Wow. Galdra sure moves fast when she's angry.

After kicking the shit out of the army, I did my best to dramatically and casually stroll back to the forest, but before long the Templars finally deigned to deploy and sent Galdra flying through the air in my general direction. I had to actually start hoofing it pretty fast in order to get under tree cover before she reached me. Unfortunately, however, simply breaking line of sight doesn't seem to have deterred First Lady High Templar Galdra Karthala the Annihilator much at all.

"You little shit!" she roars from above me. "No one beats up my exes except me!"

I feel a spell tingle above my head and immediately reach tentacles up to send out a pulse of my mana, destroying as much of it as I can. I shouldn't have bothered; the vast majority of the treetops above me still burst into flames, blanketing the forest with oppressive heat. I'm getting flushed out, and making loud mana annihilations is only likely to reveal my position. I counteract this as best I can by immediately changing direction and crafting kynamancy spells in random locations far away from me to mimic the sound of my mana annihilation. Likewise, I throw my voice, projecting it in the opposite direction from where I'm going. Turns out I can still give orders this way.

"Bomber squad up!"

A swarm of undead birds shoot into the air, moving to circle above and around Galdra to keep her attention. She mostly ignores them, spraying the forest with a frankly absurd quantity of fireballs. The ground is wet and the trees tend to not burn well at all, but the sheer amount of heat being tossed around is enough for the fire to rage for as long as Galdra wills it. I dodge and weave as best I can, knowing that Norah's talent will certainly prevent the flames from damaging my clothes but will do very little against the threat of being cooked alive inside them. Galdra is blind-firing, which makes it pretty easy to dodge her attacks, but she's frustratingly good at throwing her attacks ahead of me, in the directions she knows I want to flee. She's forcing me to slow down in order to avoid getting hit, and it's only a matter of time before I'm out of cover and in her attack range.

Fine. My turn. I snap my fingers, and responding to a prior verbal command to do so the bird monsters under my command dive on her from above. She turns to obliterate them, but tries to make a single flame wall to destroy all the birds at once. Unfortunately for her, when she kills the first one it erupts into a burst of my mana, as planned. The others pass through the resulting break in the spell, and the High Templar's helmet is hammered by a half-dozen furious raptors. It doesn't shatter the chitin, but I bet it still hurts like a bitch.

Unsurprisingly, this isn't enough to make her stop, her fingers flashing at incredible speeds as dozens of mana concentrations pop up fucking everywhere. I grit my teeth and stick a tendril through every one in my range, popping them before her cast can finish, but as I'd feared this seems to direct her to my exact location. The surviving mana signatures manifest as balls of flame that converge on me from multiple angles. I leap around them as best I can, batting a few away with Norah but still ultimately taking burns to my arm and torso. If she stays at the range she's at and keeps using this trick, I'll be in trouble.

Thankfully, though, she moves to fly directly at me. I try to figure out why as I finish munching down half of Remus' sword, feeling the metal flow down through my mana channels and pull more of me into the world. Then I twitch in annoyance as said mana swarms the nascent eyeball on the side of my waist, feeling nerve passageways rapidly shoot up the side of my body and extend towards my brain as the useless orb of sight grows to completion. Damn it, body, now is not the time!

On the upside, Galdra's advance puts her in range for gnashing shard attacks, so I pull some out and start tossing them her way. She dodges much less effectively than Remus, and I nail her with two on the first volley. Nice! Her giant soul is a much bigger target, so that helps. Unfortunately, being giant means that it's going to take a lot longer for my shards to start causing appreciable damage.

Once again, I feel mana signatures flare up all around me, but this time it's all outside my tentacle range. Damnit, this woman learns too fast! Walls of frozen air solidify into existence in a wide circle around me, locking me in the middle. Above them, all the heat stolen from the air has condensed into a massive fireball hanging above my head, ready to drop and encompass the entire circle. Shit! This is insane! I could destroy the walls but it will take too much time. I'm an easy target if I try to jump over them or if I leap up to disrupt the spell. Do I send zombies after her as a distraction? How do I... hmm. Wait.

She's not dropping on me, and she doesn't intend to. What?

"Last chance to surrender, kid," Galdra growls at me, and I don't find the bluff even remotely convincing. She wants to kill me, I can tell that much. But she's not going to. She can't, as much as that idea pisses her off.

"You've been ordered to capture me alive," I realize, grinning at her.

"You think I'm not pissed enough to disobey orders?" she fires back, but I already felt my words hit home. She's been neutered. Galdra the Annihilator isn't allowed to annihilate. This is an opportunity.

"Wallbreakers, to me!" I order.

My heavier Risen move to tackle the walls of ice hemming me in. The brutal cold might harm them a bit, but it's not like they have to worry about frostbite. While they slam their bodies into the ice walls, I continue forming and tossing gnashing shards towards Galdra, watching with satisfaction as the giant ball of flame gets launched into the forest away from me rather than dropped on my head. It incinerates a number of my Dregs, but I suppose there's always more where those ones came from.

"Come on, Galdra, if I can kick Remus' ass when he's giving his all, I can fucking ruin you if you don't use your best tricks," I sneer at her. "Besides, don't you have Ars to worry about?"

My wallbreaker squad then smashes a hole through Galdra's ice wall, and I start moving towards them as they widen it. Galdra, however, sends a jet of flame down at them, and they get incinerated.

"...Did Ars escape?" she asks me bluntly.

"He did," I confirm, seeing no reason to hide it. "He killed a High Templar, then himself, and his soul flew off. I don't feel him anywhere near Skyhope, but he's somewhere. Unless your god ate him, I guess."

She casts another spell at me, and the shattered shards of ice around the opening my ashed wallbreakers made suddenly launch towards me. I cover my face and otherwise ignore them, letting Norah handle it. As I leap through the small gap in the wall, Galdra dives towards me, the tiny opening suddenly becoming the focal point for an absurdly powerful targeted spell.

I can only assume she dives closer because she's exclusively a learned mage, and for learned magic you have to balance the amount of power you put into a spell between range and strength. There's an important distinction, however, between spells that you cast on a specific person or at a specific point—such as the ice walls she made—and projectile spells, such as the wind blasts from Remus' former sword. A projectile spell creates a projectile next to the caster and then gives that projectile momentum, so all of the actual magic occurs at close range and the spell isn't subject to the power-vs-distance problem. On the downside, they have to actually be aimed, while non-projectile spells just happen wherever you want them to. Plus, most spells can't be projectiles at all. You can't create, say, the concept of holding someone in place with kineticism and then launch it at somebody. You have to cast a spell like that on a person directly.

So basically, she's rushing closer to put as much raw power as possible into whatever capture spell she's casting. Yet it just doesn't matter. With all the metal I've been munching lately, I can still easily obliterate it. A noise like an explosion erupts from the mana clash, and I emerge from Galdra's trap uncaught… but not before she flies face-first into a spray of gnashing shards. Good trade on my end!

I rush deeper into the forest as my birds start diving for another round of harassment. This time she wises up and kills each of them with different spells, but that distracts her long enough for me to get under more thick tree cover, blocking her line of sight to my location once again.

"Are you with Ars, you little shit?" Galdra calls after me.

"Fuck no!" I call back. "I barely even know who he is!"

"Where is he!?"

"I would fucking tell you if I knew! Go bother him and leave me alone!"

I toss yet more shards up at Galdra and start really, really hoping she backs off soon. After making an army and subsequently fighting one, I feel like I might actually be starting to get low on safe bits of my soul to break off. I would definitely be out by now if not for all the powerful people I've been eating lately. Thankfully, I've now tagged Galdra with eleven gnashing shards, and without animancy I don't think there's anything she can do to remove them. As long as I keep running and keep myself from getting caught, I'll eventually chew through something important. Shit, now I almost hope she keeps chasing me. Such a huge fucking soul…! And doesn't she also have metal in her head? I start to salivate at the thought of it.

Unfortunately, as soon as I start looking forward to it she starts to back off, pulling out a tiny bead of metal and speaking into it. The speaking quickly advances into frustrated grumbling and eventually yelling, before finally she turns around and rockets off back to Skyhope. Oh, well. I suppose it's a little disappointing that I won't be able to eat Galdra today, but I suppose it's actually more likely that, if I get her close to death, she would just kill me first. I'm not arrogant enough to think she can't. She just… wasn't going to, for some reason.

I store Norah's soul back in my body as I think about that. It has to be the Epsilon thing. The Templars must know that Ars can survive his body's death, and no one other than an animancer would be able to damage his soul. If Ars is killed, he just gets away scot-free unless someone like me is around, and the Templars don't employ people like me. …Well, I guess they apparently employed a vrothizo, actually, but maybe they just don't know she eats souls. Either way, the point is that I can understand there are good reasons to not want to kill Ars. But why do they think I can do that?

Hmm. Maybe it's time to have that conversation with Altrix when I get back. I just… I don't know. The thought of learning about this secret past I apparently have weirds me out. It's literally never been something I've thought about before. Why would I? I've been an orphan girl forever. It's a pretty damn common story where I grew up. Sure, we would sometimes wonder who our parents were, but it's just sort of an idle what-if reserved for days where we have the energy to ponder things like that. Actually meeting my 'mother' in the flesh? I don't like it. I barely have any idea who Altrix is and she still looks at me the same way Lyn does. It's creepy.

Eventually I manage to get deep enough in the forest to where Penelope is waiting by herself, avoiding my little prisoner commune. I make my way to her, silently trekking the miles between us and killing everything in my way to eat and regain my strength, physically and spiritually. My body is as hungry as my soul right now, and while I'm worried that's just because it wants to grow another mockery of a tentacle I have no intention of willingly starving myself for any reason.

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"It's me," I call out once I'm close enough for Penelope to hear it… which is surprisingly far away, nowadays. She's making herself into quite the neat little abomination.

"I know," she calls back. "You have a rather distinct smell, as of recently."

"Yeah, can you maybe turn that off?"

"Of course."

I step into the same clearing as her, and I'm greeted with a wonderful smile. I try to smile back and accidentally start peeling more skin off my face as I tug on it from the inside, which actually kind of hurts. Penelope's expression quickly jumps to one of concern, rushing forwards to look at my face.

"Holy shit, Vita," she hisses. "What happened?"

"Oh, uh, Remus hit me with his sword a few times," I dismiss. "Why, is it bad?"

"Is it… ugh," she sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Nearly anyone else would be long dead. If not for your ability to pinch your blood vessels shut, you would have certainly died from hemorrhaging. And did you say this is from Remus' sword? As in our former mentor?"

"This thing?" I ask, lifting the half of the blade that I haven't eaten yet.

It is incredibly difficult not to laugh at the sheer, all-consuming dumbfoundedness boiling in my girlfriend's soul.

"Vita," she says slowly, "did you eat the Sword of Skyhope?"

"I mean, yeah," I admit. "I didn't want anyone to come after me trying to get it back."

"...You ate it in front of witnesses? No, wait, back up. You actually took a blow from it and you're still standing. Watcher's eyes, Vita, that blade has killed dragons!"

"Oh yeah, that reminds me, what's a dragon?"

Penelope lets out a groaning noise through her nose.

"…I realize you have never had any sort of formal or even arguably informal education," she grumbles, "but you were a hunter for fuck's sake. Dragonslayer Remus was your mentor. How the fuck did you go this long without knowing what a dragon is?"

"Look Penelope, I don't really give a shit about things until they become relevant, and things don't usually become relevant unless they are attacking me or I can eat them."

She snorts, stepping forward and casting a spell on the missing part of my face.

"And which of those categories do I reside in?" she asks.

"Neither," I answer. "You are far, far outside the realm of 'usually.'"

Her wonderful grin returns, and she reaches out to cup my chin with her thumb and forefinger.

"Will you think it's weird if I tell you that seeing half your face as a bloody skull makes me desperately want to kiss you?" she asks.

"Will you pout when I tell you I'm still not going to let you do that?" I ask back. "Come on, what's a dragon?"

She does indeed pout, but I am a dark and stoic queen of death and therefore immune.

"Conceptually they're not that exciting," she explains in a tone of voice I can only describe as a supremely regal whine. "They're enormous winged lizards. Highly intelligent, for monsters. Almost always possess powerful talents. They live in the deep forest and rarely leave. Remus and his team had to kill one together shortly after the war because it was migrating towards us."

"Not that exciting, huh?" I ask, scooping her up in a princess carry. "You know, Jelisa told the Valkan I should be treated as a 'sated dragon.' Does that mean I'm not exciting?"

She chuckles, leaning on my shoulder.

"What did you do with her, by the way? Inquisitor Jelisaveta, I mean. I don't see any new Revenants with you."

"Jelisa? I let her go."

"Vita, honey, no," Penelope chides, tapping her forefinger just under the exposed bone of my nostrils. "She knows too much. You have to kill or control people that know too much."

"I promised not to kill her though," I grumble, sitting down under a tree and putting her in my lap. "So my only way to control people went out the window too."

She sighs, and I feel my face itch as she starts making it slowly regrow.

"I'll take care of it," she promises. "Just… please be careful. I set the whole city on fire when I let you out and now I have to extinguish it all."

I nod glumly, letting tentacles snake out of my soul and wrap her up as she hugs me.

"I wish I was more like you, Penelope," I admit.

"Well, everybody does," she claims, pursing her lips in amusement. "But in what way do you mean, exactly?"

"You're good at this stuff," I explain. "It's like a game to you. You know all the rules and all the best moves to play. But I always just… flail around and make everything worse. I don't understand anything. I can see people's souls and they're still all a complete fucking mystery to me! I just… I really do feel like I've never been human."

I only realize I'm crying when I feel water leaking down my thigh and I instinctively think I've peed myself again. But no, it's just more of the most useless eye in existence rearing its ugly lid. My body shakes as I squeeze Penelope harder. She lets me cry in silence for a while, and I hate it. I wish she'd reach into my body and make it stop.

"...Is not being human really so bad?" she eventually muses.

"No," I manage to choke out. "Fuck humans. That's not why I… I just wish I could get it, you know? I wish I could go back and undo everything up to this point, but I wouldn't even have any idea how to unfuck it! I thought the church would always hate me no matter what because I eat souls, but now they have a fucking vrothizo! So was it just me? I haven't held you or anyone else for two fucking years and it's my fault and I have no idea what I could have done better!?"

I'm shouting by the end of my little rant, which traditional wisdom says is a dumb idea in the forest but I honestly hope something comes to try and eat us. Give me something simple, something that I can just fucking slaughter my way through and not have to worry about the consequences. Just let me kill some god damn monsters and leave me alone!

"Would it help if I tell you?" Penelope murmurs. "The things you could have done to avoid this, were you to go back in time."

"...Go for it," I answer, not having any idea whether it would or wouldn't.

"When you first found your powers, were you not so afraid of authority, were you not raised by people suspicious of the church, you would have thought to go to them. And that would have changed everything. Norah was right, up to a point. They would not have killed you, they would have tried to help you. They would look into your claims, find that you are indeed a natural animancer, track down your connection to Ars, and they would have believed you. You would not have been killed or hurt or sent to jail."

"No," I whisper. "Please don't say that."

"Ah, but I'm not done," Penelope hums, a smile tickling her face. "Because you wouldn't have been free, either. Of course they can't let an animancer go free. They would have used you, if you were an obedient and devout little girl. They would have quite enjoyed using you, Vita. Perhaps you would have even ended up a symbol of the church itself, heralded as a prophet of the Mistwatcher, with your mana and your tentacles and whatnot. You would be living a life of comfort and relative safety, your family taken care of, your food brought to you, and your every moment of every day planned out by someone else. Just like your little friend Lark. That's how the church works, Vita. They have to either control you, or they kill you. There is no middle ground. Could you accept that, Vita?"

I feel the fire in her soul as she speaks, her passion and her smoldering hate. She already knows my answer, and loves me for it.

"No," I admit. "I'd despise that."

"Yes," she agrees. "And that has been my life these past two years, my own sort of prison. Nowhere near as bad a one as yours, but it's still there. I’ve had no choice but to play the good little church girl, to become something they think they can push around and use as they will. My research is theirs, my time is theirs, my skills are theirs… even my personal wealth is only allowed because how I use it falls within their view of acceptability. This isn't overt, mind you. I've received no threats and no orders. Only reasonable requests and thin smiles. There's not a shred of evidence to implicate them. But the pattern is there. They poach the strongest members out of the army so that their private force is always stronger. They maintain exclusive control on an entire school of magic in the name of 'safety.' They knew about Sky's plan to cause a perception event and chose to abuse it instead of stopping it. Any other explanation is statistically absurd! And yet they keep getting away with it because they have that power base, they have the public's approval, they have the ability to stage a thinly-veiled coup without anyone batting an eye! So you may not always be making the 'right' choice, Vita, but I promise you this: conflict was inevitable. At this stage of the plan we're not looking to avoid the church anymore. We have to destroy them."

I continue holding her silently, soaking that in. She's probably right. I hate that she's probably right. There's a part that doesn't sit well with me, though.

"You make them out to be these absolute evil masterminds," I say, "but I've literally never met a Templar or Preacher like that. Not that I meet many Preachers, but like… I've met a lot of Templars. And they don't think that way. Not even the ones I hate. A lot of them are pretty damn nice people."

Even if they still end up betraying me.

"That's the frightening thing, Vita," Penelope says. "Both things can be true. Their whole dogma is about getting kind people to bully and abuse. It's really not that fucking hard to get humans to be evil; all you have to do is convince them that it's good. And every damn one of them knows this, yet they all think it only applies to everyone else. Nothing is easier than justification."

"...Causing a fucking perception event, though?" I grumble. "That's like, explicitly something the Templars exist to stop."

"They didn't cause it, per se," Penelope muses. "They just… decided that the Mistwatcher's will should be enacted without their interference, this time. Although you have a point, the whole mass murder situation is a bit of a bright red flag that says 'evil' on it. There's no way the rank and file believes the Church was involved. Perhaps there are a few truly foul masterminds in the woodworks of their organization. I haven't met them yet, but hopefully if they exist we make sure not to let them escape."

I chuckle.

"You really wanna do this?" I ask. "Just destroy them all?"

"Do we have any other options at this point?" she counters. "If we follow through with using animancy to become immortal, they'll come after us anyway. They won't let us save anyone else. Dying is too important to their dogma."

I sigh.

"...All right. How are we doing this, then? I don't know the first thing about toppling a regime."

"Oh, you just leave all the toppling to me, Vita," Penelope murmurs. "All you need to do is keep being big and scary. Prepare for the fight that's inevitably coming your way, keep their eyes off me, and make them hate you more than anything. Can you do that?"

I nod glumly.

"Literally without even trying," I confirm.