Ava was annoyed. She didn’t do well with authority at the best of times, but today it seemed like authority was going the extra mile just to piss her off.
“Professor Proxton, please, listen to me. We have to have the spawn,” she begged. “Its research value is incalculable!”
In front of her, on the mirror on her desk, the lined, bearded face of her professor stared back with tired eyes from the middle of a runic circle that she’d hurriedly painted on with ink. It was going to be a bitch to clean later, but luckily that wasn’t her problem. If the delvers wanted a clean mirror, they could clean it themselves.
“And I am still waiting for you to explain to me why exactly I should spend department resources and risk antagonizing the Delvers Guild for a Nightmare Spawn,” he replied tiredly. “In fact, what you’ve told me so far barely warrants the cost of this sending, never mind the price of stealing it from the possession of the Guild. What is so special about this particular creature?”
Ava had to resist the urge to grind her teeth in frustration. What was it with the men in her life being so damned difficult?
“Her body, her behavior, her intellect,” Ava listed off on her fingers, “they are all completely different to anything else that I’ve found any mention of in previous research papers. She’s something brand new!”
Her professor sighed and shook his head. “You know that’s not enough, Ava. Every few years the Tree pops out some new kind of spawn. Each time it is radically different to anything else has come before. If it isn’t plague zombies that infect magic itself, it’s giant tripods that can incinerate you just by staring at you. While they are interesting curiosities, they are the Guild’s problem, not ours.”
Ava wanted to pull her hair out. It didn’t matter that she was a genius; the youngest student ever to complete a degree with a dual major in both Animancy and Essence Application, two of the most difficult subjects at the Forbidden-A. No, she was still just a simple postgrad student, and a female one at that. Until she finished her magisterial thesis, defended it before a whole bench of morons and likely grew a dick as well, none of these ancient seat-warmers in their old-boys club would trust her to make a cup of tea correctly, much less identify a revolutionary research opportunity.
Unfortunately, those very same seat-warmers were the ones who controlled the very wellspring of power at the Academy: funding allocation. And if you wanted to be able to afford a steady supply of essence to fund your research, well, you couldn’t just tell them to go sit on an essence needle and spin.
“While the species is of middling interest, Professor, it’s the individual that has the value!” Ava tried again. “She claims that she is from another world! A different world! One without magic, yet where metal cylinders fly and knowledge flows like water!”
At this, he actually had the nerve to laugh at her. “You believe a Nightmare Spawn, Ava? I thought you were more intelligent than that. You know they are all insane, right?”
Ava bristled, but kept her simmering anger in check. An outburst now would serve no purpose other than to alienate the very resources she required. One day, when she had grown wealthy and powerful, she would have him slowly submerged in a pot of boiling oil. She made a mental note of that.
“That’s my point,” she hissed. “Not this one. She’s lucid, intelligent and has a degree of self-awareness that has never before been recorded in any of the studies on Nightmare Spawn! She can think, she can hold a conversation and she’s probably smarter than half the first years!” Probably smarter than you, too, though that isn’t saying much.
Professor Proxton sighed and raised his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. I understand. She’s different, I get it. And if this was any other time, I’d say the Spawn is perhaps worth a look. But right now, a Nightmare Tree is gone! This has never happened before in recorded history, do you understand why that is currently a slightly higher priority than one of its errant spawn?” the professor said, excitement creeping into his voice.
Professor Proxton had always had a hard-on for anything to do with the Tree. It was why Ava had volunteered for the stupid research expedition to it. With all of the goodwill it would have gotten her, her research grants would have been secure for years.
And then fate had dropped a golden opportunity on her lap and the blithering idiot was too dense to see it for what it was and too miserly to invest the pennies it would have cost him to secure it.
Perhaps it was time to play a slightly more dangerous card. “I believe that she was involved with the death of the Tree in some manner.”
“Oh? In what way?” the professor asked, eyes suddenly alight with interest.
“I don’t know,” Ava said through clenched teeth. If she told him that Rita had been inside the tree at the time of its death, she would have had to admit that she, too, had been inside. And Gora had been correct. That might attract some uncomfortable attention, not the least from the person right in front of her.
At the end of the day, she was a scientist, not a subject for study, thank you very much.
“You’re going to have to give me more than that, Ava,” her professor replied. “Why do you think the spawn was involved?”
Because the first thing she remembered after being… eaten, was coming to her senses in that Otherstone structure with the rest of her group and Rita and the Tree already dead and nobody remarked on it. When she’d pestered Gora about it on the way back, the demon woman had just told her not to worry about it. Not to worry about it? The tree was the subject of her thesis, how the hell could she just not ‘worry about it’?
“It’s a hunch,” she finally said. Which, really, wasn’t even that far from the truth.
Her professor shrugged apologetically. “A hunch is not good enough, I’m afraid. It just doesn’t make rational sense to expend Academy resources on a ‘hunch’.”
Ava sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Fine. She hated having to do this. It made her feel dirty. But if common sense wasn’t going to be good enough, she was just going to have to exploit the weakness of every academic ever.
Politics.
“Fine. I get it, Professor, forget I asked,” she said in an exasperated voice. “I’ll contact Professor Marconi. Maybe he’ll be interested.”
It was with well hidden glee that she saw Professor Proxton’s patronizing expression fall into an instant scowl.
“Why would you think that hack will help you after I turned you down?” Proxton scoffed.
“Exactly because you turned me down, Professor. I figure that after that last humiliation you handed him at his student’s thesis-defense, a hack like him might be willing to expend Academy resources on a hunch if he thought there was a chance he could tweak your nose in the process,” Ava said calmly. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it, though. After all, it’s just a hunch, right? It will probably just end up making him even more of a laughing stock among the rest of the faculty. Of course, if I turn out to be right…”
“Fine!” Professor Proxton snarled. “I’ll… see what I can scrape together. But you keep that bastard, Marconi, out of this!”
Inside, Ava grinned from ear to ear, but she was careful that her face reveled little more than a polite smile. “Thank you, Professor. My lips are sealed.”
Proxton snorted. “There is no way I can grab the creature in the middle of a delver fortress. You will have to let me know when it leaves and we can see how best to approach the situation.”
“Of course, Professor. I will stick to her like glue.”
With a final huff, Professor Proxton cut the link and suddenly the only thing in Ava’s mirror was herself. Only then did she allow herself a wide grin. Her thesis topic might be a little dead, but she already had a new one lined up!
Rita squirmed uncomfortably.
Really, she shouldn’t have been surprised that the doctor had asked to see them, after she’d gone and blabbed, but after the events in Duncan’s office, Rita had decided to just come clean on everything. The last thing she wanted was little hidden details to come out later and make it look like she was still intentionally hiding things. She’d seen enough movies.
Correction, she remembered seeing enough movies. And in movies, it was always the innocuous little lie or omission that grew with time before being exposed at the worst possible time.
So now, as she sat on the same sheet-covered stone bench that she had briefly stopped at on the way to her bath when she’d first entered Triskellion, down in the medical chamber in the bowels of Triskellion, she slowly opened her mouth as wide as she could.
Two pink little fang-tipped limbs unfolded gently from her upper jaw.
“That is so cool!” Justine whispered loudly. She was sitting on top of a nearby cot. Rita hadn’t thought it possible, but she seemed to be staring even more intently than usual.
“Why hadn’t you shown me this the first time?” the doctor, whose name had turned out to be Fenworth, asked. He was younger than Rita had realized. The heavy five-o-clock shadow around his jaw and thinning hair made him seem older, but he couldn’t have been older than a rather slovenly thirty.
Rita shrugged and mumbled something incoherent past her extended fangs. Talking with them out was like talking with… well… two little, pink arms in your mouth.
“You were busy at the time,” she finally said after pulling them back inside, gesturing at where the other patients lay. “You know…”
Her initial medical examination had been exceedingly brief. She’d come in, sat her entire body down on the bench as instructed and answered a few short questions, mostly about whether she was currently in any pain or had any open wounds that she was aware of. Then he’d sent her off to get a bath, wrinkling his nose as he’d turned back to taking care of the others with actual injuries. Any curiosity he may have had with regards to her biology had been quite firmly suppressed by the sheer amount of muck that she had had clinging to her and the somewhat dire conditions of the other party members.
Now, Bob was lying on a cot in the corner, snoring quietly, with Zaxier curled up by his feet. Samual lay awake on the one next to them, a thunderous expression on his face, but seemed to be otherwise fine. He appeared to have been restrained to the bed.
“Why does Samual need to be restrained, anyway?” Rita asked.
“Because he refuses to lie still and rest like his doctor ordered him to. Push your fangs back out and stop moving them around, please,” the doctor instructed. Rita obeyed.
He carefully gripped one of the protruding fangs between thumb and forefinger and gently moved it around. Rita winced as a stab of pain jabbed into her skull.
“Hmm. As I thought. Feels like it got dislocated at some point. And then someone tried to just ram it back in.” He gave Rita a very pointed glare. She mumbled something incoherent and vaguely apologetic.
As long as she had kept them inside her mouth, they had felt okay. Not perfect, but fine. They hadn’t really done more than ache a bit at the joints, and that had been little more than a mild nuisance compared to how much pretty much the entire rest of her body hurt. They’d hiked for kilometers to get to Triskellion… and then she’d gone and climbed the equivalent of more than ten flights of stairs, both ways.
“It doesn’t look too bad, though. You managed to get it back into whatever joint these things have, at least,” the doctor continued as he kept slowly moving the strange, pink limbs around. “Unfortunately, you didn’t let them heal properly. You’re going to have to practice moving them through their ranges of motion using your fingers. At least once a day, until it stops being painful to do so. If you don’t, they’re going to keep swelling.”
Rita groaned. She hated these things, and now she was going to have to play with them on a daily basis. Yay.
“Now lift up your shirt, I want to see the other wound you didn’t bother telling me about in your medical checkup,” he continued.
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“It’s not a wound!” Rita protested, sucking her teeth back in. “It’s basically healed over already!”
Nevertheless, she obediently lifted her shirt to just below her chest to reveal the wide, red, scabbed flesh across her stomach. Though wide, it hadn’t been excessively deep, thank goodness, and she’d already spent some time in the bath picking at the edges of the scab. It was already a lot smaller than it had been back in that ruined coffeshop when she’d first seen it.
“What was that from?” Gora rumbled from where she was leaning against the wall. She’d come down with Rita, although irritatingly, just like Justine, she hadn’t appeared to be the slightest bit tired after climbing that many stairs.
“The window, after Alice leapt off the building,” Rita explained, wincing as the doctor poked and prodded the wound. “When you cut my thread, all of my weight landed on the window frame. Apparently it had still had a few shards of glass in it.”
Gora made a face. “Ouch, sorry about that.”
Rita shrugged. “It is what it is. Don’t worry about it.” She’d seen how dangerous the things in the Nightmare could be. Some of them looked even more human than she did. It didn’t feel right to blame Gora for what had happened. It had turned out fine in the end, anyway, right?
“Hmm. Looks decent, no sign of infection. You have some kind of accelerated healing, I think, this wound looks weeks old at least,” the doctor commented, straightening up and letting her fix her shirt.
So Alice had been right. It had been healing faster, though most of the healing had occurred before she’d entered the Tree.
“Had, I think,” Rita replied. “It was linked to the Tree somehow. Since it died, it’s been pretty slow going. Also, I think it might have affected my appetite in some way. I only started getting hungry after as well.”
Fensworth shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe the Tree fed and healed you, somehow. Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’ve heard of out there. Let me see if the tests are ready.”
Sudden apprehension blossom in Rita’s gut. The first thing the doctor had done after she’d told him everything about what had happened to Alice was perform a few strange tests.
The first had been a drop of blood collected on from her finger onto a rune-covered page. Rita was familar with the concept of ‘blood tests’, so that one had made some modicum of sense. But for the next one, she had to place both hands on two imprints on a second extensively rune-enscribed paper and hold them there for ten seconds. That had been a bit odd.
And then he’d gone and waved two pieces of bone tied together by a long string around her while muttering something in a language even her tronic couldn’t or didn’t want to translate. In the end, it had seemed more like witchcraft than medical practice. Of course, since actual magic existed, she supposed those two weren’t mutually exclusive.
“Are they done yet?” Rita asked. Apparently, the tests needed to ‘sit for a while’ and ‘give the magic time to process’ after they were taken, which made about as much sense as anything else in this crazy world. But if these results could somehow help Alice, she didn’t mind waiting.
“Yes. I see. Interesting,” Doctor Fenworth muttered to himself. He had a stack of papers in his hands, and he scowled as he shuffled through them.
“What? Is Alice going to be okay?” Rita demanded.
“Uh… no…,” the doctor replied absentmindedly.
“What?” shrieked Rita.
“Hmm? Oh, sorry, I meant the results were inconclusive,” the doctor clarified. He held the paper with the handprints on out to her. Some of the runes had changed colour to red, blue and very rarely, teal. Several new runes, lines and arrows had also appeared on the page, scattered between the originals. “Look at this.”
“I… I can’t read that magical stuff,” Rita admitted. The tronic still clenched in her hand did work on written text, somehow translating it in her mind or something. She’d discovered that while checking out a number of the signs scattered around the fortress. Something about magical text screwed it up though. Or perhaps there simply was no translation for magic?
“Yes, neither can I. That’s the point.” The doctor tapped the parchment. “This is complete gibberish.”
“What are you saying, Doc?” Gora asked.
“I’m saying, the tests were a waste of time,” the doctor snapped. He sat down on the cot opposite Rita, next to Justine, and fixed her with a steady stare. “Look, those tests were a long shot. They weren’t designed for Nightmare Spawn. Your soul is probably…” The doctor waved his hands around as he struggled to find the right words for a few moments, before settling on a different approach. “Do you know what a ‘soul’ is?”
Rita opened her mouth to say ‘of course!’, then hesitated. Did she really? Earth Rita hadn’t been particularly religious, most of what she’d picked up had been via osmosis and pop-culture. Still, the tronic must have translated with that word for a reason…
“Maybe,” Rita compromised. “So pretend I don’t, please. Maybe you guys have a different idea of it than I do.”
“I see. Alright, fair point. You likely lack the cultural context, given your… unique origin,” he started. “Perhaps that makes things easier, since I don’t have to explain to you how wrong it is. The technical term for what the ordinary folk here call a ‘soul’ is ‘Asomatous Essence’.”
“Essence?” Rita interrupted. “Like the stuff that Ava gave me? The glowing blue stuff? That powers my tronic?”
Doctor Fensworth nodded. “Yes. And was used to heat your bath. They are all just different kinds of essence.”
Huh. So a person’s… soul, was just another type of magic then?
“Every essence is different, of course,” the doctor went on, “but one particular property of Asomatous Essence relevant to this discussion is that it is imperceptible. Not just invisible, but completely undetectable and impossible to manipulate by any direct means known to sapient-kind. At least, as far as I am aware. It’s possible some archmage has cracked it in secret, but at least as far as common knowledge goes.”
“Then how do you know even know it exists?” Rita asked.
The doctor held up two fingers. “Two reasons. One, while we cannot measure the essence directly, we can measure its indirect effects. Such as with this stuff.” He held up the rune-covered papers again. “They measure all sorts of metaphysical aspects of your mind and body and from that we can deduce the condition of your soul. Mostly.”
That was very interesting. It actually reminded of a documentary she’d seen on the history of medicine. A lot of modern issues were tested for not by testing them directly, but by checking secondary effects. To test for diabetes, you measured blood sugar levels. To test for diseases, you checked for antibodies. Perhaps this was something similar?
“The second reason, is demons. Apparently, they can detect and manipulate it. Quite easily, too. The result is that in Grailmane, there’s an entire banking industry tailored specifically for Asomatous Essence.”
“But Gora said that souls grow back?” Rita asked. “If souls are just magic, how does magic… grow?”
“I technically said they recover,” Gora interjected. “Don’t ask me how. I just calls it like I sees it.”
“Correct,” Doctor Fensworth nodded. “The essence itself doesn’t grow. Rather, it seems to be naturally secreted by all sapient creatures via some process that nobody’s really figured out. Tests have confirmed this. It’s one of the things that’s shared by all sapient beings. Which, I’m sorry to say, is the problem with your tests.”
“Mine? Are you saying… I’m not sapient?” Rita asked, surprised.
“Of course not,” the doctor scoffed. “I’m saying you’re not a being. At least not in the normal sense. You’re a Nightmare Spawn, and spawn work on their own rules. Yes, I’m pretty sure you have a soul, that much I could tell from your tests. But does it look, work and function like ours? Probably not. For all I know, you are some kind of construct with a soul that’s been artificially implanted and you are incapable of producing your own. If that is the case, Alice will not heal, no matter how long you wait.”
“Wait, wait, wait, go back. What does this have to do with Alice and her healing?” Rita asked.
“Oh, I didn’t already say?” the doctor asked quizzically, glancing over to Justine.
“Nope!” she volunteered with a wide grin. That girl could grin through a funeral.
“Right,” he replied, sheepishly scratching her stubble beard. “Well, it’s my professional opinion, based on what you’ve described and the fact that I could find nothing physically wrong with you, as well as the little bit we know of the nature of the inside of the Nightmare Tree, that what happened to Alice was some kind of soul damage.”
“Soul damage?” Rita exclaimed, horrified.
“Is there an echo in here?” the doctor said in a mildly irritated voice. “Yes. That’s what I said. Soul damage. Of course this is all based on the assumption that she has a soul separate from yours, and you’re some kind of… two souls shoved into a single body kind of deal, which is pure speculation from my side. Another alternative is that the split is purely mental in nature. In that case… well, basically, you’re insane and all of Alice’s injuries only exist in your head.”
She definitely wasn’t insane. Wait, if she was, would she even know? Probably not. But the Tree wouldn’t have attacked Alice like that if she could just… think it all away, would it? Or rather, if she was crazy and Alice was just a figment of her shattered mind, why would she have her own body inside the Tree?
“The third alternative,” he went on, “is that it’s neither of those and you’re something else entirely that I have no way to even start understanding. I’m afraid everything is speculative at this point.” He shrugged.
Based on her experiences, the first option did seem the most likely. Split personalities usually didn’t work like her and Alice, and if it was the ‘none of the above’ option, then she was screwed anyway. So for now, she was going to assume she and Alice had two souls and Alice had gotten hers hurt, somehow. That way, she at least had a hope of fixing it.
“Okay,” she said, “so let’s pretend for a moment that Alice has some kind of soul injury. What then? How long will she take to recover?”
“Like I said, that all depends on how your body produces Asomatous Essence, if at all,” he replied.
Shit. But wait, if her ‘soul’ came from Earth Rita, didn’t that mean that it was human? It was worth a guess. Not like she had a dearth of other ideas.
“And if I was human? If Alice was human? What would you have said then?” she tried again. Unless a ‘human’ in this world was different to humans back on Earth in some way.
“If Alice was human, based on your descriptions of her condition, then I’d say odds are good that she will take years to recover, if ever.”
Rita stared at the doctor in silent horror, hands clasped to her mouth.
“Allow me to explain. Us humans don’t need the entire soul to function. Like most races, we’re pretty hardy,” the doctor went on. “If you rip out enough to knock us into a kind of catatonic state, like what happened with Ava, we bounce back relatively quickly. The soul doesn’t heal that fast, but as long as a person still has enough Asomatous Essence left, what’s left sort of redistributes itself. It can take months for the soul to fully recover, but after a few days you can barely tell that they’re missing a part, just from their behavior.”
“We call that being ‘soul-ripped’!” Justine helpfully interjected. “And we don’t let such people go into the Tree, because then if they get ripped again, they might end up a vegetable!”
“Correct,” the doctor continued. “If the remaining Asomatous Essence drops too low, there isn’t enough to redistribute properly, they stay in that state and their essence recovery drops to almost nothing. If that happens… well, there usually isn’t much you can do for them except to give them a painless end.”
Redistribute? Rita imagined Alice’s ‘soul body’-thing sort of flowing to cover the gaps and reattach the severed pieces. Why hadn’t it? If it was her soul that she was looking at in her mindspace, why hadn’t it started filling in the gaps? Why were they still as open and raw as when the Tree had first ripped into her?
“How long does the redistribution thing take to start?” Rita asked.
“Pretty much immediately. Look at Ava, she got soul-ripped and she’s already up and about,” the doctor replied. “That’s why I said, if Alice was human, I don’t think she is going to recover, otherwise she would have done so already.”
No! She refused to accept this. Alice was alive. Rita was certain of this. And she was going to get better, even if Rita had to drag her kicking and screaming back to consciousness!
“Doctor, that doesn’t seem right,” Rita said, frowning. “Alice was awake right after we came out of the Tree. She was in a lot of pain, but she was awake. That was nothing like how Ava was.”
The doctor shrugged. “Like I said, if Alice was human. But she’s not and neither are you. All we have is speculation. If you want to get a more detailed look at what’s going on with her and your souls, the only way to get that is to talk to a demon.”
A demon? Rita turned to give Gora a questioning look.
“I’m a cambion, not a demon, Rita” Gora sighed, rolling her eyes. “A half-demon. We don’t have any fancy soul-tricks.”
“But we can ask your father!” Rita replied with hopeful excitement in her voice. “He seemed nice enough…”
“No!” Gora suddenly roared, interrupting Rita and startling everyone in room. “No,” she continued in a quieter voice, “not my father. Absolutely not.”
“Okay, sheesh, it was just an idea,” Rita said, dejected. “But where else am I going to find a demon, then?”
Justine and Gora gave each other a strange look.
“Grailmane!” Justine said. “You know it’s known as the City of Demons, right?”
No. No she had not. That would have been a useful tidbit of information to have shared earlier. It did, however, raise a ton more questions. What were demons, then? How many were there? Were they dangerous? Would they help her?
Unfortunately, before she got a chance to ask any of those questions, they were interrupted by the sound of running feet and excited voices from the corridor. Gora walked over and stuck her head out the door.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Rita heard her shout.
“The mist is coming back!” one of the delvers from the outside called back as they ran past. “You can see it from the windows!"
The mist? No, no, no…
“What mist? You mean…” Gora asked.
“Yeah! The Tree! It’s not dead!” the delver called back before disappearing around the next corner.
Rita scrambled off the bench. She had to get out. To get somewhere safe. If the tree came back…
A hand grabbed her arm. “Rita? What’s going on?” Justine asked. For once, she wasn’t smiling.
“Please, I can’t stay here! If the tree’s back…” Rita babbled.
“Relax, Duncan’s not going to blame you for this,” Gora said. “You believed you’d killed it. His little thingy proved it.”
Rita shook her head and tugged her arm out of Justine’s grasp. “And what happens if it makes me go crazy again, huh? If I suddenly start attacking you!?”
“It won’t. You’re too far away. Previous Spawn calmed down if we got them this far,” Gora stated.
That’s right, she’d mentioned that she’d been a part of groups that had brought Spawn out before. But the Tree hadn’t cared about those. It cared about Rita. It had cared enough to lure her in all the way to its core. It had cared enough to butcher Alice just to bring her back to the fold.
She was not taking a chance on what the alien-god-plant-thing could or couldn’t do when it felt like it. “And if I’m not?”
“Even then, I don’t think you’re much of a danger, Rita,” Gora chuckled. “I’ve seen you try to use that spear of yours. I suspect we’ll be fine.”
“I’m not worried about you, you dummy! I’m worried about me!” Rita snapped. “If I go crazy, one of you delvers are going to put me down like a rabid dog and stick my head on a wall somewhere as a trophy!”
“Nah, we’ll just toss you in the cells!” Justine giggled, patting her shoulder.
“That’s not funny! Wait, you have cells? Like prison cells?” Rita asked, a sudden idea forming in her head.
“Yes, like prison cells,” Gora replied with a roll of her eyes. “What other kind of cells are there?”
“Doesn’t matter! I want you to put me in them! Right now! Hurry!”
Some time later, Rita awoke with a start.
For a few moments, she didn’t know where she was. She took in the grey, stone walls and simple wooden furniture. Faint daylight was slipping through the gaps around the simple woven drape in front of the only window. It flapped gently in the breeze, casting the room in unsteady gloom.
As the last of her sleeping fugue faded and memory returned, she remembered where she was. With a smile, she collapsed back onto the simple bed underneath her.
They hadn’t taken her to the cells in the end. Why bother, when they had plenty of spare rooms with bars on the windows and doors that could lock from the outside? An entire fourth floor of them, it turned out.
She wasn’t really a prisoner. She was pretty sure Justine was somewhere outside within shouting range, and if she asked, she was almost certain they would open up for her.
Rita smiled happily. After days of terror and sleeplessness, she was finally somewhere where she could relax. Where nothing was trying to kill her. Where she could get some actual sleep on a real bed, even though her anatomy had a bit of trouble fitting.
She was safe.
Right?