malrosa at all, but… sometimes I don't really feel like Vita. It's kind of scary and I don't really get it. I thought I'd reached a point of stability where neither part of me was at danger of disappearing, but when that happens it feels like part of me is disappearing, or reverting I guess? And that's scary but then it stops and I'm back to normal. It's happened enough times now that I think it's just going to keep happening, but it doesn't seem to be causing any problems."

"You might want to talk to mom number two about this," I tell her, ignoring how incredibly weird her mother ranking system is for the moment.

"Altrix?" she asks, tilting her head in confusion. "You think this is related to her? I doubt being born from a splice has anything to do with it, this is Lich stuff."

"I don't think the things you're describing are similar because she's your mother, I just think they're similar because I notice commonalities."

"Altrix is three distinct people," Vita points out. "I'm very much not. If anything, I feel like less than one person when it starts acting up. I don't think we're comparable at all."

"It's just a thought," I allow, shrugging lightly. "I don't think talking to her about it will hurt, and even if she doesn't understand it any better than you do I'm sure she'd be happy to listen."

"I guess."

She goes silent again, and I suspect the conversation has ended there. That's okay, this is way over my head and I didn't expect to have the answers. I still think the conversation helped. All I can do is be someone she can trust. That's the baseline I need to establish before I can really start discouraging her from killing us all. She's getting worse, after all. If someone doesn't figure out how to manage the mental health of monsters, we're all fucked.

And that's the kicker, isn't it? As much as I'd rather relax at home, I've noticed that whenever I say 'somebody should do something,' nothing ever happens unless I follow it up with 'and that somebody is me.' I don't think of myself as a passive person. When I see injustice, I stop it. The very first time I met Vita, I stopped my partner from beating her. I separated the two of them, took on extra work to make sure that problem didn't happen again. But even then, I should have done more. I should have stepped forwards and done something about the fact that I had to stop her in the first place. The real problem was that things had actually gotten bad enough that I was witnessing a prisoner getting beaten on my first day. I, a brand new Inquisitor with no experience, should never have been put into that situation in the first place. But that doesn't matter, because I was, and I let it happen. I don't have any idea how I could have cleaned that kind of systemic rot, but I certainly should have tried. Imagine how much better things could have gone if I did. So much death, all on my shoulders.

Not this time. I will get better. I will be the hand that pulls people up when they fall. I just wish I had a better way to do it than one conversation at a time.

"Well," Vita prompts, "you ready for this?"

"Yeah," I confirm. "Ready as I'll ever be."

"Cool. Thanks for being such a good sport about it."

Aww, that's good! She thanked me! That's excellent progrrrraaaagh oh fuck she's sticking that onto my soul I can feel it I can feel it aaaaagh! It's sticky and clingy like someone else's sweat getting wiped all over me. A horrible shudder pulses through my body like a stranger just licked me in an alleyway, and then all at once I feel it connect, the weight of knowledge crushing my skull with a hammer. Words I've never heard but have always known seep into my memory, dripping into my brain and catching on my tongue. I swear in a foreign language and remember stubbing my toe, but the feeling is all tepid and utterly lacking in detail, just pain with no information, ignorable and empty and wrong, it's all so wrong, that's not me that wasn't me!

"Woah, okay, we got way too much leakage," Vita announces. "Sorry, sorry, I'll thicken things, this will only take a moment."

The feeling recedes like it's been sucked away, digging in its fingernails and scratching at my mind as it's slowly pulled free of me. I physically gag, vomit begging to geyser up my throat but I hold it down, refusing to add that unspeakable sensory experience to this already-torturous mess. I take more sharp breaths. Things… stabilize a little.

"I hated every second of that," I say in Baldonese, remembering the motions of cleaning a pet's diarrhea, but it's not my pet and it isn't my memory, just something attached to the words. "That will haunt me until I'm ash."

"I don't know what any of those words meant, so I assume that's a good thing?" Vita hedges. "The connection isn't leaking anymore, I think we're stable."

"That was indeed Baldonese, and I think it's lacking the Valkan accent and fifty-year language drift from the version I was taught," Lady Vesuvius confirms. "That's… very impressive, Vita."

"If we had more time I wouldn't have needed to fuck up Duhn-Kall to do it, either," she says, shrugging. "We're on a time limit, though, and the dude tried to kill us anyway. So yeah! Behold one of the many advantages of intentionally modular anima design: being able to do stuff like this on the regular without it fucking you up a little. Lament your inferior soul structure, mortals!"

"I thought you said you couldn't apply these changes to yourself," Lady Vesuvius comments dryly.

"Well no, I can't, but my soul is better for other reasons. Lamentations are still warranted!"

Lady Vesuvius actually snorts at that, amusement showing on her face for a brief second before returning to her usual impassiveness. Vita clearly spots it, and absolutely lights up with joy, insofar as her species is able. I have to say, I find the reaction reassuring as well. Lady Vesuvius' self-mutilation is certainly effective, and while it's also horrifying I can honestly empathize with the intention behind it. Forcing yourself to act on what you think you should do rather than having to worry about being tempted by your own weaknesses is absolutely an alluring prospect, even when I factor in the fact that it seems to remove basically all joy from her life. If I could torment myself like that to fix the world's problems, I would. Unfortunately, I neither have the skill nor the power to make use of what Lady Vesuvius has done to herself, and if the way her condition distresses everyone around her is any indication, my job would just become way more difficult if I locked away my emotions like that.

…That, and it's pretty obviously unhealthy to be idolizing a state like Lady Vesuvius', but I can worry about my personal mental health on my own time. Which I have actually had a good amount of, lately, so hopefully that's not just the self-deflection it kind of feels like.

"Well, I suppose we'll get going the moment I finish the physiological changes, then," Lady Vesuvius says. "That should just be a few hours. Are you absolutely certain you don't want me to numb you, Jelisa?"

"It honestly feels just as weird as the procedure itself," I admit. "And even if you did, it would just cause me to focus on other senses. Please numb me if you notice I'm having a severe dissociative episode, but otherwise I'd prefer to endure it as-is."

"I can do that," she agrees, and my torment continues for a few more hours. I take the time to practice the new language that has been injected into my soul, not to mention all the foreign associations tangled up in that language. I'm almost certain Duhn-Kall was a father of at least two children, considering the very strong impressions I get from the words for son and daughter. I think he was a farmer, too. He must have gotten poached for the assault by virtue of his talent, and now he's dead and likely experiencing a literally unspeakable existential horror at having so many memories removed. I feel horrible about all of this, but I can't deny the importance of the end goal.

Ars has to die.

Soon enough, the procedure is done. My hands no longer look like my own, my face no longer feels like my own. My dark hair has all fallen out and been replaced with long, white locks. I don't even have my scars anymore, not that I had any particular fondness for the memory of trying to claw out my own eyes when my talent first kicked in. It's just… strange. But there's no real time to lament it, because just a few minutes after it's done Vita scoops me up into her arms and starts flying towards Baldone, with Lady Vesuvius holding Lark beside her. Magic bends the air around us, turning what would have been a deafening roar of wind into a pleasant bubble of calm. The ground rushes past at terrifying speeds, though, almost certainly unsafe for most people. The group I'm with, of course, hardly qualifies as 'most people.' Apparently they can go a lot faster, but Penelope and Vita both agreed that causing 'kynamancy explosions' (which Vita also called 'sonic booms') would be detrimental to the goals of a stealth mission.

"So," Vita suddenly asks, apropos of nothing, "what's the deal with Baldone, anyway? I don't actually know anything about it."

There's a beat of silence.

"I would berate you for your ignorance if not for the fact that I mostly just feel foolish for not anticipating it," Lady Vesuvius answers dryly. "Where to begin… I suppose the war forty-some years ago is best. So, as you may be aware, Valka is a multi-island nation. The first Valkan colony on Verdantop arrived just under sixty years ago, where at the time Sigulda and Baldone were the only nations on the island. Sigulda controlled the vast majority of land that now forms the nation of Valka, but when we initially arrived we held territory they didn't care about, and had positive trade relations. We were at peace for a decade and a half… but then the Skyhope Crater was formed."

"The sign of the Mistwatcher's favor, right?" Lark chimes in. "A gift of metal, taken from a higher island that had sinned."

"That… is certainly something the Church claimed," Lady Vesuvius answers noncommittally. "At the very least, the records are clear that the Mistwatcher reached a tendril up past our island, high above it, and shortly afterwards something fell down to Verdantop and formed the Skyhope Crater. It was, apparently, an incredibly massive deposit of metal, and for obvious reasons both the Valkan government and the Church wanted it. Nominally, it was even in free territory, though no one had any delusions that the Siguldans were just going to let us take it. To make a long story short, Valka captured the Skyhope Crater and refused to cede it to Sigulda, and the war began in earnest. Being technologically, industrially, and magically superior to Sigulda, the Valkan army quickly started sweeping through them despite a numbers disadvantage. My grandfather was one of the most famous and influential generals of the time, and I suspect he suffered from similar proclivities to my former self, as he had no qualms about using dishonorable and devastating methods, even against non-combatants. Naturally, the Valkan government didn't care as long as he kept up his win streak. Which he did, all the way up until the first major battle with Baldone."

"Huh," Vita muses. "So Baldone is a lot more dangerous than Sigulda, I take it? What did they have that Valka didn't?"

"Nothing whatsoever," Lady Vesuvius answers. "The minor battles with Baldone were absolute one-sided dominations, where we routed their forces almost trivially. If anything, they were less capable in the art of warfare than Sigulda, being a much smaller country with isolationist foreign policies. But while we easily scooped up victories against their border territories, cracking an entrance to Baldone proper wasn't an easy task. The Great Wall stood in the way, an absolute marvel of engineering and manpower. A giant, defensive wall nearly thirty feet tall stretched across their entire border, which is as ridiculous as it sounds. Still, my grandfather made the decision to attack the wall anyway."

"Why?" Vita asks.

"Because we had Galdra," Penelope answers. "And back then, she was in her prime. Remus was stronger back then as well, and still wielding the Sword of Skyhope since this was before you fucking ate it. My grandfather believed there would be nothing stopping Galdra from simply slagging a large section of the wall and letting the army walk right through it. And frankly, he was right. The problem is that Baldone knew he was right."

She stops talking then, and we all wait with mild confusion. No continuation is forthcoming, though.

"So what happened?" I prompt, even though I do actually know this story.

"It will be easier to show you than tell you," Penelope answers. "We're almost there, after all."

Sure enough, it doesn't take long for me to spot a clearing in the forest ahead. That obviously means we're still very far away, but it also means we're close enough that the stealth spells start coming out in full force. We are now invisible, inaudible, and even spoofing a few other forms of detection that Vita is apparently aware of. Only people inside our little bubble of calm air should be able to detect us, though from our perspective everyone looks perfectly normal. We slow down, and the sight in front of us is both terrifying and breathtaking.

The forest simply ends in a craggy cliff, a vast and bottomless canyon half a mile wide. On the opposite side of it is Baldone proper, but in between the forest and their land is nothing. No bridges, no ground, just open air. A massive and completely separate island floats next to us, now part of Verdantop only in name.

"Behold, the Baldonian border," Lady Vesuvius announces, "also known as the Chasm of Disdain."

On the far side of the border it's easy to make out countless shambling shapes watching over the gaps, arrayed like soldiers but rarely armored like them. Revenants. A defensive force of Revenants at the other end of a bottomless chasm.

"What the fuck…?" Vita whispers. "You said this was a wall?"

"It was, yes," Penelope confirms. "Until the Baldonese army lined the inside with metal and purposefully caused enough of a ruckus to create a perception event. A massive tentacle reached up and tore through the island along the entire structure, annihilating the Baldonese defenses along with most of the Valkan army. That is what ended the Skyhope War: our forces ravaged and now faced with a completely unassailable defense, we retreated in short order, held our forward bases, and licked our wounds for forty years while Sigulda did the same. Every dignitary sent to Baldone since has been politely but firmly rebuffed at the border, and for obvious reasons we cannot exactly send an army over the chasm."

"I… wow," Vita mutters. "Well, first thing's first. Someone who isn't me needs to make sure the mists are up. There's little sense in announcing our presence with another perception event."

"Understood," Lady Vesuvius confirms, shooting off with Lark in her arms and leaving Vita and I alone. We don't speak, though, and Penelope returns soon enough with confirmation that the flight should be safe. So together, we head over the chasm, and I get to stare far, far below us, where the yellow mists billow and writhe.

"Stop," Vita orders, and everyone obeys. "I see signs of a sensory array that will detect our bubble. I think it's a metal engraving, though, so it'll be easy enough to bypass. Go slow, go quiet, and follow me."

We end up descending into the canyon temporarily, Vita following some sense only she's aware of. Mana is moving in ways that imply there are metal spikes in the ground which keep up a suite of detection spells, but I can't see anything more detailed than that with the spells I have active. Vita just approaches a seemingly-identical-to-all-others cliff wall, touches it for a bit, then nods before carrying us over the border. The undead shamble below, many of them moaning meaningless sounds but some of them actually speaking to each other in Baldonese, their tones hushed and fearful.

"It just isn't how I expected to spend my final moments, is all," one of the Revenants mutters. "I had my Days of Death all planned out, you know?"

"Ars is not a traditional man, to be sure," the other agrees. "But I am glad he is with us."

"I am glad he is with us," the complaining man parrots, and that seems to end the conversation. I shudder, and Vita grips me just a little bit tighter. We fly in silence until the bubble forms up around us again and Lady Vesuvius speaks.

"Can you spot any towns or cities, Jelisa?" she asks.

I glance out at the horizon.

"Both," I tell her. "How big of a place would you like?"

"Bigger is more likely to have the information we need," Penelope says. "Point us in the right direction."

I direct them towards the tallest structures I see and our flight continues. I find it quite notable that height is so relevant here; I see a number of different cities that all have taller buildings than the tallest ones in Skyhope. And I see no shortage of them, either! The visibility here is staggering, as there's no forest to get in the way. Leaving the country's border, we fly over nothing but plot upon plot of wide, flat farmland, manned by living people rather than the dead we found at the border. Eventually, the city itself comes into view, and the reason for its bulk is made clear: it's layered. Huge stone towers lay out on a grid, bridges spanning between them as houses and business all stack on top of another, people scuttling over them like ants in an anthill. The city has a minimum of three layers to it in any given area, and plenty of construction is visible on the tops of what is already built. Penelope, Vita, Lark and I land about a mile out from the city, giving me time to stretch my sore body and adjust the Baldonese clothing that Lady Vesuvius took from their camp. I should look like a traveler approaching from out of town, and I see enough people taking roads into and out of the city that the ruse will probably hold.

From here, the city seems… normal. Lively, even. There's a beauty to it unlike anything I've seen before, the design principles of a completely foreign culture looking far more beautiful than they otherwise would just because of their sheer uniqueness, at least to my eyes. Even from here, though, I can make out little details that give me pause.

Here and there, I see people standing around and doing nothing, looking hungry. I see the beginnings of grime forming on otherwise-pristine monuments, as if they had been religiously cared for until only recently. And out of every single face I can see, I don't notice a single smile that isn't strained and exhausted. But I notice many, many smiles, all directed at the ground as if everyone believes their own feet to be the most interesting thing they have to look at. Whenever they do look up, it isn't for long, but if two people's eyes meet, they always exchange the same greeting.

"Hail Ars," they say together.