Vigor Mortis

I manage to land my attack before Capita can teleport away, but she doesn’t just stand there and take it. She dodges and I miss her heart, instead planting my spear into her shoulder. Glancing off bone, it carves the blood and muscle above her left arm. The shard in my spear drinks deep, pulling pieces from her poorly-cobbled soul and empowering itself with her waning strength. Unfortunately, her talent then activates. I swear internally, expecting her to teleport away, yet for some reason I find my hands unexpectedly empty instead.

With a clatter behind me, I realize that instead of retreating, she teleported my spear right after it hit her. Kind of an odd move, but not one that I’ll complain about. I push a second hungry shard into my leather glove and punch her in the face. Unfortunately, without piercing her skin the strike is far less capable of pulling out bits of soul. With no intention of letting up, I grab one of my knives with my other hand while she's still reeling, putting a shard in that as well.

Capita glowers at my weapon, and with another flash of her talent, it's suddenly in her hand. I'm in the middle of trying to stab her with it when the transfer occurs, leaving me to smack her impotently while she uses the opening to stab me with my own blade. My soul shard knows better than to drink from me, but the rest of my knife is not so loyal, carving a shallow gouge through my cheek.

"Shit!" I swear, jumping back to the edge of my tentacle range.

I send four of my tendrils into her body, grasping and pulling at each half of her soul. I find purchase on the crack in her center, letting me grab and try to yank the damn thing in half. Capita screams, but as I feared I'm not quite strong enough to kill her outright. The other half of her soul flares with power, the one that holds a talent she threatened me with but never used until now. Whatever it is, I feel the pressure of mana gathering around me. I leap away, trying to make it back to my spear as I feel the spell start to complete inside of her.

Something goes wrong. As mana fills the pathways of her soul, it reaches the broken edge of its half as if it expects to find more there but instead simply bursts through to her core's center. The mana is still gathered, the spell still activates, but it comes out horribly wrong. Capita attacks with only half of a talent, and it works about as well as a bomb with only half the casing.

In the spot where I was standing a mere second prior, a screeching roar that nearly bursts my eardrums accompanies a rapid influx of air. Leaves and dirt particles suck upward into the center of the effect, spiraling closer and closer together before colliding together and crushing down to the size of a grain of sand. A wave of pressure vibrates my body for a silent instant, tiny explosions of lightning and flame and sparks of light dancing around the area before a thunderous clap ends it all, knocking me sprawling as I try to make my way back to my weapon.

"'Tis a crime to shatter such a priceless piece!" Capita shrieks, scrambling to her feet. No wonder I’ve never seen her use the talent before; she’s just as endangered by it. “Don’t make me, work of art!”

I ignore her threats, already leaping back in the cognimancer's direction with spear in hand. A tendril empowers my backup knife with a shard as well. She'll probably teleport the spear again, so the knife will be my true attack. Of course, she's still holding my first knife, so I have to worry about not getting stabbed again, but… I’ll figure it out.

Sure enough, power gathers in her soul, specifically the half that teleports. I lunge with my spear, but rather than feeling it vanish from my hand, Capita ducks the strike, stepping in closer with a knife. I start to dodge, and in an instant I realize that's a fatal mistake. The knife is just a feint, and the way I fell for it combined with the failed strike on my end gives Capita the perfect opportunity to plant the palm of her free hand square on my chest.

A spell surges, incredible amounts of mana passing into me. It's not the painful kind that rages when caught inside my soul, but simply a spell being cast on my physical body. That doesn’t mean that it’s any less dangerous, of course. It feels like when Penelope casts a spell to heal me... and I know full well whenever one of those spells enters me Penelope can just as easily rip my insides apart. I suspect that Capita is not about to be as kind as my ornery biomancer.

Thankfully, I know how to resist spells. I can cut off Penelope's attempts at healing, and I just as easily cut off Capita's attempt at teleporting me. With a flex of my soul's power, I fight the energy Capita pours into me and win. The look on her face as I fail to be budged is priceless.

Unfortunately, my spell resistance doesn't seem to extend to my stuff. A sudden chill encompasses my entire body as everything within an inch or two of my person is fully affected by the spell and removed. Only my spear is large enough to be outside this radius, and I'm much closer to Capita than I'd like to be in terms of using the polearm.

Noticing the new location of my teleported shards as I jump away, I track the distant fluttering of my outfit and gear as it starts its fall from hundreds of feet in the air. A fall that, should I be subject to it, I doubt I’ll be surviving. Not that I like my prospects of fighting without armor or even clothes much better.

“Oh, my! A work of art without its finishing coat of paint!" Capita chuckles, also taking the opportunity to jump away and create more distance. “Unexpected but not unwanted!”

Oh good, she’s being fucking creepy about it. I grit my teeth, trying not to let my shiver of discomfort slow me down. If she’s cracking jokes while I’m trying to murder her, she’s a lot less worried than I’d like her to be. Capita has her free hand on her wounded shoulder, trying to slow the flow of blood with pressure. It’s not a mortal wound as far as I can tell. Blood from my own cut trickles down the side of my face, and though it’s not as severe of an injury as hers, I’m now devoid of protection against someone that can steal my weapons at will. Things aren’t going well.

"Surrender, please?" Capita asks hopefully.

I respond by throwing my spear at her. I suspect if I don't, she's just going to teleport it out of my hands anyway. Unfortunately, she not only dodges it but strikes it mid-flight, forcing me to leap out of the way as the flying projectile is suddenly behind me, nearly skewering me through the kidney. The moment I start to move, Capita aims her terrifying second talent at me, starting an implosion in the area I'm about to end up.

Thankfully, I know something she doesn't. Before she can complete her partially-broken innate spell, an invisible Rowan blasts a gout of fire at the back of her head. Capita's talent sputters and fails as the woman shrieks in agony, diving out of the way as best she can while attempting to stab Rowan in the gut. Of course, she misses catastrophically, Rowan not actually standing anywhere near where the flames originate from. Hair on fire, she immediately drops the dagger and sets to try and extinguish her head, smacking at the flames as she rolls along the ground. I sprint forward, retrieving my spear again as I try and figure out a way to stop it from being teleported out of my hands again. Is there some way to extend magic resistance to nearby objects, perhaps? I rush towards Capita as I try to think, unwilling to give her an opportunity to do the same. A massive amount of power starts gathering into her soul, however. Again, it's the half that makes explosions, not the half that teleports. Why doesn't she just teleport away?

"Stop!" Capita orders, finally putting out the flames on her head. Her hair is burnt to smithereens, horrible red blisters reminding me of Remus's scars. "If I die I shall not die alone!"

The air all around us gets horribly thick, the threat of a massive amount of destruction hanging openly above our heads. For once, Capita declines to speak in singsong riddles. She's obviously threatening to kill us all, and unfortunately it looks like she can do it. I halt my approach, staying very still. Maybe Rowan can kill her before… no, it’s not worth the risk. Rowan isn’t the most skilled thermomancer around, and if he could kill her that quickly he probably would have done it on the first blow. Either that or he purposefully spared her life out of his sense of morality, in which case I can’t rely on him anyway. Sure enough, he’s making no moves towards her, keeping invisible. I scowl. This is going far worse than I had hoped. I didn’t think to plan for Capita teleporting everything except herself.

...Not that I had a particularly detailed plan coming into this. I just felt her near my home and kind of flipped out.

“Why?” Capita cries, staring at me. Quite literally, too; tears start to form in her eyes. “Why? I wanted to be friends with you.”

The sincerity of those words, combined with just how unexpected they are, has me reeling a little. What? That’s so damn ludicrous I’ve half a mind to assume my senses aren’t working.

“You brought a bunch of goons to my house after my sister recently died because you wanted to be friends with me?” I ask, shocked at the sheer audacious stupidity of the idea.

“I feared the wrath of the artist's work," Capita chokes, "though it would seem my entourage was more gift than guard. I must say, since you have clearly not accepted the gifts as a peace offering, it's rather rude to eat them anyway."

"I haven't fucking eaten them," I correct, though I'm certainly tempted to. Time to stall, I suppose. "Well, you have us in a stalemate. What now?"

"Now?" the woman asks, seeming genuinely miserable. "Now I think I rather wish to forget all of this. Let us start over, oh work of art. When you see me again, kindly do not inform me how utterly I failed."

What? Was she going to cognimancy herself into forgetting this entire thing? Is that why she's so nutso? I'm certainly not going to fucking forget, so what would it even accomplish?

I don't get much time to be dumbfounded by that for the mana in the air surges even higher. Holy shit, she's actually going to kill us all! I rush straight at her as fast as I'm able, desperately hoping I can stab her through the head or heart before all that power can be unleashed. Yet I'm too slow, I know I am. This was reckless. I should have never fought her before I can rip her to shreds with one tendril. Rowan and I together almost beat her, but I never guessed her other talent could just smash us into dust. I got arrogant. Again.

Yet at the last moment, everything shifts. Power from one side of her soul shunts itself into the other, and Capita grins madly at me as my magic resistance is overwhelmed and everything suddenly vanishes.

My ears pop painfully and I'm instantly overcome with a sense of vertigo, my vision flashing yellow. Yellow! The sky is everywhere, without any city walls or trees or even tall people to hamper my view of it. Islands are in every direction, not just up. One droops with verdant greens, massive vines likely the size of entire forests hanging from its sides, swaying in the breeze. Another made of deep red stone, curved spires jutting out of its top and bottom, like claws grasping at the clouds. I can even see the edge of my own island from here, and beyond it, far below, I see hints of the mists that I’m quite thankful to notice are thick today.

I get to appreciate this for only the barest instant before I realize I am falling.

My body twists and tumbles in the air, a scream escaping my lips as I try and fail to orient myself somehow. There has to be a way to improve my odds of survival. Yet I have nothing, not even a shirt to try and fashion into a shitty parachute. Although I have to wonder as I struggle to stop spinning, will it even matter? I'm above the city, I can tell that much. A city made of stone and clay, sitting in a crater. There's not exactly going to be a soft place to land. As panic fills me, a familiar soul suddenly pops into my range… though with something subtly wrong with it.

"Is the work of art falling into a spot of trouble?" Capita asks cheerfully.

Her hand grabs my shoulder, stabilizing me so that I am merely dropping through the air rather than tumbling through it. We're horrifyingly high up, much further than my gear had been teleported. I don't have the faintest idea when we'll actually hit the ground, although I suspect that will start to become increasingly more apparent the closer I get. Yet with all the terror and anger and peril, one question snaps to my mind first.

"Where's Rowan!?" I demand.

I can't feel my father anywhere within my soul sense, though for that matter I can't feel the ground either. If he was teleported up here with me, I can't imagine he has a trick to save himself. Not that I do either. Capita merely tilts her head at the question, however.

"She questions about the gambler? This one knows not, and knows not why you know not. I must admit I feel somewhat chagrined. When I requested you meet with Sky, it seems I should have added clarifications."

"What!?" I shriek.

"The work of art has dressed for success, at least," she murmurs, tapping her chin. "Though while the sky enjoys gazing down at bare mountains of fresh earth each morning, this painting seems less sultry and more terrified… may this simple palette ask what happened?"

"You did this!" I snap indignantly, wind rushing around us.

"I did?" she asks. "We weren't fighting, were we?"

I grab onto her shoulders, very nearly thrusting tentacles through her belly to try and rip her soul asunder again, before I realize something.

Her shoulders aren't damaged.

The wound I gave her is gone. She has no burns, and all her hair is exactly as it was when the fight started. And she's genuinely ignorant of everything that just occurred. Now I think I rather wish to forget all of this. Let us start over, oh work of art. Did she actually make herself forget? But how did that heal her? How did that repair her clothing? What the fuck is going on? I swear, if this maniac has four talents, I’m going to lose it. What kind of talent would even do this? Rewinding time for herself? I’ve never even heard of magic like that!

Yet I don’t know what else it could be. Her soul is the same, I can confirm that. There are a few subtle differences, particularly along the giant crack, but they're the kind of differences that could very much be accounted for by a slight alteration in memory. There's something bugging me, something else that I know is wrong, but I don't really have time to look into it while falling to my death.

In fact, it's about time I ditch my entire half-baked plan to murder Capita. At least for now. I'm unarmed, unclothed, and against someone somehow unharmed. I need to figure out quite a few counters before I'm ready to get revenge for Angelien... but I seem to have the opportunity being handed to me, so I may as well take it.

"No," I lie. "You said you would catch me."

She brightens immediately, apparently quite worried that I was about to say yes.

"I did? I mean, I did! It would be my pleasure to cradle such a beautiful work of art all the way to the ground."

She moves to grab me, and for a moment I almost consider not letting her. I’m fucking naked, after all, and Capita has been more than a little unnerving about it. Which really isn’t a joke. I’ve seen shit happen to other people growing up. But what am I going to do, push her away and die splattered on the stone below?

Fortunately, she just loops one arm under my knees and uses the other to support my back, neither her eyes nor fingers wandering as I feel her talent start to activate. Unfortunately, that only replaces my prior worry with a new one. It's the wrong talent! She's not teleporting, she's activating another implosion! What's going on, have I been tricked? Does Capita know how to send false emotions to my soul sense? I have to—

A powerful force suddenly pushes against us from below, slowing the fall. Rather than a chaotic implosion of devastating energy, Capita's talent creates outward explosive force. I look down, watching with surprise as her feet and her back exude a purpleish, chaotic torrent that seems barely directed enough to not kill us both. Capita winces as she maintains the spell, but after a tense few minutes we land on a roof. Specifically, one of the many roofs my weapons and armor ended up on, which were fairly easy to find as thankfully the Mistwatcher hasn't eaten the shards I put in them yet. My armor even all landed mostly in the same spot, since the straps were still done up and interconnected when it vanished off of my body. It’s fortunate only a few bits and pieces made it to the alleyways below. If anything valuable fell all the way down there, I doubt I would be seeing it again. Capita sits and pants with exhaustion as I briefly appreciate solid ground before quickly gathering what I can and putting the armor back on.

"Hey, Capita," I say once I'm mostly decent, "did you want to be friends?"

For a moment, her face reminds me of Bently receiving a compliment. It's so pure and joyful that I nearly regret trying to murder her.

"Like a pauper wishes to befriend a princess!" She insists. "I desire it more than with any other, bar the sky!"

"Sky's gang let my sister die," I remind her. "You know that, right?"

That sobers her real fast.

"I… it was not his fault. The man assigned to watch your family took a bribe. We have him in custody, and I will happily arrange transferring further punishment to you."

I frown.

"I think I'd like that, but fault or not my family worked for you, bled for you, got beaten by you all in the name of a protection you failed to deliver. Sky fucked it up by having a shitty guard put in charge of upholding it. So our deals are off. I hated him before, and now I don't trust him either."

“I… but you should,” Capita all but whines. “He will fix this city. He will save our home. He will make a place safe for us to live. You have to trust him. I want you both.”

“Why?” I ask. “Because I’m your ‘work of art?’ You barely know me, Capita. We’ve had a handful of interactions and most of them involve threats or mind control. Usually both.”

She has no apparent response to that, so I continue.

"What is Sky doing with all the metal he had Lyn steal?" I ask.

Her eyes go wide.

"I-I cannot tell you that," she stutters.

"Not even if we're friends?" I ask, my own eyes narrowing.

She hugs her knees.

"…You won't like it," she mumbles.

"You won't know until you try," I press, although I expect she's quite right. The woman is insane, and I doubt Sky is much less so. It turns my stomach a little to pretend to be friendly in order to try to abuse that insanity, at least until I remember how she mindfucked my parents. Seemingly permanently, in Lyn's case. ...Which I guess I fully intend to do right back to her, but that’s different. Kind of.

Anyway, my prodding seems to do the trick, though the answer I get is one of her asinine riddles.

"The sky's wrath comes from above. The sky's justice comes from below. The rich only get richer until they are made as poor as everything else. He with the soul of a crown will be the only king left to rule."

I scowl. That sounds to me like they're going to use the metal to assassinate the King. With that much power it might even be possible. Fortunately, I don't actually give a shit about the King, so whatever.

"I'm not going to join your gang, and my family is leaving it," I insist. "But if you hand over the guy that was supposed to protect us and leave us alone afterwards, I'll consider staying out of your way."

Until I'm strong enough to end it in one blow, that is. Capita nods glumly.

"I just don't want to be apart from you," she mutters. "I finally found you after all this time."

I raise an eyebrow at that.

"Found me? Were you looking for me?"

"Well, I didn't think so. Not until I found you, anyway. But now I have, and I know that I was."

I scowl. I have no idea where to start poking that.

"Well, if you quit the gang you can hang out with me as much as you want," I answer, though mostly because I know she won't.

"I could never!" she gasps predictably. "Please, please join us. I need you and I need Sky."

"Why?" I ask. "Why do you need either of us?"

"I love him," she answers simply. "And as for you… to see the work of art that my sketch was for, it shows me my suffering had meaning. That I was not built for nothing. You are the reason! If you help him, then... then all of me is helping him! Even my pain!"

I sigh, putting the last of my armor on, securing my weapons, and standing back up.

"Everyone is built for nothing, Capita," I say simply. "We're food on a farm. Don't try to find meaning in the goals of whatever fucked up bastard split two souls in half and glued them to each other. Besides, you've seen me. You really think whoever did your cobbled job also made something like me? Who exactly do you think it is, anyway?"

She tilts her head.

"Who would make a work of art, if not an Artist?" she asks, standing up as well.

I snort derisively.

"Thanks, very helpful."

Capita shrugs.

"I cannot tell you more of something you cannot remember. Perhaps later, we can be friends. I will beseech the sky to follow your demands. He will not be happy, but I believe we have almost finished gathering what we need regardless. I will do all I can to ensure your family is left alone."

And with that, power builds up in her soul and she teleports herself away. I snort. All that, and now she teleports herself? I start to wonder what she meant by not being able to tell me more of something I can't remember, but quickly dismiss the thought. I have much more important things to worry about, now that this conversation slash battle to the death is over with.

Namely: how the fuck am I going to get off of this roof?