Glorious fire burns inside me, warming my soul as I pull metal through to my ocean, lining the passageway that links my being together. Holy shit, metal is so good! This is so amazing! Two years of massaging that tunnel open, overshadowed in an instant from a simple (if rather expensive) snack. This is incredible! It's like eating my first soul all over again, but without any of that nasty guilt attached. Also, my soul has teeth now, so that's pretty fucking cool.

"W-what is that?" Jelisa whispers as I drop another chunk of metal down through my soul. "What are you doing?"

Partly to be coy but mostly because I'm curious, I ask her:

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"I… I don't know. When you eat that… I can't believe you're eating metal, but when you do and I stare at your soul it—it almost looks like, for an instant, you're bigger than the room. Like I'm staring at something far larger and deeper than could be possible."

"Oh, cool," I say, grinning as I pop another bite-sized chunk down my throat. "You can actually see me for a moment."

"What are you?" she asks breathlessly.

"Come on, isn't it obvious by now?" I ask her. "If your Mistwatcher counts as a god, then that obviously makes me a goddess."

I almost chuckle at the torrent of conflicting emotions that gives her, but unfortunately Ars chooses this moment to walk up and ruin my fun.

"That's not inaccurate," he butts in, stepping back into the cell with us. "Though obviously, there is a somewhat significant difference in scale."

"Hey, come on," I snap at him. "She's going to be less likely to believe it if you back me up on it. I think you might be the only person I have ever felt Jelisaveta hate."

"What!" Ars scowls. "Why, Inquisitor, we haven't even had a proper conversation! Have the values of the Templars truly fallen so far?"

Her whole body shaking, Jelisa still stares firmly right at the cognimancer and answers.

"You called me a pet, and you were about to soulrape me before Vita stopped you!"

He frowns, but after a brief delay nods his head in acknowledgment.

"I loathe to phrase it that way, but… fair point, well made. Anyway, Vita, you realize we could have used all that metal, yes?"

"I am using it," I protest. "Eating it counts as using it. And I'll have you know it's delicious."

"Really?" he hums curiously. "Fascinating. Oh, I see your teeth have grown in! That's wonderful! I theorized that such a thing may occur at some point in your development. Was eating this metal the triggering event?"

He leans down, getting very uncomfortably close. I snarl at him and resist the urge to lash out with a fist, but I fail to do the same with a tentacle. To my surprise, however, the tentacle actually makes contact with his face and pushes him away!

"Woah!" I say excitedly, metal temporarily forgotten. "I can touch you!"

I immediately start doing exactly that with numerous additional tentacles, poking and prodding him all over, which he primly pretends to ignore.

"Indeed, believe it or not anima tangibility is a rather useful skill for animanc—mrph."

I cut off his words by squishing his cheeks together, making his lips puff out like a fish. I giggle a little, smooshing his face around until he finally gives in and steps away.

"Personal space, Arsy-warsy," I chide.

I get the distinct impression that were I not his estranged sort-of-child I might have just earned myself a soul flaying, but it's not often I'm on the beneficial side of favoritism so I'd best take advantage of it. Besides, watching Jelisaveta and my Revenants react with mind-numbing horror is just too funny to stop.

"Quite. Well, I'm sure you would be startled to learn I am not the slightest bit interested in remaining in this cell, and would like to request that we make our way to the exit. So if you could snack as you go…?"

"That's not startling at all," I protest, "but yeah, sure. We've got a lot to do and a lot of stairs to climb."

I gather up the rest of the metal for on-the-go snacking, ordering my Revenants to walk ahead of us and the other half to walk behind as we finally enter the stairwell. It's a spiral column that rises far, far above us, and Ars' mood drops considerably as he cranes his neck to stare upwards at it all.

"Oh. Hrm. That... really is a lot of stairs," Ars sighs to himself.

"Well, you won't have to walk them all at once," I answer, rolling one of my eyes. "We have a few stops to make on the way."

"Should we not escape as soon as possible…?" he protests.

"What," I smirk up at him, "and leave all those witnesses around willy-nilly?"

He snorts with amusement.

"Touché."

All the Templars on the floor directly above us have already descended to guard Ars, and are therefore my Revenants, so I just order one of them to free all the prisoners on that floor and guide them to us. Same with the floor after that. From there on it's just one Templar a floor for a while, which is easy pickings. I turn most of them into snacks, handing out key rings to my slaves to go gather a menagerie of prisoners. The process takes a long time, as there are a lot more prisoners on every floor other than the bottom, so I don't actually see any as we continue making our way upstairs.

By the fourth floor, Ars is huffing and puffing like he just ran from one edge of the island to the other. I guess I shouldn't really blame him if he's been unable to exercise for a decade and a half, but it's still annoying.

"I do not feel..." Ars wheezes, "cut out for... these exertions..."

Rather than answer him, I carefully reach over and wrap tendrils around his body, lifting him up over my head with them as he flails around a bit in surprise.

"G-goodness!" he yelps. "This is… somewhat undignified."

I suppress a grin, mentally tallying myself a new record in the 'how flabbergasted I can make Jelisa' game. A girl has to develop a few hobbies in prison, after all, or she goes crazy.

"You were the one bothering me to hurry things along," I remind him, popping my last chunk of metal down my throat. I look forward to the fact that I'm about to get a lot more when those prisoners catch up with us and I steal their collars.

"You should really be more respectful to your elders," Ars complains, letting himself hang in the air like the creepy doll he kind of is.

"I respect people if they deserve respect," I grunt back. "It would go a long way, in my case, if you quit being so cryptic and started explaining what you know about me."

"Now now, don't knock being cryptic until you try it out for a while," he disagrees. "An amazingly large number of people think you're smarter than they are exclusively because they don't know what you're talking about. It's hilarious!"

"Well I just think it's annoying. Come on, spill."

"Bah. I'm not sure what there is to say. Your intuition has already figured out the most important piece, hmm? Use that brain of yours."

I scowl, but answer anyway.

"Well, you said I was right when I claimed to be a goddess. So I'm probably like… directly descended from the Mistwatcher somehow?"

He laughs.

"No, no no no. On the contrary, Vita... you and you alone are the only person that isn't descended from the Mistwatcher."

I stop walking halfway up a flight of stairs.

"...What?"

"Your pet here, your enslaved souls, everyone else you see… before birth, the Mistwatcher gave them all fragments of its soul, fragments which are now inseparably part of who they are," Ars explains, slowly becoming more and more engaged as he speaks. "They were born for the Mistwatcher and they will die for the Mistwatcher, but you, Vita, are something beyond that. I crafted your soul myself, at first as a tracing project to help myself understand the shape of God's true being, copying the essence of nature's greatest animancer. But unknowingly, what I made was an empty vessel. One that you, somehow, found and filled. I gave you your human body—mostly to see what would happen—but you existed far before me. You are no child of the Mistwatcher. You are, I suspect, something more akin to its sibling."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I digest that while I digest the last of my metal, not really sure what to do with that information. Ars doesn't feel like he's lying... but I'm not totally sure that means I can trust him. Ultimately, I suppose, my origins only matter insofar as they inform me about what I can do now. Jelisa, similarly, chews on that information with suspicion but not with outright rejection... which is surprising, as even most of my Templar Revenants immediately dismiss Ars' words as malicious nonsense.

"What are you thinking, Jelisa?" I ask curiously.

She chews on her lip a bit, picking out tiny shards of chitin from her face that ended up stabbing her when I smashed her helmet.

"…How did you cast with the collar on?" she asks back.

On one hand, giving her information might not be smart, but on the other hand she's curious for reasons beyond the security concerns so I decide to indulge her.

"I don't use the Mistwatcher's mana," I explain. "I have my own internal pool of it that I draw out from somewhere else. It's mana but it's a different kind of mana, I guess, so standard detection spells don't recognize it."

Again, she's quiet for a bit as she thinks, the gears in her head turning just a bit further towards blasphemy.

"I see," she eventually says.

"You're not thinking of starting a cult about me, are you?" I joke.

"Of course not," she answers firmly. "You're a murderer and a mindraper."

The answer startles me, along with the hurtful spike of raw disgust that accompanies it. I find myself unable to form a response. We continue ascending the stairs, en route to the first and most important stop on our journey, as I chew on her words. I feel the need to answer before we get to our destination.

"I didn't choose to be what I am," I tell her. "I can only play the hand I'm given. If my talent—or whatever I have—wasn't fucked up I wouldn't have to use fucked up methods to escape your torture prison. I wouldn't even be in here in the first place!"

"Michael screamed in protest as you made him try to murder his friends," Jelisa responds, her eyes distant. "You tortured them."

"They tortured me first!"

"So what!?" she shouts, surprising me again. "You didn't have to do it back! I just... I thought you were better than that."

My tendrils curl in irritation, causing Ars to wriggle as I squeeze him a bit harder on accident. If she was the one that had been locked up and tortured for two years, I bet she wouldn't be spouting this shit.

"I don't have the luxury of being nice all the time, Jelisa," I growl. "The world doesn't work like that."

"It's not about 'how the world works,'" she says quietly. "It's about integrity. What's the point of… of anything if you're not at least better than the people you hate?"

"Superiority is relative, my dears," Ars butts in before I can respond, stumbling a bit as I set him down on the floor we finally just reached.

"Well, I want no part of whatever you use to judge it, then," Jelisa snaps back, though the animancer's responding frown causes her to flinch in terror.

I don't know how to continue that conversation, or if I even should, but it doesn't matter anymore. We made it. I open the door to the floor of this awful, terrible prison where my mother is currently rushing around, looking for me.

She's here. After two fucking years, she's here, messing with a lock at the other end of the hallway. She takes one look at the mass of Templar armor walking into the hall and drops what she's doing, drawing her knives bursting towards us. I grab my helmet and throw it off, grinning like a fool.

"Mom!" I greet her, arms outstretched for a hug.

I feel the instinct of recognition, and though she has no time to sheathe her weapons, she has plenty of time to outstretch her arms in return and tackle into me, wrapping me up in a whole-body hug as I stagger backwards from the impact.

Her soul is the same beautifully warm gold as always, but I'm not sure I'd have been able to tell it was her if I was limited to normal senses. No hint of her normally-messy red hair is visible underneath a black balaclava, which covers her nose and mouth to only leave her eyes visible. I'm slightly taller than I used to be, and it startles me, the feel of the hug different from both that and the surprisingly alien-feeling muscles rippling under her arms.

"Vita!" she greets me, her voice and her soul full of worry and joy and love. "You're okay! Oh, fuck, you're okay! Did Sky get you out?"

"Nah, I got myself out. He's a pretty great distraction, though."

The far-away sound of an explosion punctuates my point.

"Ha! You're still my little ruffian!" Lyn says, her eyes starting to get wet. "I'm so glad you're safe. Let's get you out of here, yeah?"

"That sounds awesome," I agree. "But, uh... can I ask... did you and Sky have any, you know, financial backing?"

It's not like I expected Penelope to break me out herself—she probably has some scheme or another that makes it better for her to send other people to do it—but I can't help but be a little bothered by her conspicuous absence. Lyn just ruffles my hair, though, flashing me one of her usual grins.

"Honey, she never stopped looking for you for a second. Sorry it took us this long to get here."

I grin back. Now I feel bad for doubting her.

"It's okay, mom," I tell her. "You're here now."

"I'm here now!" she agrees. "But well, look at you! You must have grown two more inches! ...And also an, uh, eyeball."

"Yeah, I grow eyeballs now."

"Neat! So who are your friends here? Are they all dead, or...?"

"No, just the ones with helmets. This is Inquisitor Jelisaveta, she... didn't torture me, and I thought that was nice of her. And this is—"

"First Lord and Former High Inquisitor Ars Rainier, madam," Ars says, bowing lightly and holding out a fingerless hand to shake. "Charmed, I'm sure."

Lyn does not accept the hand, instead staring at it wide-eyed like it's an entire island about to fall on top of her head.

"Oh!" She answers, with significantly more volume than necessary. "Okay!"

"This is your one and only warning, Ars," I tell him frankly. "If you so much as look at my mom in a way I don't like, I will kill you."

"I thought you said you were an orphan," he answers, idly ignoring my death threat as he retracts his hand.

"I mean yeah, but I got adopted a few years ago, kinda," I say. "Honestly, I just like calling her mom because it makes her feel old."

"Vita, can we have like a private mother-daughter talk for a second?" Lyn squeaks.

I shrug and quickly cast a silence spell around us.

"What's up?" I ask her.

"Okay honey, the brain parasites were one thing, but I definitely draw the line at bringing Ars fucking Rainier home. I get that I'm a pretty hands-off mom but, you know, I gotta put my foot down somewhere and it is absolutely at some point before, uh, whatever this is."

"I mean, I agree," I answer, shrugging. "But I just learned he might actually be my air-quotes 'real dad' in at least some weird wibbly way, and more importantly I need his help to kill a couple more High Templars. We can ditch him after that."

"All right, well on that note, our escape plan is Capita. Sky freed her and got her halves back together, but she's in bad shape. We should regroup with them as fast as possible and get out of here."

"I was sort of hoping to kill the rest of the Templars before we go," I complain.

Lyn seems surprised at that. I don't know why.

"I didn't exactly have a fun time here, mom," I clarify.

"...Right, um. Well, I don't think we have time for that. So let's get going, all right?"

I nod and dismiss the silence spell.

"Okay, our ticket out of here is eight floors up, and she's under attack," I announce. "Let's move."

"Watcher's eyes, more stairs," Ars sighs.

I smirk and start leading the way. Ars declines getting another tentacle ride, so he huffs and puffs laboriously all the way up to the floor where a furious battle currently rages.

"Revenants, keep Jelisa away from the fight and don't let her interfere," I order, booting down the door.

Before us is quite the chaotic battle site. In the middle of the hallway, facing away from us, an Inquisitor Captain and a powerful Templar that I'm surprised to find doesn't have High Templar armor stand among the perforated corpses of dozens of other Templars as Sky, on the far end of the hall, tears open more of the floor, walls, and ceiling to blast it towards them. The Inquisitor Captain, I immediately note, is actually a splice: a cylindrical column of thrumming, rock-hard soul impales an otherwise-spherical, apparently-talentless base soul. He and Sky are locked in a dangerous, long-range dance with each other where Sky constantly pesters him with stones which are blocked with invisible forces that seem to be projected from the captain's hands. Meanwhile, the other powerful soul defends by freezing giant blocks of air solid, blocking the larger attacks with ease, though the structures rapidly sublimate after being created. Still, the whole hallway is terribly frigid, and doubtlessly as the ambient temperature drops, the Templar's talent will become easier and easier to use.

Behind Sky, both Capita bodies rest, one bloody and kneeling on the floor where her other half hugs her around the shoulders. She looks up when I kick down the door, at first hope and joy filling her face before she spots Ars... wherein all of it immediately vanishes, instantly replaced with nothing but terror. Before I can so much as get a word out, she grabs Sky and both of them vanish.

Capita, our ticket out, is no longer in my sensory range, and the two super-powerful souls both turn to face us instead.

"Did Capita just run away from me?" Ars grumbles indignantly. "What an ungrateful little brat."

"...I'm significantly more worried about the two Templars in front of us," I tell him. I never intended to teleport out anyway. "I don't really want to get close to either of those talents. Any ideas?"

"Ars!" the Inquisitor Captain roars. "Dammit! You are not leaving! You are never leaving!"

Ars scowls and I step in front of him as streams of mana try to crush and restrain us. I let my own burst forth from my body, surprised at the ease with which it flows, and obliterate the spell.

"Manus," Ars greets him back, seemingly unperturbed. "I do hope we can work together again soon. I suppose I will have to deal with this situation. Miss Lyn, would you mind lending me your knife?"

Lyn sends a questioning glance my way, and I shrug, busy focusing on nullifying Manus' kineticism talent. She flips her knife around and catches it by the blade, holding it out to Ars hilt-first.

"Perfect, thank you," he says, clamping it between two fingerless palms. "This is where I depart, then. Do come visit me when you get out, won't you Vita?"

"Huh?" I say, confused. Then my mind catches up with the words. "Wait, help me kill these guys!"

"Mmm, no thank you. I've little reason to stay. Our teleporter is gone, after all, and there's certainly no way I'm going to walk up the rest of those stairs."

Then, giving me a polite nod goodbye, he swings the blade upwards and stabs himself through the eye. His body collapses immediately, but somehow he's not dead. He doesn't feel dead! He rises from his body, wretched mockery of a soul fully conscious despite being unanchored to flesh.

Then it shoots upwards like an arrow, unaffected by pedestrian things like gravity and mass as he leaves Lyn and I to face the Templars alone.