"Look at them twitch!" Penelope crows, barely managing to speak coherently between her gasping breaths as she tries not to roll off the giant undead beetle we're both sitting on. "This is the first onset! It starts with muscle spasms, so pretty soon they'll—"

Her words are cut off as she erupts into gleeful laughter, the colony of little disciples in front of us falling into severe seizures. The many-limbed creatures, being boneless except for the mostly spherical core all their tentacles attach to, flail and writhe like snakes struck by lightning. Far from the occasional jerky movements I expected, the monsters violently slam their bodies across the ground, twitching and jerking with their full strength. Their skin smashes into hard dirt, scrapes over rocks, and injuries pile up internally and externally as their muscles rebel with unnatural fury. A few of them let out brief screams of pain and terror before their lungs are also seized into uncontrollable action and ultimately, fatally, their hearts. The macabre slapstick lasts nearly five minutes before all of them die, and I wait in silence as Penelope fails to stop laughing throughout the entire test.

I'll have to apologize to Jermaine when I get home, but despite how cute little disciples are I can't help but find Penelope's joy to be infectious. No pun intended.

“It all worked!” Penelope exclaims, small beads of water pooling in the corners of her eyes due to how hard she’s laughing. “It all went exactly how I thought it would! No, even better! They skidded along the ground like—"

She burst into uncontrolled laughter again, and 'uncontrolled' is not a word I ever thought I would be using to describe Penelope unless things start going very, very wrong. Here she is though, testing out what she described as 'the less professional pathogen concepts.' Apparently, she has a large collection of diseases that she'd otherwise never get to use because they're impractical or inefficient in accomplishing their final result. Killing the little disciples over the course of a few minutes in which they make a horrible racket would certainly be a terrible way to contribute to how we traditionally worked with our team. Stealth was so much more important back when this part of the forest was threatening.

"I'm impressed," I say honestly, sitting cross-legged beside her. "I remember back on our first mission you couldn't infect the little disciples at all."

"And I never forgave myself for it," she agrees. "I've thought up twenty viable diseases to attack their unique immune systems since that day. I think I like this one best."

I laugh and hop off the beetle. It's not a particularly impressive creature, and I just made it a Dreg, but it's the first thing we found that was large enough to carry both of us and stupid enough to not run away from me before I killed it. I have to admit, I find it a rather pleasant ride. Approaching the pack of about thirty little disciples, I swiftly grab all their souls, stick shards in them, and shove them back into their bodies. Once they’re all awake and surrounding me, I point back towards Penelope.

"You will not hurt her," I order. "You will treat her as you would me."

My new undead respond with frustrated chittering noises, as while they can't actually understand language they are intelligent enough to have opinions on things and my orders seem to convey enough meaning to work as a rudimentary communication method. They remember being infected, most of them have figured out that Penelope is the source, as a result they don't particularly like her… at least for a few moments, until my shard more thoroughly infects them and enforces my words. By the time I make it back to the beetle, those that aren't crawling all over me happily want to do the same to her, and she lets them.

"You can be Jermaine Junior," I tell the first one to crawl up and rest on my head.

"They're still warm," Penelope comments. "I know that isn't surprising, considering how many recent corpses we've both been wrist deep in, but still. It's like having pets again."

"You even used these for experiments as well," I comment, recalling how she claimed to have killed her previous family pets.

"Exactly!" Penelope laughs. "Except this situation is somewhat reversed, in that I get to keep the pet only after I perform the experiment. Much preferred, I must say."

I chuckle at that, scratching Jermaine Junior at the base of her tentacles, which elicits a delighted coo. Our army has expanded considerably in the five or so hours we've been in the forest, although we've been largely lacking in variety. A significant percentage of monsters seem to have some kind of danger sense, which I suppose is completely understandable for all the same reasons hunters don't go out into the forest without someone that can sense problems before they get close. Unfortunately, my diet today is limited to whatever creatures can't tell that certain death approaches them, which is mostly an uninteresting smattering of scavengers. Penelope theorizes that the ability to detect how dangerous something is when alive just isn't as useful when your main diet is dead things, but who knows? Either way, little disciples are the only creatures I've opted to make Risen instead of Dregs.

Of course, at some point the low quality of each individual member of the army is overshadowed by the fact that we have about two hundred enlisted. Penelope is loving it.

"How are you not out here all the time?" she asks, her laughter having finally settled down into a content smile. "I knew you had to hold back the sake of the team, but this… this isn't being a hunter at all. Watcher's eyes, we could expand into the forest with power like yours. We can get enough fertile ground to solve the food crisis."

"I guess?" I answer noncommittally. "Why couldn't someone like Galdra do the same? She threatened to destroy all of Litia and I'm pretty sure she has the power to do it. Surely she could win some more ground against the forest."

"She could, without a doubt," Penelope agrees. "The problem is that we wouldn't have the forces necessary to keep the ground. The boundaries between the forest and our growing zones need constant maintenance. Poisons must be set and refreshed, patrols must keep constant watch… the manpower required is immense, and while it's nowhere near as bad as being a hunter the job tends to have a high, lethal turnover. If we expand deeper into the forest, that necessitates stronger guards to deal with the more serious threats, but the majority of our current labor is relatively weak slaves. We wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise."

"And undead are basically free expendable slave labor," I finish. "Which could provide the sort of defense Galdra can’t just because she’s one person and she has to sleep. Yeah, that makes sense. But that's not what you were talking about when you asked why I'm not out here all the time, is it?"

She sighs, her eyes drifting up towards the canopy. I watch her with all three eyes, taking effort to pay attention to anything I think might be a social cue. The abnormal lack of tension in her muscles, the way she sits with her knees bent and both legs to one side, the looseness of the straps on her armor. It all speaks to her being relaxed, a feeling her soul clearly matches. Too clearly, almost, to the point that I think she's going out of her way to match her actions with her feelings as much as possible. It's kind of funny; she puts so much effort into letting herself do what feels natural that it kind of undermines the entire endeavor… but she does seem to enjoy it anyway. Like she's stretching a muscle that has been slept on wrong, so that every movement is both pain and relief in equal measure.

"There are no Templars here," she eventually answers me. "No other nobles, no laboratories, no obligations and no witnesses. We can do anything here, and it will never get back to anyone. You are the only person that will ever know, and you understand. I love that."

I nod, letting my hands go through the motions of the meat-treating spell as I listen. I cast it on one of the little disciples, petting it softly as I bring it up to my mouth, bite off one of its tentacles, and slurp it down like a super thick piece of pasta along with the strands of soul trapped inside. My Risen whimpers in pain a bit, but quickly stops as I continue to give it scratches. Holy shit, this tastes so good. No wonder vrothizo have ensouled flesh as their only diet.

"It is pretty great out here," I agree. "Let's not underestimate the forest, we can still totally die. I can feel some crazy things, you know. But being surrounded by hundreds of undead… I don't know, it just makes me feel really safe and comfortable. I can just spread out my senses and know that there's a wall of loyalty in every direction. It's awesome."

"I get the impression that there is a 'but' coming," Penelope muses.

"But I don't feel like I really need that anymore, I guess," I confirm, shrugging. "When I first came out here to feast, I was just… trying to get away from everything. Because of Angelien, you know? I love devouring shit out here, and I feel a lot safer when it's both of us, but the first time it was a pretty aggressive lack of self-preservation."

She nods.

"I understand. I'm glad you're starting to look ahead towards your survival, because I must say it has never been as strong a trait in you as I'd like."

I laugh at that.

"Guilty as charged, call the guards," I joke. "I think living at home, the new home, has helped a lot. I've had time to think, time to focus on myself a little. Lyn and Rowan are especially nice to be around, because they know everything but they're both a bit more… I don't know, normal? Not like us, but in a good way. Being able to have a safe home with everyone is such a dream come true."

I feel her already substantial pride swell at that, so I decide to indulge it.

"I know, I know," I tell her. "It's all thanks to you. The house is perfect. You did incredible. You are incredible, you know that?"

I feel, in order, her notice that her body is about to blush, her instinct to physically suppress it, and her ultimate decision to just let it happen. Her face blooms just the slightest bit red as she gives me a smug smile.

"I do know that," she confirms haughtily. "But it means quite a lot to hear it from you."

I grin back, but we are quickly interrupted as my senses detect multiple Dregs dying to a soul that doesn't feel like it should be strong enough to accomplish the feat.

"Contact with something interesting," I announce, hopping off the beetle.

I scoop Penelope up in my arms, which surprises her enough to elicit a hilariously squeaky yelp before I run off towards the soul. It only takes about twenty seconds until we're there, my horde stepping out of my way long before they have a chance of slowing me down. When we arrive I immediately spot the culprit: a huge mass of transparent slime that is slowly glooping its way over the flailing body of one of my Dregs, which immediately starts to dissolve all the way down to the bones. Another Dreg tries to attack, although it does so by running directly into the slime because it is really fucking stupid.

"Retreat," I order, and my army stops committing suicide.

"It's a carnivorous ozoid," Penelope comments as I set her down. "Could you do me a favor and cut off a small bit of it before you kill the main body? I'd like to keep some for testing."

I raise an eyebrow at her, smirking a little as she pulls out a fairly large glass jar.

"Traditionally, you're not much of a proponent for keeping slimes around."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Very funny," she deadpans, handing me the container. "Ozoids have an interesting and intimate connection to magic that might be useful to research, and if not the carnivorous ones are at least made of one of the most powerful flesh dissolving acids known to man... although it likely isn't technically an acid, since it loses its properties when it ceases to live. Perhaps it's even natural biomancy."

I nod. As usual, Penelope has good reasons. Given that my spear is chitin, this thing can probably burn right through it, so I order some zombies to sacrifice themselves by smacking the ozoid hard enough to make pieces fly off. One of the decent-sized globules actually pulls a chunk of the ozoid's soul with it, so I coax it inside the jar with a few pokes from my tentacle and then kill the big one with another.

"Here you go," I say, handing the jar back to her. Hopefully it won't break and kill her somehow. "You know, on the subject oozes... I still have Penta's soul. You realize she's going to be one of the first people I revive, right?"

"I know," Penelope sighs, sitting down by the trunk of a nearby tree as she swirls the small, captured ozoid in its jar. "I wish you wouldn't, but I understand. If we don't revive her as a Nawra, most of my objections go away. But honestly, Vita, why do you hold her in such a high regard? I'm fairly certain she didn't even like you."

I wince a little at that.

"Yeah, I don't know if she did either, at least not until Litia. I just kinda didn't pick up on it until she told me. I don't know what to say. I just wanted to be friends with her, I guess, and just before the end I think we really were starting to become that. It feels like I failed her. And… I don't want to fail my friends, you know?"

Penelope nods slowly, her soul starting to do indecisive flip-flops. I give her some time, sitting down next to her and taking a deep breath of air. Fuck, I hate breathing.

"I… suppose I have been failing you as a friend," Penelope eventually says.

I blink in surprise, making sure to turn and physically stare at her so she can see all of my incredulity.

"Didn't we just get done talking about how you're basically the most awesome thing that has happened to me?" I ask.

"Well! Not… in so many words, but I'm referring to something more specific," she explains, blushing a bit again. "Back when we first got home after Litia you made me promise to try and to be honest with you. To believe that I can trust you with the things I keep secret from everyone. I have not been doing so, because so many of my secrets are about you."

I'm not sure what to say, so I say nothing. She soon realizes that's an indication to continue.

"So… I want to change that. I have a few things I want to get off my chest."

"Don't look at me," I tell her. "Your breast size is your own fault."

She laughs at that, shaking her head.

"Well, let's start with that. I know that you hate your chest, but I have been the one making it increase in size anyway. While it is true I believe this offers you advantages, at least part of my motivation is selfish. In reality, the benefits it provides are probably not worth the degree to which you find them distasteful, and I have persisted with the alterations anyway."

"Huh," I say. "Well, quit doing that then."

Again, she chuckles at my response.

"I shall."

"Then we're square," I answer, shrugging. "Thanks for telling me."

"I started the operations to experimentally alter your family’s biology months ago, not recently as I have allowed you to believe," Penelope admits. "I did not ask for their permission, your permission, or the permission of your guardians until well after already starting."

"But you think these alterations will make them more likely to survive?" I ask.

"…I do, yes. Not all of them improve survival, but they are all designed to be beneficial. However, they are also the first human test subjects I have used, so there is significant risk. I chose to do so anyway."

"Well, if whatever you do fucks them up and you don't fix it, I'll kill you," I tell her frankly. "But if you do, and they're okay, and it helps them, well… thank you."

She swallows.

"I honestly think they help," she tells me. "There have been no negative complications so far."

"Then thank you!" I say again. "I trust you not to hurt them. Always have."

Her lip trembles for a moment as a swell of emotion pushes its way through her, but she pushes it right back, swallowing the joy and relief from hearing my words to move on to the next thing she's been afraid to tell me. I guess there are a lot more than I thought, but I know this is hard for her.

"For all intents and purposes," she manages to say, "I murdered Penta."

That one takes me by surprise. The others I suspected, but this hits me like a slap to the face. Murdered Penta? What does that even mean? She did kill her, that's true, but she was forced to as a consequence of my own failure. She would have never needed to put an anti-Nawra infection in my body if I hadn't gotten myself infected by Remus's slime and trapped as a result.

"I anticipated the likelihood that you wouldn't drink the poison and get infected long before the dinner," she explains. "When the dinner began, I took the first excuse to leave and go to the bridge. I knew you would be unable to cross the bridge if I made you believe the mists were down. I planned to use your possession as an excuse to kill Penta from the start."

"How did you know I wouldn't drink the poison?" I ask, dumbfounded. "We had a rat to hide Penta in, that's what I was supposed to have done instead of letting her have that speech."

"I didn't know," Penelope answers, shrugging. "I had a number of excuses prepared. Reasons it would seem like I was forced to infect you in nearly any outcome. In the worst-case scenario, I was prepared to leverage my position as your only defense against the Templars in order to just murder her without attempting to hide it. I knew that the dinner plan had a high likelihood of creating the outcome I wanted, so I let you go through with it without reminding you about the poison, without talking to you or strategizing with you at all. That was entirely intentional. I could have easily prevented you from getting possessed in the first place, but I left the possibility open because it was the most convenient to my personal vendetta."

Shit. That's the truth. I know it's the truth, but it's still kind of hard to believe it. I've been blaming myself for Penta's death this whole time, and ultimately I still made the mistake that led to it. But the admittance that she would have killed her anyway…

"Why?" I ask her. "I thought you liked the poetic justice of trapping her in my body the way she trapped you in yours."

She sighs.

"A number of reasons. Most of them irrelevant. I hated her, Vita. I still hate her, hate knowing that she'll be back, but it has faded a bit since then. I won't… I promise I won't interfere with her resurrection. The ultimate problem is that while I certainly hated her for the torture she inflicted on me, that was only a fraction of my objection, in truth."

"What do you mean?" I ask. I can almost, almost see how the things Penta did to Penelope justify Penelope's actions, but it still seems so... wrong.

"Vita, I…" she stumbles over her words a bit, which is so very unlike her that my focus is taken off my thoughts. "I desperately wish, with everything in my heart, to be a good person."

"I don't understand," I say. "I think you're pretty great?"

"Still?" she asks sardonically. "You're more than I deserve. And that's the thing. I wish I was good, but I'm not. I'm really, really not. On a personal level I don't think I give a shit about anyone on this damn island except you. Not for lack of trying, either. I believe that this world should be better, and I believe that this world becomes better when people make an effort for each other. Care about each other. Try for each other. But no matter what I do, my head just doesn't seem to work that way. I look at a child starving in the streets and think to myself 'this is an inexcusable failure of the nobility,’ not ‘oh no, this human person is suffering.’ I don’t feel it. Instead I convince myself of all these reasons why the rational response is to use the kid as an experiment, why that helps, why it’s not the action of completely fucking insane monster, and then I do it. Even though I know, obviously, that nearly any right-thinking person in the world would be utterly disgusted."

"Are you saying I'm not a right-thinking person?" I ask, wrinkling my nose.

"I mean, are you? You're here in the forest with me, eating zombies like candy and preparing to betray a man not because he's protecting a cognimancer or because he's about to assassinate the fucking King, oh no that’s fine. You just don’t like him personally.”

“Hey, he beat up my mom,” I protest.

“Well, I would probably kill someone for an opportunity to ‘beat up’ my own mother without consequence, so that just sort of proves my point, doesn’t it? I’m on his level. Below it! I try very hard to make this world a better place, I believe the reason I exist is to make this world a better place, but I just fucking don't like people. And then some monster, a literal actual monster from the forest, takes over my life and in a few days she has made more friends than I have ever even attempted to acquire. She takes all my memories, all my experiences, and becomes an actual fucking person instead of an emotionally deficient shell. She robbed me of the ability to pretend I’m a victim of circumstance. She was proof that all my failures are my own. And then every damn day I kept getting reminders thrown in my face about how much you like her better."

I nod slowly, chewing that over. I know this is something I will fume about later. But right now I just look at her and wonder… does this actually change what I think of the Penelope I know? The Penelope I care about?

"If it makes you feel any better, I like you a heck of a lot more now than I used to like her," I tell her.

Her knees are hooked up to her chest, having rested watering eyes on them after saying her peace. She stops staring at them, turning to me with a war of hope and disbelief inside her.

"Even now? Even after that?" she asks. "I murdered your friend."

I shrug.

"We'll make her better," I say. "Right? Norah was our friend, and I murdered her. Can you forgive me for that?"

"Of course," she says, almost breathlessly. "That was a matter of necessity."

"I fucked up. When you put that disease in me, it was a matter of necessity, too."

"I would have killed her anyway," Penelope presses.

I shrug.

"You would have tried. And then I guess our relationship might've been really different. I don't know. But given things as they are, even if it’s not fair to Penta, it's difficult to not be happy with how things turned out. Like I said, you're pretty great."

She stares blankly at me for a moment, then suddenly bursts into uproarious, full-body laughter. Tears stream down her cheeks as she howls with amusement, the harmony of incredulity in her soul drowned by a melody of pure relief.

"You're insane!" Penelope insists. "You're completely inhuman. No one should just be okay with this! I was afraid you would kill me!"

"I might have a few months ago, I guess," I agree. "But I forgive you. You've earned that much."

"Completely fucking inhuman," she repeats, shaking her head.

"Humanity is overrated anyway," I answer with a shrug.

That gets her to laugh some more, wiping tears from her eyes.

"It is, isn't it?" she agrees softly. "It really is."

I say nothing for a while, letting the last vestiges of her sobs trail away as we sit shoulder to shoulder under the tree.

"So… any more island-shattering dark revelations you have for me today in order to try and make me attack you?" I ask when she finishes.

She laughs, voice still shaky.

"It's not how I thought any of this would go, but… fuck it. One more for now."

"For now?" I ask hesitantly.

She responds with a coy smile, the effect only slightly diminished by the way her cheeks still glisten with water. Her fingers start to move in the complex patterns of a spell I don't recognize, and when it completes I see a change start to occur in her soul. Power flows out of it, noticeably weakening her in exchange for a different sort of strength. The spiritual energy fills the rest of her body, flowing into her limbs and forming a lattice inside her skin.

"What is this?" I ask, scratching my cheek. "A spell version of the way warriors enhance their bodies with their soul?"

"Not quite," Penelope answers, and then she slowly reaches out with her hands to the tentacle I've been scratching myself with.

And she grabs it.

My breath catches. My body freezes. She holds on to me, the real me, and pulls that part of me close. I wrap my tentacle around her arm, squeezing lightly and feeling the resistance, the contact.

"What," I barely breathe.

"I knew it had to be possible," Penelope explains softly. "By studying your body and the vrothizo teeth you brought back, I figured out how it works. It is the first original animancy spell I designed."

"How does this… help your research?" I whisper.

"It doesn't, really," she answers with a shrug. "Arguably, I wasted a month on this. But I knew that going in."

"Why would you...?"

I swallow. No, I know why. I know what she's going to say.

"Well that ties into my last confession, doesn't it?" Penelope says. "The one I'm sure you already know.”

Countless tentacles emerge from my core, wanting to poke her, feel her, touch her, but all I do with them is hide my eye and hide my face, overwhelmed with emotion and embarrassment.

“I love you, Vita," Penelope says. “All of you, real and fake, material and immaterial. I know it makes you uncomfortable, but I have to ask. Would you consider a relationship with me?”