Out of all the secret bases Ars could have been hiding in, I can't decide whether or not I very much should have or very much should not have expected the state capital of Baldone. Hundreds of souls, then thousands, then tens of thousands all enter my sensory radius in short order, an almost-blinding density to it all that not even Skyhope can compare to. It's weirdly layered in the same way the city Jelisa scouted is: walkways on top of walkways, bridges on top of bridges, ways to get from the top floor of towering buildings to the top floor of a building across the city without ever getting closer to the ground.

It reminds me of the caves above and below Liriope. We once lived on the surface of our island, back far before the Progenitor uplifted us into what we are today. Populations expanded, though, and our island is not very wide, so we had to dig down. Down, down, down into the stone, learning through trial and error how to make vast caverns throughout the entirety of our island's innards without collapsing everything in a chain reaction of death. These humans have done the same, as they're unable to expand with their land cut off from the rest of the island by the Chasm of Disdain. But rather than go down, they've gone up. They have bridges instead of tunnels, structures instead of caves, but the philosophy is the same. There's something endearing about that, but I don't really have time to think about it much.

I feel him. He's here. My so-called father and his abomination of a soul. We found him.

I am very, very tempted to just teleport over to him and kill him immediately, but unfortunately I have reason to believe he knows at least the basics of teleportation and anti-teleportation strategies, and those are very annoying. Getting to him is going to be a pain and a half.

Not because I can't teleport directly to him, since I absolutely can. It's obvious at a distance that the city doesn't have a teleportation disruption field. It does, however, have a teleportation detection field, and that's where things get messy. If I try to teleport to him, he'll have a split-second to teleport away before my spell completes, and if he does that we almost certainly lose him. While we might get lucky and catch him by surprise, it's really not worth the risk: it takes me about two to three minutes to gather and store enough mana for a teleportation spell, so he'll be long gone by the time I'm able to chase after him if he reacts fast enough. It's way too big a risk.

Likewise, I can't prevent him from teleporting away and just… fly over to the guy. The city is way too big to wrap a disruption field around it with the amount of metal I sense nearby. And if I try to remove or disable the detection field, it'll almost certainly alert him of that. But maybe not! The field is most likely powered by metal spikes driven into the ground around the circumference of the city, and if I can get close enough to one I should be able to figure out how it works and decide our options from there. Of course, that means I'll probably have to infiltrate a secure facility to get access to it, which is another point of failure. So yeah, every option is pretty annoying!

"What are you thinking?" Penelope asks me, and I turn to look at her. We're still hovering high in the air, miles away from the capital.

"He's here," I confirm. "His soul is even more fucked up than the last time I felt it."

He still has that disgusting core of flesh-textured darkness, sucking and pulsing and lapping up everything around it, and he still has the obscene grafts clutching onto his core like parasitic larvae. They're far larger and more numerous now, and with my superior Liriope education it's pretty clear what they are: talents. Ars has given himself over a dozen different talents, and there's no way to know what any of them actually do until and unless he uses them on us. That's very dangerous, but it doesn't really change our plan.

"I don't think there's any way we can reliably prevent him from teleporting away," I tell her. "So instead, we have to bait him into teleporting away while I'm in a position to track the teleportation, then follow it and assassinate him after he reaches his destination. Not even Capita can immediately teleport twice in a row, she has to wait at least a couple seconds."

"Hmm," Penelope muses. "I could teleport us both to him, and then you could teleport us when he teleports away?"

"That could… no, wait. He can do that, too. Potentially. Chain teleports with Capita. They might not have the coordination for that, but it's a possibility we shouldn't ignore."

"He couldn't teleport last we saw him," Penelope says, frowning slightly. "Otherwise he wouldn't have killed himself to escape Site 4 when things looked dicey. And is Capita with him?"

"She is, currently," I confirm. "If we can lure her away, that could be an opportunity, but ultimately I think we want to get close to him and force him to teleport first. Then I feed you his destination coordinates, you take us there, then if he ports again I follow after him alone."

"Can't you take me with you?"

"You're very heavy, Penelope," I tell her. "I can do it, but it would consume so much mana I wouldn't be immediately able to flood the area with myself and stop Ars from casting, and no offense but I think that's a more valuable tool for the assassination."

She nods slightly, a bit irritated by my assessment but not denying it.

"So… I figure we have two options," I continue. "The first is to sneak our way as close to Ars as possible, making sure he doesn't teleport away until I get within about fifty meters or so. If he teleports within that range, I should be able to track his destination and then we'll be golden. The downside is that if he teleports before we get close enough, we're screwed. The other option is that there's a field around the city to detect teleportation. I think I should be able to jury-rig myself into the detection field's alert system, using it to extend my range and alert me if Ars teleports, and to where. If I get that working, he can teleport from anywhere in the city and we'll still be able to nail him, but it'll take a while and we'll have to infiltrate somewhere that's probably fairly well-protected. What do people think?"

"Why can't we just do both?" Lark asks.

"Uh… because I can't be in two places at once," I tell her simply.

"So?" Lark asks. "Why did you even bring us if you expect us to be useless without you?"

I signal irritation with my eyes, not that she can comprehend the expression. Our whole conversation kind of… got to me in a way I don't understand and I'm not particularly sure that I like. Sure, there were the bits about how I consistently and repeatedly ruin good things in her life, and… okay, I can see that. I think it's a little unfair—it's not like I created her fucked-up species or anything—but it's not totally unfair. We've had our conflicts, and they were some of the absolute lowest points in her life. I've disliked people for worse reasons. So why am I so annoyed? Is it because of Melik's lingering crush? I don't think it is; Melik might be part of why I'm unwilling to just write her off like I might with someone else, but I'm thankfully not attracted to her anymore. Is it because she's being a brat? She's literally a child, I should be mature enough to take that in stride. Well, whatever. I've got to deal with the situation first.

"Lark, can you magically reshape a segment of a metal network array without disturbing its function enough to detectably disrupt it?" I ask.

"Well, no," she admits, "but—"

"And can you invisibly track down Ars in order to record his spatial translocation signature in the event of a teleportation?" I press, cutting her off. This is the most important part of the operation, I need her to not be snarking at me and actually contribute.

"Is it a spell I can just cast and leave on?" she asks. "Or is there a bunch of nuance in its operation?"

…Huh?

"What does it matter if you don't know how to cast the spell?" I ask.

"Just teach it to me, Vita!" she snaps. "I have a perfect memory, I can figure it out in like five minutes if you help."

I… huh. Huh. She even has four arms, I can actually teach her how to cast it like an Athanatos. Gah, now I look like the idiot again!

…Oh. That's why I'm mad. I'm mad because I got treated like a kid while Lark and Penelope had an intellectually stimulating conversation. Which… of course they did. I was acting like an asshole. I was acting like… Vita. Just Vita. Just the angry girl who doesn't have time for introspection because everyone is out to get her. I've been feeling more and more like that ever since I returned to Verdantop, and I'm not sure I like it. We're on Vita's island, around Vita's friends, fighting Vita's enemies and dealing with Vita's problems. No one here even knows Malrosa, no one would even think to call me that. So I've defaulted to Vita, to old habits and comfortable defaults. I've been griping when I should be listening. Of course Penelope would treat Lark with more respect than she treats me if I'm acting like that. It would have been obvious if I'd been thinking more like Malrosa.

So… that's who I need right now. I need to be the War Princess, not the Lich. I know what that's like, because she's me. There's no reason I should be stuck with old habits. I just have to let myself be myself. I want to do that, it feels like I've been like… neglecting Malrosa, or something. Or I'm neglecting myself, since that's me? Whatever, it doesn't matter. I know how to walk this walk. I take a deep breath, let it out, and then turn to look seriously at Lark.

"You're absolutely right," I tell her. "My apologies. I've been stressed and dismissive, and it's been problematic for everyone. Splitting up is a good plan, as long as you two don't get caught. I'll teach you the spell, but it'll be a lot different than the casting style you're used to. Are you up for that?"

Lark blinks in surprise, but nods.

"I think so, but we won't know for sure until we try," she says.

"Fair enough," I confirm. "You're going to need to watch me closely. Can your mana sight see me?"

"Yes, I taught her to do that," Penelope says offhandedly.

"Good," I nod. "This will use all four of your arms. We'll have to modify it a bit since you have one less finger per hand, but that'll just be an extra corrective step every few motions. Ready?"

I show her the first movement, starting in the standard closed position, all four of my hands together. I make sure she can see my fingers as I grasp a thread of mana in each, moving them to begin the artful weave. The mana in front of me bends to my fingertips, and though I no longer need to perform the art this way it still comes almost as naturally as breathing. My arms pull apart from each other, asymmetrical movements flowing gracefully in time with a step from my body, each micromovement purposeful and timed. Lark, true to her word, does a startlingly commendable job of copying me, but a hundred little details are all wrong and it's the details which make the biggest difference.

"No, cancel that, you're about to blow yourself up," I sigh, and she does so. Hmm. Correcting all of her mistakes individually would be a pain, and it would take forever. But she has a perfect memory, doesn't she? Can't I just correct her all at once?

"I'm going to use Motion to guide you, if that's alright?" I prompt.

"You're going to use what?" she asks.

Huh? Oh. Language barrier.

"Kineticism, sorry," I tell her. "We call it Motion."

"Oh, sure, that's fine," she agrees, nodding.

I flicker a confirmation with my eyes, then step behind her to get to work. I seize careful control over her limbs, moving her body into the proper starting position like my mother once did with me.

"Now channel, and watch the mana as I move it with you."

It only takes her about two minutes to learn the spell after that. Almost as fast as an Athanatos. Somehow, that makes me feel weirdly proud. Because she's young? Because she's kind of my niece? I don't really deserve to feel proud considering that I barely even did anything, but it's a nice feeling nonetheless. And most importantly, it means she can track teleportation now.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Very good," I praise her honestly. "We should give you some practice with it before we get close to the teleportation-sensing field, and then I'll teach you how to send Penelope and I the coordinates."

"Uh, yeah," Lark agrees, giving me an odd look. "Ready when you are."

I signal assent and teleport a short distance to my left. We practice for a while, I give her the second spell she needs, and we move on to testing that. Lark quickly casts and I feel the ping of her spell against my magic resistance. I let it through, and my current spatial coordinates pop up in my mind.

"Perfectly done," I confirm. "Great. You and Jelisa can make a beeline for Ars' home base while Penelope and I sabotage the city's detection systems. Jelisa, can you handle the stealth spells for that?"

She looks at me in surprise.

"Uh… probably," she admits. "I have been tweaking some improvements into a lot of standardized kynamancy during my time off."

I refrain from flinching. I can show them proper casting later, once everyone is safe. Also, did she just call quitting the Templars and no longer having a job 'time off?' That's kind of hilarious, but I'm not sure why.

"You brought my mundane disguise too, right?" Lark asks, walking over and starting to rummage around in Jelisa's backpack.

"Yep," Jelisa confirms. "Hopefully it'll be useless, but having another line of defense is never bad."

"Honestly," Lark admits, pulling out a well-worn owl mask, "I just kind of wanted to wear it again."

I recognize the mask, but I know it would be a bad idea to comment on it. I turn to Penelope instead.

"They have all the tools they need to get started, so let's get into position," I suggest. "If they fail, they'll likely be in danger but they probably won't cause an emergency situation, since Ars and the splices don't know either of them. But you and I will set off immediate red flags, so we'll have to be extra careful."

"I don't need to be told the stakes," Penelope answers. "It is not as though I intend to allow failure."

Heh. I do love her arrogance, sometimes.

"Fair enough," I concede, weaving all the stealth arts I know around the two of us. "Let's head to the closest segment of the detection array, then."

She nods and follows as I lead the way, her massive, scaled form moving with effortless grace. I remember how Melik's body felt looking at her, enraptured by the instinctively alluring artistry of her naked flesh. I wonder if that's how Tala reacts to seeing her, since my sister always had an odd proclivity for scales over chitin. That's just how we Athanatos are, though. Strange and unique in our own ways. Though that means we sometimes conflict, wouldn't eternity be boring if we were all the same? The only unacceptable sort of difference is the kind that harms the people of Liriope. The only unacceptable Queen alive is my mother.

…But I'm trying to think about Penelope right now, so I should focus on that. Looking at her now, I don't feel the way I felt when I wore Melik's flesh, which I find comforting. Becoming a Lich gave me my attraction to this woman in the first place, but it also took away my comfort with being attracted at all. Or… well, my comfort with being attracted physically. Vita quite likes how relatively subdued the Athanatos libido is compared to the human one, and while I have to agree that human libidos are excessive, I do feel somewhat of a loss. Penelope likes sex, wanted sex with me, but I'm not able to, not even for her. It feels wrong though, like there's something wrong with me for being this way. It's a frustrating contradiction. I'm longing for the ability to give Penelope that joy, but the reason I'm longing for it is the same reason I'm now unable to! I feel like such a mess of contradictions, sometimes.

"Is there something on my face?" Penelope comments dryly.

Ah! I've been caught staring. I turn my head forward again.

"No," I tell her. "Apologies. I was just thinking."

"You do seem unusually thoughtful," Penelope agrees. "It's not like you to stare."

I feel my eyes twist into an expression of mild irritation.

"I look at you all the time," I protest.

"Not with physical eyes," she counters. "That's odd for you."

Well I'm not sure how else she expects me to… oh. My head glances down, slightly. My soul glances up. My tendrils seem oddly calm, wrapped up around my core like a lounging cat. I stretch them, briefly, and then let them coil back up around me. I scratch my chest-setae through my armor with one before letting it rest, my anima self all there, all me, but oddly subdued. I know, from memory, that I'm usually moving my tendrils all over the place without really thinking about it. I don't pay much attention either way, of course, so I didn't really notice that I wasn't doing that. I even feel a couple insects in range, yet still alive. But I'm not tired or damaged or anything like that, am I? I certainly don't feel like I am. I… don't know what this means.

"I suppose it is," I concede. "I feel fine, though, except for general stress about our objectives."

"Is that what you were thinking about?" she asks.

"No," I admit. "I was thinking about sex."

That sparks a slight smile out of her.

"I do seem to have that effect on people, for whatever reason," she muses.

"I can't imagine why, you incorrigible nudist," I tell her, smirking with my eyes. "At least put some armor on for practical reasons."

"You say that as if what you're wearing is better protection than my uncovered epidermis," she answers smugly. "It isn't."

I'm wearing enchanted dragon hide and somehow she's not lying. Still, I can't let her get away with that.

"Is that why I saw you visibly wince when Lark kneed you in the groin after you popped Galdra's head like an overripe fruit?"

"I have since corrected that weakness," Penelope snorts. "I'm insulted that you think I didn't."

"You corrected the weakness by fundamentally altering your biology and not by just… putting on some protective pants?"

"Well, I've always prefered dresses," Penelope answers, staring directly at me and sounding completely serious.

We stare at each other for a bit, then both of us start to chuckle at the same time. It's not even that funny, it's just… nice. We're nearly to the edge of the city now, and the building which houses one of the metal spikes that generate the teleportation detection field is just outside the collection of sky-kissing towers and bridges. Invisibly, we approach.

"I'm glad the horrific work you did to your soul hasn't damaged your sense of humor, at least," I comment idly, immediately feeling offense boil up in her soul before getting clamped down on and locked away. Which, of course, doesn't do much to contradict my opinion.

"There's no reason it would," Penelope tells me flatly. "Humor isn't an inherently damaging instinct. It can actually be quite healthy. No part of my principles forbids it."

"But they forbid you from feeling indignant when I say what you've done is 'horrific?'"

She shrugs.

"You're entitled to that opinion, and it is better to be clear-headed when I'm making the decision to argue it," Penelope answers easily. "And I must admit, I am curious. Don't Athanatos have custom-designed souls? Do you feel the same way about them?"

"I do not feel the same way about us, no," I inform her. "No part of me takes offense to the idea that you've redesigned your own soul. It's how you've done it that bothers me. You are a genius at the art of Life, Penelope. My clear superior, even though I've had a better education. But the way you perform Pneuma? It's self-destructive. Dangerously so."

We approach the compound, silently levitating over the fence designed to signal people to stay out as much as it's designed to actually keep people out. We don't touch down on the other side, instead staying in the air. It wouldn't be wise to leave footprints.

"It had to be," Penelope admits quietly.

I turn to her again, physically looking with my head. I'm self-conscious about that now, but I do it anyway.

"What?" I ask.

"I existed solely for her," she tells me. "That is the totality of who I was. Had I not been trying to destroy myself, I couldn't have come back at all."

I take a deep breath and let it out. That makes a sick sort of sense, it really does. The damage to her soul had already been done by the time she got her own claws in it. She had to make it worse before she could make it better. But… the damage won't get repaired like this. She has to know that, right?

"I'm hardly an expert, but I'm fairly skilled at Pneuma arts," I tell her. "I can help you with the healing process."

"While I freely admit to multiple imperfections, I can handle them myself," Penelope disagrees. "Besides, I don't think the two of us agree on what 'healing me' would look like. I can't let you access my soul."

"I would never do something to your soul without permission," I insist firmly. "Do you not trust me?"

"It's not a matter of trust," Penelope dimisses. "I can't let you access my soul, Vita."

Oh. A matter of principle, then. I go quiet at that, something beyond the obvious bothering me about what she said. The question stumbles out of my mouth before I can even finish thinking it.

"Can you call me Malrosa?" I ask.

Surprise crosses Penelope's face only briefly, though her soul erupts with calculations and considerations.

"Certainly," is what she says out loud. "May I ask why?"

"I… don't know," I admit.

"Well, it's not a problem, Malrosa," she assures me, and I relax a bit, signaling thanks with my expression. An expression I'm fairly sure she can actually read, because she has been paying very close attention.

I turn away, trying to focus on analyzing the defensive enchantments of the building in front of us despite how I keep getting distracted by my worries. Why do I want to be called Malrosa? I'm still Vita, aren't I? Malrosa can't be consuming Vita, can she? I feel like I'd know if she was predisposed to something like that, since I'm her. Did I just get used to being called Malrosa during my time on Liriope? …No, that doesn't make sense. I've been getting called Vita since I got back and I was fine with that.

"Don't get distracted, Malrosa," Penelope gently chides.

I huff out a breath. She's right. I'm a Princess. I'm better than this, and I need to act like it. The door enchantments are pretty basic: just a simple magical circuit that gets broken when the door opens. I weave it a temporary new pathway so it'll stay unbroken when the door opens, then telekinetically unlock it from the inside, magically silencing the hinges as I push it ajar.

"Let's go," I tell her, and she nods.

I suppose the security is fairly decent by human standards, and there are quite a few Baldonese people wandering around and guarding the area personally, but avoiding them all is trivial. The complex isn't all that large, either, so making it to the center where I can get direct access to the metal spike powering the city-wide enchantments occurs swiftly and without incident. I expected this, of course. The hard part of the operation isn't getting to this thing without being caught, it's deciphering it and modifying it to work in our favor without being caught. That is, to put it lightly, a whole different generation of problems.

"Anything I can help with?" Penelope asks as I run my senses over the metal. I can't see most of it because it's in the ground, so that's a problem too. The whole room is little more than a slightly oversized closet with a few windows to ensure no one can hide in here… without being invisible, anyway. The spike itself is about seven feet long but only a couple inches in diameter, with only about four feet of it being visible. I can't take the spike out of the ground and actually look at it, so I have to intuit its functions exclusively from how mana flows inside it.

"Just general overwatch for now," I say. "Once I've gotten what I think is a good idea on how this works, I'll ask you to double-check me."

She nods and we both get to work. So, the spire has multiple obvious functions, communications with the dozen or so other spikes that form the complete field around the city being chief among them. It looks to be a fairly primitive suite of teleportation detection magic, working by taking constant updates of all spatial data inside the field and comparing it to expected spatial data. When a teleportation spell has a source or destination inside its boundaries, there will be modified data points as a result of the temporary link between two locations. When the source and destination are inside the field, there will be merged spatial coordinates for the same reason, and that can be detected as well. It's very old and inefficient spell work, but unfortunately inefficient doesn't mean ineffective. There are ways to accomplish this sort of magic that would require dramatically less metal and general upkeep to do, but I can't deny that the brute force method still works. And because each spire is in constant contact with its neighbors, simply disabling or modifying the field is a non-starter. If whatever changes I make to this construct are incompatible with the ones it's linked to, the whole place will go on high alert.

Thankfully, I don't really need to disable the field, do I? The field isn't stopping me from going after Ars, per se, it's just giving Ars a heads-up when I do. The field can stay, it's only the part which communicates the issue that I need to mess with. I start drafting up a plan of action, and of course that's where things start to go wrong. I feel a soul lift up off the ground and start flying at us incredibly quickly. And not just any soul: it's a splice. A big one. A central soul with a series of smaller grafts, talents on talents on talents. And, of course, a deeply-ingrained loyalty to Ars. I don't know how we got found out, but the splice's trajectory is too spot-on for it to be anything but.

I hiss with annoyance. Lark and Jelisa aren't in position! Ars obviously knows we're here now, so he's going to get away! Except… I can still feel his soul, and he's not budging. He's not even worried. I guess he's confident he can get away with Capita next to him? Or does he also know he needs to make sure I'm the one that teleports first? How much does he know about our capabilities? I suppose that until I know the answer, our plan remains the same. If he's going to stick around even though he knows we're here, well… that's his mistake.

"We've got incoming," I tell Penelope. "But the plan is still on. Ars hasn't flown the coop."

"Quite the arrogant man," she muses. "I have come to truly disdain arrogance."

"Alright, you motherfucker!" I hear the splice roar from outside, and I recognize his voice. "Get out here so I can make this quick!"

Is that… Sky? I couldn't tell from his soul at all. Oh, that poor bastard.

"Put him out of his misery, would you Penelope?" I ask.

Smoldering rage tries desperately to escape the walls of her soul, but the woman ignores it and simply nods.

"I will ensure our enemy cannot disrupt the operation," she agrees, and slips out of the room to meet the man who got her captured by Galdra in the first place.

Or at least what's left of him, however much that is.