Vigor Mortis

Chapter 161: Lost Comforts

I wake up in my bed with the horrid, foreboding feeling that I am dead. I almost feel like the experience chills me to my core, but then I recall I do not have one.

Right, I remember. I am Vita now.

It's quite an odd feeling, to suddenly be someone else. My pleasant life knew nothing of struggle, poverty, need, oppression, hunger, or danger. Up until my very last moments I had been pampered and, in my eyes, functionally invincible. I would have told any asker that I knew I had weaknesses, that I knew I could die, but they were distant things, nothing I truly had any way to understand. And now they are not only in my life thanks to personal experience, but also in a dangerous, immediate sense. I am now a parasite that subsumed my body, and I have every reason to believe my family, friends, and superiors would take issue with this fact, even though I still love them. Additionally, my life is no longer defined by my own hedonistic whims. I have an important objective: ending the hostilities between Liriope and Verdantop, so that both of my families are safe.

Which family I choose to stay with is still an open question, but I have until next 'Hiverock Night' to think about it as I accomplish my objectives. Progenitor, this is so odd. Even odder than Melik. My thought process is very different, my whole everything is different. I don't have a human brain anymore, though Athanatos minds at least seem similar. Well, at least this is only the second day of possessing Malrosa. Hopefully I'll continue to normalize and feel more and more like myself as time goes on.

I uncurl from my spot in the very comfy nest of a bed I now own. It's pretty much just a big fluffy blob that my body sinks into at the slightest touch and it is the most comfortable thing I've ever experienced (sorry, Penelope). The decadence here is staggering. I want to feel horrified and disgusted by it all but I'm way too busy being completely overwhelmed. Still, I regretfully extract myself from my amazing pillow blob, stretching my wings and noting with discomfort that my current body cannot and does not yawn. I scratch my chest-fluff and fail to frown as well. Being a different species is a lot.

I'm still wearing the same outfit as last night: a stylized skirt embroidered with delicate glowing runes and nothing else. But people here seem to wear less clothing than humans in general, and I suppose the lack of breasts means there's no particular stigma about shirtlessness for either sex. Furthermore, wearing clothing overtop of our thick, sensitive setae tends to be somewhat uncomfortable. A lot of Queens will wear such clothing anyway, but it's an individual fashion choice, more about expressing one's self and showing off than any sort of necessity. I think I'll quickly develop a 'fashion sense' that revolves around constantly wearing as much armor as I can get away with, but the important bit for now is that I'm not underdressed when I stagger my exhausted ass out of my room.

Unfortunately, I still manage to scare the shit out of the poor worker standing watch on the other end.

"P-princess Malrosa!" he blabbers. "My apologies! We did not know you were awake! Your bath is not yet ready, I'll I'll have it started immediately!"

I blink in surprise, or at least do a thing where I contract every hex in my eyes to briefly cut off my own vision. I don't think that's a normal facial tic in Athanatos, so I'll have to try and break the habit. Which means that's two mistakes I've just made literally right after waking up. Malrosa has a morning routine, and she starts it by signaling her servants when she wakes up. I totally forgot to do that. Whoops.

"Ah, it's nothing to worry about," I insist. "Do inform me when everything is ready."

The worker visibly relaxes, and I once again try and fail to frown.

"Yes, Princess!" he insists.

That was entirely my fault, but I can tell from his soul that the worker blames himself for this 'failure.' He literally exists in order to serve me, after all. He doesn't care about why my bath isn't ready, only that I walked out of my room and it wasn't, and he's distressed about it. I wonder if they're even capable of blaming me. I'll have to be more careful, I don't want to hurt the weird little guys. They remind me of my Revenants for obvious reasons.

My bath is soon ready, a fact for which I am grateful. I do feel dirty, which is a rather unique experience on my part. Both of my last two bodies got dirty and knew they should get clean, sure, but they didn't really care about the 'being dirty' part as long as things weren't egregiously bad. Malrosa, meanwhile, feels itchy after only a day's worth of well, I won't say sweat, since I don't do that anymore, but a day's worth of grime, I guess. It's very odd. I'm still looking forward to enjoying the bath, though.

Somehow I doubt Malrosa's life will ever stop surprising me with how many things she looks forward to. That used to be a pretty rare occurrence for me. Now it's hourly. I hug myself with all four arms. From Malrosa's perspective, my life was kind of a horror show, huh?

Of course, that's partially Hiverock's fault, so I shouldn't be too happy about my current situation.

I'm led into my home's personal bath, all heated and ready for me. I stop and wait. This is, presumably, the part where I get undressed and bathe myself. The workers do not leave. The, uh, male workers. Do not leave. The bath.

Oh shit, I'm supposed to get in with them so they can wash me.

This is twenty pounds of 'fuck that' in a ten pound sack, thank you very much. I'm not only supposed to get naked here, but I'm supposed to let people touch me while I'm naked? Nuh-uh, no way. I'm shaking at the thought of it. Fuck. This.

I'm no stranger to public bathing, it's a hundred percent the norm in Valka. But it's not only segregated by sexes, it's very firmly understood that nobody touches each other unless they're like, a mom or dad washing their kid. Bathing is fine. Bathing with other people is fine. Bathing with people of the opposite sex is probably fine too, I just spent a month or so with a dick. But getting touched by someone while I'm bathing? No. A thousand million times no.

I think the worst part is how many memories I now have of liking it. I used to enjoy being pampered like this! It used to be one of my favorite things! And now it's ruined forever because my memory core has been replaced with a traumatized demigoddess who spent an entire decade of her life desperately trying not to get raped in the street!? What the fuck is wrong with Valka!? Holy shit, I'm really starting to see why the Athanatos think of humans as savages! Jury's still out on whether mind-control capital Liriope is a marvel or a horror, but at least we don't have to deal with that!

"Princess?" one of the workers asks hesitantly. "Is everything all right?"

I take a deep, calming breath.

"Your work, as always, is exemplary," I say slowly, "but for reasons unrelated to it I believe I would like to bathe alone today. I'm afraid I'm still extremely stressed from the recent battle."

I feel sympathy from them, not distress. Good.

"Of course, princess," the worker says, and departs with the others.

I allow myself an indulgent groan once I'm alone, and then I strip and get into the water. It's a weird experience all around. Between my fuzz-covered body and the way the breathing slits in my sides close up as they become submerged, it all serves to remind me how far from human I've become. The bathwater is much shallower than the Vita side of me is used to, because I can't even get my shoulders wet without holding my breath. My huge, fuzzy wings quickly soak up water as well, and I soon feel like I'm three times heavier than I used to be. As I start going through the motions of repeatedly soaping, scrubbing, rinsing, and combing every single part of my damn body, I start to realize why Malrosa normally lets multiple other people work together to do it all for her. Oh well. I take probably two hours in the bath, so what? It gives me more time to think. I dry myself off with magic when I'm done, put on the fresh new underthings and skirt my servants left me, and head to the dining room to scarf down breakfast. I bring the food up to the bottom of my chin, which then unfolds into a horrifying collection of mandibles so I can scoop up the food with my spiky tongue, chew a little by masticating with said tongue, and swallow it.

I'm not even gonna lie, I think it's kind of cool.

I also have to admit, albeit begrudgingly, that the food tastes incredible. It's also amazingly hardcore. My meal is a sort of gelatinous, meat-textured orb that is, apparently, the solidified vomit of a beetle species that has been bred and biomanced by the local gourmand Queen for close to a thousand years. Like, think about that. This hedonist moth lady has been crafting the perfect food for a literal millenia using nothing but magic and fucking bug vomit and it tastes absolutely amazing. Best thing I've ever eaten in my life, and it even covers the most important part of food: it fills me up.

The lingering bits of my Melik instincts think that the entire meal is disgusting in both concept and execution, but this just further proves he had the worst opinions on food in the entire world. Well, maybe that's too harsh. I did hollow out his soul, permeate his flesh, and assume his identity while he slowly watched himself die via subsumption. It's only fair to cut the guy some slack. On the other hand, he's just a mortal so it's not like he wasn't gonna die soon anyway.

I blink, then try to wrinkle my nose and fail. Hmm. That's a thought I'm going to have to keep an eye out for, aren't I? Properly sobered, I quickly finish my meal and try to figure out what comes next, in terms of my plans.

Agh, I don't have any plans!

"Princess," a servant addresses me with deference. "You have two messages."

Two? An abnormally high number this early in well, actually it's probably almost afternoon, and also I nearly died yesterday, so actually it's not that weird at all.

"Please give me them," I say, prompting him to continue.

"Your associate, Bahregar, has requested entry to your castle at your earliest convenience," the servant reports. "And your sister would like to make arrangements for a shared dinner."

I suppose I now have plans.

I stretch out my soul sense, trying to get a better handle on everything around me. Liriope is an alien place, and it takes a lot of direct focus for me to pick out things of importance. Every soul here is rich and complex. I'm sure I'll figure out how to read them quickly and easily like I can with human souls, but I've barely been here a day.

Anyway, I reach out and try to get a feel of my home and beyond. Sure enough, I find two people waiting just outside my home, one of them feeling mildly impatient. They're oddly similar and close together, though. Like, really close together. What's oh. Oh! Past memories from all my bodies crash together at once. Holy shit, I never thought I'd be doing this again.

"Please let Bahregar inside," I instruct the servant, and he bows, heading off to do exactly that. He's apprehensive about Bahregar, and generally worried about the fact that I associate with them. I can hardly blame the poor servant. My memories are disturbing, at least from my current perspective.

Soon enough, the servant escorts in what appears to be another worker, but the new worker body before me is little more than a shell. Its soul was constructed with the explicit purpose of not being a person, so that the real host of the body could survive with some bare semblance of ethics. Bahregar, after all, is a Nawra.

I would have no problem with this if he wasn't also my lover.

Ever since I first started integrating with this body, I knew Malrosa has lovers. All Athanatos do. Our method of immortality involves getting pregnant, after all, and our servants are our own children. We design the souls of said children ourselves, while they're still in the womb, destroying the raw anima The One Below All grants them and using it to craft something entirely our own. Our souls are completely artificially designed, meaning our species can't have talents the way mortals and fauna sometimes do. But the result is that we can create whatever sort of person we desire. As long as a Queen has a given bit of knowledge, she can pass that knowledge to her children so that they know it from the moment they are born. Our engineers literally come out of the womb with a complete body of engineering information, not to mention language, law, and the basic capacity to take care of one's self. They also enjoy engineering, instinctively knowing satisfaction when they perform well in their area of expertise. The men are not controlled through force or brainwashing. They're not puppets. They're simply people that are good at what they do and like doing it. What could be a more fulfilling life than that?

They are still individuals, of course, and occasionally one of them gets it into their head that they'd prefer to be something they are not. These men are rare, but when they do show up they are begrudgingly tolerated, mostly because we Athanatos realize that our veneer of Pneuma-induced tyranny loses its coating of benevolence if those that step out of line are abused. But they are generally replaced, and of course every new child must be birthed by a Queen. This naturally necessitates quite a bit of sex.

As a Princess, I am not yet fully trained in the art of soul creation and resultantly I am not allowed to have sons. But our bodies tend to only remain in peak condition for twenty to thirty years, at which point they start to rapidly deteriorate and falter with age. This requires us to create new bodies, and we do so by having a daughter (we're able to choose the sex of our children) and replacing the daughter's soul with our own shortly before birth. Malrosa was fifty-five years old before I ate the bit of her that determines continuity of age, and she conceived a new body for herself on her two twentieth birthdays. I remember the experiences intimately. It was quite enjoyable at the time. Unfortunately, Vita continues to be a joyless parasitic wretch and I can no longer conjure a stronger emotion than disgust when recalling the experience.

Anyway, Bahregar was my partner both times, though they used different host bodies to prevent issues with inbreeding. And even though my current body has not yet had that particular birthday party yet, I've certainly put it through its paces, so to speak. The same internal system that allows us to regulate the sex of our children also allows Athanatos to simply choose not to get pregnant, and our bodies reach sexual maturity after less than two years of physiological growth. Thank the Progenitor that we don't grow at the horribly slow rate that humans do. Our bodies are designed mainly for people that are already adults, and I'm not a fan of remaining small and weak any longer than I have to. My point is, recreational sex has been part of my life for nearly my entire life, yet now I don't want other people to so much as touch my wings, let alone anything more intimate. It kind of hurts, in a way I don't really understand.

Bahregar knows me quite well, but the 'me' they know is basically dead. They're going to notice something is up. It's been a long, long time since I've had to play con artist, and I find I no longer have the energy for it.

"Hey, Princess," Bahregar greets in that easy, relaxed way of theirs. "I hear you got into a pretty bad scrap. You doing okay?"

I look up at them from where I sit. I suppose I could also say I look up at 'him,' as the Nawra tolerates whatever form of address is appropriate for their body, but I've known Bahregar long enough to be aware they identify more as a translucent slime controlling a body than the body itself. Bahregar is an oddity in our community; we host few of their kind, and treat them as somewhere between worker and Athanatos. Some of the Queens believe we should cast them all out entirely, but the Progenitor won't hear of it. At the end of the day, they're not terribly dangerous to us. Most of the queens are immune to slime-based possession via one method or another. I'm not, or at least I wasn't until I became Vita. Though this was mostly by design. I used to enjoy partaking in a bit of, ah, consensual body control? For various recreational purposes? Oh shit, no wonder it was so easy to convince Malrosa to keep me a secret. Wow, that's I'm just gonna dump all those memories in the 'don't think about it' pile.

"No, Baba," I tell the Nawra. "I'm not doing okay at all."

That seems to surprise them.

"Oh," Bahregar answers. "Um. Is it okay if I sit?"

"Let's go somewhere more comfortable than the dining room," I sigh, waving my worried servants away. It's so weird that I have servants. Like, yeah, I've had mind slaves before, but I usually let them do their own thing? Or at least give them a task that doesn't involve waiting on me hand and foot.

Yeah, okay, I'm not really any better than the people of Liriope and I shouldn't even try to pretend otherwise.

I lead them into my warded private room, which I immediately regret when they assume I've brought them here for sex. I give the Nawra my best serious glare, though, and sit down at my desk rather than the bed. Pretending to be a perfectly normal Malrosa isn't going to happen, so I'll need to play up my memory loss instead.

"I I got messed up pretty bad out there, Baba," I admit. "One of the savages died casting a Pneuma spell on me that destroyed my memory core."

"Oh holy shit, Mal, I'm sorry," Bahregar says. "So you need me to give you your memories back?"

I blink before I can remember that's not a real Athanatos expression.

"What?" I ask, dumbfounded. "What do you oh duh, you're a Nawra and we you have my memories. Gah, why didn't I think of that?"

Bahregar goes deathly still for a moment, a traumatic flash and deep fear cutting through their soul all at once.

"Eh, you had a big scare," they say like nothing's wrong. "It's okay to forget things when you have literal memory damage. So, uh shall I?"

I swallow. Yeah, I don't think I can let it slide. Worst case scenario, I'm certain I can beat them in a fight.

"...Hold on," I insist. "What's wrong? What did I say?"

"Hmm?" they ask innocently.

"You just reacted badly to something I said," I press. "Don't think I can't read you, we know each other better than that."

Bahregar regards me motionlessly for a moment before leaning forward in his seat.

"...Where the fuck did you hear the name 'Nawra?'" they ask.

Huh? Is that not oh holy shit that's not what we call them. Malrosa has no memory of calling them 'Nawra,' they're just referred to as 'Clear Ones.' Damn it!

"I what does it matter?" I protest. "I probably read it in a book somewhere."

"Well destroy that book," Bahregar growls at me. "It's both dangerous and inaccurate."

"But why?" I ask. "What does Nawra mean? I thought it was just another name for your species."

They glower at me for a while, then shift their weight.

"It's part of a name for our species," Bahregar clarifies. "Our true name. Only we're supposed to know it. But since you've already heard it we are the Children of Nawra. I suggest you never repeat those words again."

Uh. Huh. Okay. That's very strange. None of the Nawra (or 'Clear Ones,' I guess) from Verdantop had any negative reaction or even idea of what 'Nawra' meant, it just got into our records somehow. But 'Children of Nawra' actually makes sense. 'Nawra' isn't a word in either of the languages I now speak, but it certainly sounds like a name.

"I have a lot of questions," I admit.

"Yeah, well, not as many as I do," Bahregar counters. "You're acting very weird. You wouldn't mind just letting me in on it, would you?"

They holds out their hand, the offer to possess my body clear.

"That's probably not going to happen again," I say firmly. "Sorry. We can still be friends if you want? But today I've been freaking out if my own servants so much as touch me. I just"

I try to think of a good, believable lie. One comes to me easily, since it's also the truth.

"I didn't know what war would be like until I fought in one," I say.

"You underestimated the savages and got burned for it, eh?" Bahregar remarks. "Yeah. Okay. I won't push you, Princess. But if you ever want to relax and unwind"

"Thank you, Bahregar, but no," I growl. "I just I need some time to recover and figure myself out. I'm confused about a lot of things right now. I barely even feel like myself."

And isn't that an understatement.

"Well" Bahregar sighs, standing up. "I'll leave you to it, then. Don't be a stranger, Princess."

"Not if I have a choice in the matter, Baba," I answer, and let them leave.

I get up as well, albeit briefly, and quickly collapse into bed. I already feel exhausted, and the brief chat with Baba has me thinking about a lot. First and foremost, I realize that now I know two languages, so there's something I need to try. I close my eyes and let my focus drift into the deepest parts of my soul, freeing my attention from my flesh and my brain. I am, at least for now, no longer Malrosa. I am simply power, and mana, and Vita. And I have someone I'd like to ask a question.

I use a single point of mana to poke at the blackness next to me. Once again it stirs, a slight fear and aggression to it that quickly subsides when it acknowledges me. I send it a greeting, which it reciprocates. Then, I write out something in Athanatos script.

Can you read this?

Excitement. Recognition. Joy.

Yes, my elder in power responds.

Oh. Oh, holy shit. I send excitement of my own, apprehension, and a little bit of disbelief.

I have a lot of questions, if that's okay.

Amusement. Agreement.

Ask away. I have plenty of my own.

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