Vigor Mortis

I feel it before I reach the exflow tunnel, and my fists clench so hard I nearly bleed myself with my nails. The revenant I made out of Grig’s son, that fucking murderer, is still functional after I told the damn thing to kill itself.

With tendril-strengthened arms I practically throw the cover to the sewer entrance open, jumping down with a wet splatter into a feces-filled tunnel, sinking knee deep. According to what I can feel, that asshole is down here, presumably having brought the other corpses and hidden them a few days ago like I ordered. He was supposed to kill himself, too, but his soul is barely cracked. His body must hardly be damaged at all! Did my order not take? No, this should be within my power. My shard seems to have integrated just fine, as well. What the fuck happened?

I walk right above where I feel the soul, reaching my hand down into the sewage. I grab hold of something, pulling the familiar corpse up out of the muck. The fucker is a disgusting mess, with chunks of skin peeling off his face and sewage seeping into the muscle to help it rot. Yet he is as alive as anything I can make, and when I pull him up he staggers to his feet under his own power, stammering like a fool.

“M-Miss Vita! I-I am so sorry, I tried to—”

“Why the fuck are you alive?” I snarl, grabbing the kid by his throat.

“I tried to do what you said!” The boy whines. “But I couldn’t! I couldn’t figure out how to die!”

“Oh, okay! Let me help you then!”

I toss him into the wall of the tunnel, striking out with a kick to his skull the moment he slumps over. I’m no pugilist, but my body is strong and reinforced by powerful tendrils and plenty of pent-up rage. My foot hits with a crunch, chitin-armored boots meant for stomping through the jungle connecting hard enough to pop him like a grapefruit.

Or at least what should have been hard enough, but it’s actually my boot that shatters instead of his skull. The chitin breaks into pieces, cutting up my toes a little and leaving my murderous revenant seemingly unharmed. Well, I rip some more skin and muscle off, but that stuff isn’t doing anything anyway. My eyes narrow.

“You have a durability talent,” I immediately deduce.

“U-um, y-yes Miss Vita, I… I tried stabbing myself, drowning myself, and starving myself, but nothing seemed to work! I-I’m so sorry! I don’t know how to follow your orders, Miss Vita!”

God damnit. Half of those things wouldn’t kill a Revenant anyway, but if he can’t break himself...

“You’re about as good at dying as you are at baking bread,” I seethe. “Are you sure your talent isn’t just being worthless at whatever you’re told to do? Stand up.”

He gets to his feet, what’s left of his lower lip trembling as I start to circle around him. I suppose this means his soul is anchored to his body’s bones. His talent either reinforces bone or it reinforces all of him, and the rest of his non-bone body just isn’t considered him anymore. Does he have two talents, or does he have one that encompasses both strong bones and blunt force child murder? In retrospect, I should have seen this coming. This kid got the shit kicked out of him by Grig hard enough for me to hear it through a brick wall and he barely got bruised. Grig probably would’ve killed a child without a talent like this. Fuck, for all I know he did.

It’s a mercy that the family can’t reproduce anymore.

“What’s your name?” I ask. He doesn’t really deserve a spot in my memory, but if I’m lucky I’ll just forget it later. I need something to call him, for now.

“J-Jati, Miss Vita!”

“Jati,” I say evenly, “you killed my sister.”

The horror that washes over my Revenant's face is equal parts satisfying and infuriating. Does he care because he realizes he's a monster or does he only care because my shard is making him obsessed with me? I guess the end result is the same either way.

“I-I’m so sorry. I remember being so angry, I just wanted to… no. No, I’m so sorry. Please let me make it up to you.”

“Make it up to me!?” I laugh. “You want to fucking make it up to me? You can’t even die like you’re supposed to, you're gonna make me do that for you too. There is nothing you can do for me other than ending your disgusting existence.”

“I understand,” the murderer answers. “I’m ready to be accepted by the Mistwatcher.”

I blink, momentarily stunned by the absurdity of that line. He’s religious? Of course he is. I’ve never really picked anyone’s brain about that before. It might be funny.

“Accepted by the Mistwatcher?” I ask innocently. “What do you mean?”

“W-well, the Mistwatcher takes us back when we die,” he explains. “He guards and shepherds the next world, escorting new souls to their bodies and old souls to heaven.”

“Oh, wow. That sounds nice. Are you looking forward to it?”

“I suppose it’ll be nice to see my dad again. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

I smile a little at that, tendrils squirming invisibly into the murderous kid’s body.

“Oh yes, he’s very dead, Jati. But you won’t be seeing him again.”

“What?”

I grab what’s left of the boy’s collar and pull downward, forcing him to meet me eye to eye.

“There is no afterlife in the Mistwatcher’s jaws,” I promise him coldly.

His eyes go wide. It’s funny, I doubt a single sentence would convince any normal person that their religion is false. My Revenants, however, trust me completely. Jati knows the truth of my words because I’m the one speaking them. This is how I will make him hurt.

“Nothing awaits you. Even if the Mistwatcher had any interest in bringing you to some kind of reward after death, you’d never make it. I’m your god, not that thing. I am going to peel your soul apart, sliver by sliver, and crush it to dust until not a single aspect of the person you were remains.”

His whole world comes apart in that moment. I see it on his face and I feel it in his core.

“I… but the Mistwatcher, he… he has to—”

His protests don’t amount to anything, because of course I know he doesn’t even believe them. I grab his soul, using a few tendrils to hold it in place while one begins to chip away at it. Still inside a body, Jati remains awake as I start to crack his very being. Judging by his reaction, I suspect it is excruciatingly painful.

“You killed my sister,” I tell him again. “Apologize to me.”

“I-I’m sorry!” the boy cries. “I didn’t know!”

Fractures dance up his core, and a scream erupts from his lips as I grab hold of these new, jagged grooves, and rip a soul shard out of him in much the same way I’d pull one out of myself. Of course, as a simple human, his soul is not at all built for such things.

“You didn’t know?” I press. “You broke a child’s neck. What didn’t you know? That you would be punished for it?”

“No, I—”

Whatever words he was going to say are cut off as I pull another shard out of him, eliciting another scream.

“Did you not know that the child you killed mattered? Did you just think she was some street rat? Do you think that means you can do what you want with her? Stop screaming.”

His incessant noises cease immediately, becoming silent gasps as the pain of impending annihilation continues to overwhelm his mind.

“You killed my sister,” I remind him a third time.

“Y-you killed my father!” he chokes out.

I scowl. What, did I break some actually important part of his undead soul, so now he can sass me? Or is the pain just so much that it’s overwhelming the mind control? Doesn’t matter, I suppose.

“I ate your father,” I correct him, ripping off another shard and smashing it to dust. “You don’t even deserve that.”

“Fuck you!” Jati shouts.

"Careful," I hiss. "You'd better choose your last words carefully, or else I'll just make you change them. Into something like… ah, I know. Where's your mom?"

There it is. Despair, terror, hopelessness. Complete and all-consuming. I’ve killed people who’ve fucked with me, but this is much more than that. He tries to reach his arms up and cover his mouth, but all I have to do is repeat myself.

“Tell me where your mother is, Jati.”

“Sh-she begs on Folsad Street!” His mouth barks, betraying him. “We sleep in some of the abandoned shacks by the defunct chitin farm!”

“See?” I sneer at him. “Now those are some good last words.”

I shatter him, and then I shatter the pieces until nothing is left. I have no interest in making anything that was once him into part of me. Letting the corpse drop into the outflow channel, I let out a sigh of satisfaction. I don’t know if that counts as justice, but it certainly was… cathartic.

My heart thunders, fingers clenching and unclenching. I did it. I thought he was dead before, but I know for certain now. I should have just done this the first time. With some deep breaths of foul sewer air, I'm slowly starting to calm down, minutes passing in silence.

Getting the knowledge out of him was fun and all, but I of course don’t actually have any plans to kill his mother. As far as I know, she’s never done anything to me. It might be a good idea to go find her and see if she’s plotting some sort of inane revenge, but at this point a career widow with no apparent skills probably isn’t any form of threat. The whole thing was worth it for the look on his rotten, fucking face, though. And I got the job done for the Hunter’s guild! This didn’t go too badly.

Now, I suppose, I should go to the next item on my agenda, which would be checking up on the Revenants I actually like. I guess I may as well make the entire trip via the sewers, since I would draw way too much attention being covered in shit. While I don't know the sewers anywhere near as well as I know the streets, I can tell more or less where we are by the collection of souls above me. Wherever large concentrations of people are in the line, I know that's a major street and I can figure out which street it is just from knowing the city. I hit more than a few dead ends along the way, but a few hours later I find what I suspect is going to be the closest sewer exit to Penelope's Revenant research facility. There are a couple people milling about, but they quickly leave when I emerge, smelling like death. I quickly run out, unlock the doors, and make my way downstairs.

“It’s me!” I call out. As per tradition, Vitamin jumps onto me from her hiding spot above the door, though this time she swerves at the last second, kicking off the wall to avoid touching me. She lands a good distance away, skidding to a stop and turning to face me as the other two Revenants emerge from their hidey-holes.

“Whoa! Hey there, mom! You, uh, kind of look like shit!”

“And smell like it,” Theodora comments.

Huh. Can Revenants smell? They can obviously see and hear, so I don’t know why they wouldn’t be able to. It just seems weird for some reason. Margarette and Theodora are both covering their noses, so... I guess they can smell. I’m personally not much bothered by the sewage, so maybe they can smell even better than I can.

“My bad,” I say, shrugging. “Hunter job in the sewers. I had to kill a monster down there. So how have things been going? Sorry I dropped off the map for a couple days. I’ve been in the forest. Have you all held up okay?”

“Well enough,” Theodora says slowly. “Margarette and I have had a breakthrough on figuring out soul sight, and we’re slowly coming up with a workable spell.”

I look over at Margarette because she starts squirming at that, like the smallest kid in a gang trying to work up the courage to ask for extra food.

“That’s great news,” I say honestly. “You got something else to say, Margarette?”

“Um, well, Penelope finally got her hands on a couple more bodies, and I was sort of hoping to get one of them…?”

“What’s wrong with… oh, right, I remember. You want to be in a dead woman instead of a dead old man. Yeah, doesn’t matter to me at all. Go grab the body and I’ll swap you over.”

Margarette beams, excitedly rushing off into another room. Honestly, I almost forgot that she’s in an old man’s body in the first place. She just feels like Margarette to me, and Margarette feels like a woman. That kind of thing is yet another aspect of souls that I didn’t used to be able to determine very well, but now I find it pretty obvious even for people I’ve never met before. I guess it’s not always obvious. Most people don’t have a super strong impression one way or the other, and some people, like Seong, leave no impression whatsoever. Margarette, though, is unambiguously female, at least according to whatever the fuck my soul sense is using to determine that. I can’t say I understand it, but it’s never been wrong before.

It occurs to me, suddenly, that I have at some point entirely stopped recognizing people by their faces and started recognizing them by their souls instead. I don’t think I even look at someone’s face when I talk to them much anymore. I don’t know when I started doing that.

Eh, souls are a much more convenient thing to pay attention to anyway.

Theodora casts a few spells to start cleaning the shit off of everything, myself included, while we wait. Soon enough, Margarette brings me her preferred corpse, so I rip her out of her current one and plop her into that. Now she looks like a dark-skinned older woman who seems as though she probably didn’t work out very much in life. A mage or noble, perhaps, as though she’s somewhat aged she doesn’t look old enough to have died from it. She could likely either afford cosmetic biomancy treatments or perform them herself.

Well, back when she was alive, I mean. I don’t really care what this body used to be anymore, because now it’s Margarette. The Revenant soul spreads its web of fibers around the inside of the corpse, and soon enough Margarette is up and moving again.

“How does it feel?” I ask.

Margarette flexes her hands, gropes at her chest, and slaps a hand back and forth between the inside of her thighs.

“Way, way better!” she assures me, grinning and daring to give me a hug.

I let her, more out of apathy than any particular interest. Vitamin then hops up and decides she wants to hug as well, but from her I absolutely reciprocate. I grab her out of the air and give her a big squeeze.

“While I’m here,” I say, “Would one of you check me to see if it’s safe to start learning to channel mana? I think I’ve gotten pretty damn good at these cancel command thingies.”

“Ooh! Sweet!” Vitamin cheers. “Magic mom!”

“I would be surprised if you figured it out this early, but I can test you, I suppose,” Theodora offers.

I nod, happy it’s her. She’s less afraid of me, now, but should hopefully still be cautious enough to not consider falsely inflating how skilled I am at this. Not that it matters a whole lot, since I want Penelope to be around for the final bout of training either way. The odds of Penelope not being as blunt and critical as possible are pretty slim.

I start wiggling my fingers around and humming the vocal cancel at the same time. Theodora approaches me and shoves me backwards, causing me to stumble but not preventing me from continuing the symbols. My voice doesn’t even waver.

“…That’s actually not bad,” Theodora says. “A lot of the other tests can be pretty painful. Do you want me to run through them on you?”

I nod. Theodora, for a moment, radiates an almost disturbing contentment as her natural soul and my added shard sit in harmony for a rare, glorious moment. ...I think that means she wants to hurt me.

Later, I conclude that is absolutely what it means, but at least I pass her magic tests. Next step: channeling.