Greta sits at her small kitchen table, in her just big enough cottage and waits. A pie in the oven makes the place smell alive. Fresh cut flowers on the table provide a colorful splash to match her mood. The forest sounds almost lull her to sleep and she starts daydreaming of spending the rest of her life like this.
A knock on her door pulls her back to the present, Malo must be here already. She picks up her cane and uses it to help her stand. She quickly makes her way to the front door and throws it open.
It’s not Malo; it’s Him.
Having known it would happen eventually, she thought she was mentally prepared for this moment. She wasn’t. All her meditating, and herbal teas, and tinctures were only holding back her fears, they did not conquer them.
Terrified, she invites him in.
He speaks, “That’s it, no hug?”
Greta doesn’t speak, she goes to the oven and pulls out the pie and sets it on the counter. Sullenly she muses that at least she used up the last of the apples she harvested this month.
He throws the letter he had been holding onto the table and takes a seat.
“How is it you all know on sight that it’s me?”
Greta takes that statement as a small victory and decides she has very little to lose at this point and talks, “You used one of those on me for what? two full years plus several months? I can almost smell it.”
He responds, thinking he finally has a way in, “You know it was never me piloting you, right?”
“Of course not, you handed me off to a team of perverts. So, they could experience my pain firsthand. But now that can never happen again.
“I have safeguards in place. Try and put that in me, I will die. If you don’t break the entanglement quick enough you will too.”
He gloats, “I like this idea. You and I, testing each other to see if you can kill me before you die.
“I wish I could convince myself you have a chance to win, it would be fun that way. But you can’t so I won’t enjoy it.”
Greta decides to have some pie while He mistakenly thinks he’s toying with her.
“You know I can just take what you have at any time, right?”
Now she knows she isn’t as helpless against him as she once was. He would not be using his words if he was as in control as he asserts.
She serves herself a large slice of pie and sits at the table across from the man that groomed, recruited, corrupted, and served her the sacraments of the Free’er; before she betrayed him.
Now she will toy with him, “How angry is the Free’er about the current state of the world? He must be beside himself with fear.”
Stifling a laugh, “He fears nothing, he is eternal.”
“Exactly, he’s eternal and he’s trying to end that problem by ending the world. A world that is on the verge of rebirth. The last ten thousand years of scheming and plotting all wasted because his disciples took their eyes off the game to play act as gods.”
His nostrils flare at her causal use of that word.
“That’s right, I know many of the words he has hidden from us through omission in our knowledge inheritance. All to keep us from hoping and asking questions that can’t be answered. I learned that one right after you recruited me. I bet you didn’t know that.
“You left me in your library, where I flipped through dozens of books in the few minutes I was alone. Admittedly, I never realized the significance of those words until Malo came along.”
Looking perturbed, “Yes, the boy is a problem but I have him contained for the time being.”
Greta looks him dead in the eyes, “No you don’t.”
Looking less happy, “He wasn’t the first, was he? His mother was just as special, or so my sources tell me. Was it her that recruited you to betray me? She must have been powerful to win your loyalty so quickly and surely.”
Now Greta feels like laughing but doesn’t want to get her hopes up that she may live through this encounter.
Playfully with a large bite of apple pie left unswallowed, “Oh, she was far more powerful than you ever were.” Swallows then finishes, “She stripped my crumbling-spirit bare and remade me that day.”
“You speak nonsense. Nobody but the Free’er and the nameless can remake a spirit.”
“Now who is speaking nonsense? Are you trying to trick me into revealing something? Have you seen Malo’s spirit?”
Greta isn’t sure if she can believe the answer, “No, I can’t pilot a vessel to act against itself without breaking the entanglement. Delving is no different than an act of violence except in scale. A spirit can’t differentiate therefore responds the same.”
Greta can’t hold it any longer and laughs at him.
She laughs so heartily that she is reminded of Luela, Malo’s mother from all those years ago and wishes Malo were here to hear it.
“Stop laughing!”
His powerless demands only fuel her merriment further.
Like all good things it had to end eventually, he simply glared at Greta until she laughed herself out.
“Oh my, that was such a needed outlet, thank you for being so arrogant and condescending. What were we discussing?”
“Malo’s spirit and his powerful mother.”
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“Yes, the near dead pregnant woman I stumbled upon sixteen years ago. She overwhelmed me during the throws of childbirth.”
“I detect no instability with your mind, your every action tells me you are in complete control of your body and thoughts. She couldn’t have manipulated you with the gift or parlor tricks. Besides I trained you to recognize and resist such things. Did she buy your loyalty with a promise of power? Immortality? Revenge?”
Greta takes the last bite of her pie slice and slowly chews it before answering with a question of her own while waving her fork at him, “That’s the best you can come up with, parlor tricks and promises of power? Do you think I was in any state to negotiate. I came here hungry and scared, I wanted power all right but I came here to gain it by feasting as you taught me.
“Now, be a dear and fetch me the rest of that pie.”
Before he can respond, the vessel complies by leaning over and reaching the pie with his long gangly arms.
Greta watches as he stares at the quarter eaten pie he just fetched on command, refactoring how much leverage he has before continuing.
“Here’s your damned pie,” and tosses it none to gently in the center of the small table.”
Still with nothing to lose and maybe a chance to survive the day, “Which do you think it is, his runt brain or spirit that makes the pilot respond so poorly?”
Greta watches him sit, staring blankly as he decides his next course of action.
“I have Malo sleeping and unaware of time passing. I can wake him whenever I want and make him watch as I choke you to death with his own hands.”
“Are you willing to risk breaking the entanglement? When I warned you that you can’t pilot me, I should have also explained that I can execute the same final measure under any circumstance.”
Angrily He responds, “You teased me, saying you were remade, be a dear and show me; I did get you your pie after all.”
Greta doesn’t bother with a plate and digs her fork into the pie now in front of her.
Fork still in her mouth she holds up a finger, rudely saying wait. Greta savors a last mouthful of apple filling before swallowing and opening herself up to show her most intimate and precious possession to the monster at the table.
He looks at her spirit, scans and probes it, he allows himself to get lost inside the perfectly framed depths. He notes two things, his spirit is stronger, yet her spirit is better than his in every measurable way.
Quietly asking, “Where did that come from?”
Appearing nervous, Greta quips, “I already told you, Luella remade me that day.”
Holding back anger at her lies, “How? Why? You said she didn’t offer you power yet it appears you received an incredible payment. What did she ask of you in return? Loyalty, information, what did this remade spirit cost you?”
Greta appears resolved, “If I tell you, you won’t believe me and I’ve eaten all the pie I can in one lifetime, and I am curious if I can take you with me.”
He knew it would come to this and was disappointed at the sudden turn; of all his recruits she was always the most competent. He had thought she was dead once and missed her. Finding her alive was an unexpected treat, after living for 7,000 years he does not get surprised often and feels sad it will end so soon.
“Ok, Greta. Let us see what you can do.”
He watches as Greta stands up using a cane for assistance and clears the table. She dumps the remaining pie in a bin and proceeds to wash the few dirty dishes in the sink. Absently he leaks this moment into the vessel’s memory, along with her opening the door to let him in, fetching the pie, and that episode of laughter.
He ruefully chastises himself for wishing this would continue. He reflects on the realization that he’s never watched someone wash a dish before. He’s seen it done, but never watched how. It looks tedious, but somehow watching her clean is relaxing.
“Just a second, I need to toss this into my compost heap.”
He watches as Greta, his top prospect and betrayer, take out the trash and adds the memory to the vessel’s.
She comes back in, looking around for any other chores she must attend. He tenses as she looks excited for a moment.
Anticipating something interesting he watches as she returns to the oven and brushes the hot ash and burning coals out the firebox into her trash bin and pours water on the hot coals filling the kitchen with steam and ash.
She looks unhappily at all the soot now covering her counters and comes to a decision.
“I could clean forever, but at this point I’m just delaying the inevitable. Thank you for your patience. Are you ready to be disappointed?”
“You mean more than I already am? By all means continue.”
“Malo, come give Aunti Ge’get one last hug.”
He sits back as the vessel stands and throws his arms around Greta.
The three stand there embracing, he feels uncomfortable, he’s an interloper that doesn’t belong in this moment, but it’s another memory for the vessel. He’s about to break away when the weight in his arms increases.
This is it, opening all his senses, he searches for the signs of an attack.
Greta slips from his arms and crumples listlessly to the floor; dead.
He stands there dumbstruck that his most promising recruit went out with such a whimper.
A deep burning sensation in his gut tells him he’s wrong, it isn’t over. A fire builds in the vessel until it fills his every cell. The tiny pilot on the vessel’s spine is being squeezed horribly, that same information is felt by his own body through the entanglement.
In that moment the entanglement degrades, he feels Malo’s spirit for the first time and is awed by its majesty. It almost reminds him of his first glimpse of a true spirit 7,000 years ago. This moment also reveals a truth he was blinded to. This spirit is sentient, and malevolent, as impossible as it sounds. Not only is it sentient but it has been eating away at his own spirit. Whatever Greta did the rate of consumption increased tenfold and destroyed the boy’s spirit and affect masks. He’s bared to the world and shining so bright that his true self is suddenly aware of the location of the boy.
Investing more spirit stabilizes the state of entanglement, giving the pilot enough strength to withstand the mounting pressure. Nauseated at the thought that he is being consumed, he rashly calculates how long he can afford to feed this connection. He has a month at best to figure out how to kill the vessel or be weakened to the point of losing his standing as strongest amongst the Freer’er disciples.
The vessel cooperates and reapplies spirit and affect masks. Feeling relief now that his true self can no longer sense the boy, he shakes off the disconcerting feeling of having been juxtaposed from two different continents.
He looks around at the state of the room, his favorite apprentice dead on the floor, a table and countertop covered in wet soot.
Something isn’t right about this; he wants to leave but feels like he’s missing some valuable clue. He picks up the corpse and looks at the floor beneath, nothing. Not knowing what to do he grabs her cane and carries the dead woman to her bed and lays her out flat and arranges her to seem comfortably asleep. He adds the memory to the vessel.
Was that what was wrong? No. Something else is bothering him. He goes back to the kitchen and looks at all the soot.
He concludes there’s something to the soot and proceeds to wipe it up using the same dish rag used by Greta to dry her favorite pie pan.
Finished he looks for a hamper and adds the dirty towel to the basket of clothes. Was that it? Did he find what was wrong?
Maybe it’s the hamper, should he wash its contents?
NO, this is NOT right.
Greta’s last words spoken to him, return to haunt him, “I could clean forever, but at this point I’m just delaying the inevitable.”
His vision clouds and it becomes hard to breath, the pressure is returning. He runs outside and starts to hyperventilate.
The inu he brought comes over and sits in front of him and looks at him as if waiting. He needs to pull his investiture back for a while and rebuild his strength. His time controlling this vessel will need to be kept to short intervals.
He gathered a lot of intelligence on this incursion, including that the story of loyal inu detecting their master is in distress, fetching help or delivering them to safety is another sad myth.
This one after six years of knowing the vessel is sitting there licking its chops while I fall to my knees unable to breathe.
His last thought before leaving was that dogs have always been overrated.