191. Found Family (Patreon)

A/N: Hello! I'm back! My wrist is still a bit damaged but I got my old speech to text program working and I'm back to the grindstone. Also, content warning for suicidal ideation. Enjoy the chapter!

The delicious scent of a dying meal wafts through me. It's close. I dash towards it, no longer having the energy to avoid salivating. I'm hungry, oh so hungry, but I'm always hungry so it hardly matters. I have to save them. This one and the next one and the next one and the next. I'm good at it, because my nose only smells prey if it's still alive.

I find the pile of rubble the smell is coming from. My muscles burn and ache, and I could wipe it all away with just one bite, but I don't even let myself think about it as I wrap my claws around the shattered stone and heave.

"I'm here, I've got you," I reassure the smell, just in case they're conscious. "I look a little scary, but I promise I'm not going to hurt you."

As I lift up the rubble, I finally spot the prey underneath it, its eyes weakly fluttering open to stare at me in fear. The islands are no longer moving above us, so it's impossible to know for sure how much time has passed, but I estimate that it has at least been over a day since this town was leveled and so many of its inhabitants trapped or killed. This meal—this person has been without food or water the entire time. Every second I waste with them, another meal winks away from the edge of my senses, dead. Yet I can't afford to rush either, or else I risk killing the people in front of me.

For any number of reasons, really. Understandably, the person I'm trying to save now looks rather terrified.

"I'm a nice vrothizo, I promise," I insist, using two arms to push the block of stone I'm lifting above my head so I can get close enough to reach another arm out and grab the human. They don't at all seem like they want to come with me, but they don't really have the strength to resist. "It's okay. I'm going to get you some water. I promise, it's okay."

I promise, I'm not going to eat you. I'll kill myself before I do.

Lifting them up out of the way, I let the rubble drop back down. Then I start running slowly, because I can't accelerate too fast with a human in my arms or else it will hurt them. The gradual pace is excruciating, but the warm body I hold to my chest, pumping with blood and lush with anima, is far more excruciating still. It's okay. I can keep going. I have to.

A bit under a minute later, I make it to the clearing by the spring where the local Templars have set up camp. They eye me warily as I approach, still nervous around me even after the thousands of dying people I've brought them for rescue, even after the half-dozen times one of them has attacked me in a panic and I've had to avoid them. They are slowly getting used to me, but none of them have lived in Skyhope and none of them know I used to be a Templar myself, even if only for a little bit. They don't trust me at all. I appreciate that. The people I know have been trusting me a little too much, in my opinion.

I suppose a little trust would be nice just so they stop getting in my way, though.

"Vrothizo!" one of them shouts, hunkering behind their shield and raising their sword.

"Wait, isn't this that other one?" a second one answers hesitantly, though he also raises his weapons at me.

Grinding my teeth in frustration, I start to slow down. I don't want to have to dodge swords while holding someone on death's door.

"Is there another vrothizo around?" I call out to them. "I can handle it for you."

Ideally, of course, the Templars will have already killed any other of my kin. But part of me hopes that they failed to do so, because I am so desperately hungry that even the foul blood of my own kind would be a welcome meal. I need something. Anything. But I just can't stop now, not unless it's for something serious. Like a vrothizo.

I start sniffing around for one of my own kind, since that will probably give me better information than just waiting for the Templars to respond anyway. Nothing. The tantalizing scent of human is too thick, it's too hard to focus on anything else. I suppose that means if there is one of my kind around, they at least probably aren't very strong.

"Look, this one is dying," I call out again, indicating the human in my arms. "Can you just take them and get them some water and whatever else they need without stabbing me?"

The Templars hesitate, but someone calls out behind them.

"Get out of its way, boys," the Captain in charge snaps. "It's been helping all damn day, just let it."

Sighing with relief, I jog forwards, nodding a brief thank you to the Captain as I run past his subordinates and take the person in my arms to the medical tent. I quickly drop them off and leave before I can bother anyone too much, and sprint back out of the camp.

Just keep going. Just keep saving people. Just keep going until there is no one left alive. Then, and only then, will I rest.

It's horribly easy to find people trapped in the rubble. My senses, designed as they are to seek out living souls, are ironically quite adept for search and rescue purposes. I can just follow my hunger, and it will lead me right to the closest person who needs help. The monstrous instincts I have that push me to find and kill food… I'm almost thankful to have them here. There's something deeply triumphant about twisting them towards the purpose of saving people, rather than hurting them.

Back and forth I run, moving rubble, grabbing humans, getting them to safety, and returning to do it all again. I don't know how long it's been and I don't know how long I continue. I lose myself in the repetition of it, letting routine trump feral urge, becoming a machine instead of a monster. Whatever works. Whatever gets the job done. More and more people die while I rescue their peers. I'm never fast enough, but I still can't stop running.

And then something new enters my senses, and my hunger screams too loudly to be ignored.

Rich. Powerful. Certain death. The perfect meal. My hunger needs to know what it now senses, and I barely have the mental presence to be thankful I'm not currently carrying someone. I surely would've dropped them before sprinting off toward the source of this smell. Where is it, where is it!? Up in the sky? My eyes gaze frantically above the tree line, and then I spot it. Brilliant blue. A truly divine meal.

How do I get it? I don't think I can jump that high. As I wrack my brain for an answer, it turns to look at me and starts descending. What luck! I watch out of the corner of my eye as one of my brethren leaps out from the trees towards my meal, and a whip-like tendril of blue streaks from the food and snaps through them, killing them instantly. I tense and crouch lower as I approach. I will need to dodge those attacks if I am to eat. But even as I get in range, my meal does not strike. Am I being baited to approach? It doesn't matter. I have to approach anyway. My jaw aches for blood.

Closer, closer. I accelerate towards my food, drinking in details that might be dangerous. Four arms; I won't be able to overwhelm it easily. Compound eyes; flanking will have limited effectiveness. Bright blue scales; attacks other than my teeth and spines likely won't penetrate. However, the scales don't seem to cover the entire body. They almost look… oh, it's armor, not a body part. Dragon scales, like Vita wears. This is a person. This is Vita. This is a person named Vita and I know her and I can't eat her I can't I can't I can't—

My mouth is open wide to bite, my claws are ready to grab and gouge, my quills are thrumming with energy and drinking in light, but I still force myself to slow down. My sprint becomes a jog, my job becomes a staggered walk, and with all my willpower I force myself to a stop in front of her, twitching and hyperventilating, reduced to nothing but a war between instinct and reason.

But it's one I'm winning.

"Holy shit, Lark," Vita says. "How are you even… fuck, okay, I got you. I have a bunch of food, and you need to eat, all right?"

I don't answer, of course, because I'm not really a person right now, but I mechanically chew a little when she reaches forward and carefully puts an ensouled meat ration in my mouth. I swallow as soon as I'm able, letting the ecstasy soothe my aching body and take just a little bit of weight off my straining mind. Vita continues to feed me, her indescribably wonderful soul filling me up like nothing else for the instant before the hunger returns after every swallow. Once I finally feel in control of myself again, I'm tempted to continue pretending otherwise just to get even one more bite. I know that would be stupid, though, since Vita can't be lied to. Not to mention how awful it would be to lie to her like that.

She hands me more food before I can say anything. I glance at her in surprise, and while I'm not totally sure what all of her expressions mean yet I'm pretty sure she's smirking.

"Don't worry about it," she tells me. "It's not like I'm going to run out."

I blink slowly, not entirely sure how that's relevant. Of course Vita isn't going to give me parts of her soul until she runs out of it. I still shouldn't take any more than I absolutely have to.

"Why are your tentacles visible?" I ask her instead of saying any of that. I never used to be able to see them, I could just sort of vaguely feel where they were.

"Weird complicated anima stuff," Vita answers without really explaining anything. Wait, I don't have time to care about this anyway! I have to go save people!

"Thank you for the food! I need to get back to helping!"

"I'll come with you," Vita says, taking off into the sky again.

I nod and sprint towards the closest trapped human. To my surprise, Vita manages to keep pace from the air, hovering about ten feet above me. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the one thing I was better than Vita at, speed, also got overtaken by her. I can't help but be frustrated that it has happened so soon, though. Her tendrils extend outwards in every direction, emerging from painful-looking holes in her exoskeleton where yet more brilliant blue writhes underneath. And then… they extend towards everyone I can smell nearby.

All at once, the tendrils reach out, snaking and slithering through cracks in the destroyed city, touching trapped survivors one by one, and then… nothing. The people vanish. They aren't here anymore. She's teleporting them all away.

She doesn't need me at all.

A wave of unexpected despair has me start to slow down, but I quickly shake myself out of it. Even with her absurd efficiency, Vita can't really be everywhere at once and this town is quite large. I break away, heading in a different direction from her so that I can grab people on the fringes that her trajectory won't lead her to.

With Vita's help, it takes less than an hour to save the rest of the people in the city. I was expecting my work to end when the last person I was running to died in the rubble, but she got here just in time. I shove away a painful and unexpected bout of envy and resentment, forcing myself to focus on how profoundly wonderful that is. I have been scared and angry at her for so many things, but this right here is an unequivocal good. So when she floats back over to me, there's only one thing I can let myself say.

"Thank you."

She stares at me for a moment, and I belatedly realize what a dumb thing to say that was. It's not like she did it for my sake. The whole reason I'm here is because she told me to head this way. She was just finishing the rest of my job, because I was too slow to do it myself. But all Vita does is descend back to the ground and give me a small nod.

"You're welcome," she says simply. "I figured you might need the help, considering how long you've been out here."

"I guess so," I shrug, unable to meet her gaze. "Where's the next closest town?"

"I think you've done more than enough," Vita says with surprising calmness. "Come on, let's head back to Mimas."

"No!" I snap angrily at her. "There were still people alive here, which means there are probably still people alive and trapped in other places too! We have to go help them!"

"They are getting help," Vita says. "You don't have to help everyone personally, Lark."

"I shouldn't just stop helping for no reason, either!"

Vita sighs.

"Come on. Jelisaveta is worried about you. Let's go home."

I cross my arms, fighting an urge to scowl.

"…That's not fair," I complain.

I shouldn't care more about Jelisaveta than I care about saving people, but I do. I do and I know that makes me a bad person but I feel that way anyway, so of course now I want to go back. I shouldn't, though. I know I shouldn't. People are still in danger.

"Lark, please," Vita insists, holding out a hand. "They will be fine, I promise. You, meanwhile, need food, hugs, and rest."

"I don't sleep," I remind her testily.

"I didn't say 'sleep,' I said 'rest,'" Vita growls back. "And you absolutely need the latter. Come on. Please?"

I shift my way back and forth, itching to just run off. But I guess I can't outrun her anyway, so I take her hand, and an instant later we are somewhere else.

Immediately, I glance around to get my bearings, but our arrival point is so familiar that it's not even all that disorienting to appear here suddenly. I'm right outside my own home, and after spending the last who knows how many hours surrounded by the rubble of destroyed buildings it's a profound relief to see it and everything around it still standing tall. Jelisaveta stands beside us, only mildly surprised by our sudden appearance, as her focus seems to be entirely on the sky.

"Back at it?" Vita asks. "Please tell me you at least slept."

"I did, yes," Jelisaveta nods. "I just wanted to figure out what was happening now. It seems like the lights are moving now, but they're all so far away even I can't figure out what they are."

I glance up at the sky. The sphere that the Mistwatcher had been tearing apart and devouring is less than a husk now, nothing but a handful of discarded stones in the sky, like gravel thrown by a titan. There's nothing to look at anymore, and the Mistwatcher seems to be done with whatever it was doing, but it's not returning to us. It's still up there in the sky. I compare the current configuration of white lights against the black backdrop with my memories of them, and sure enough they're in different places than they were before.

"I think we're rotating, or maybe moving some other way," Jelisaveta says. "The Mistwatcher isn't done. He's taking us somewhere."

"Terrifying," Vita sighs. "Nothing we can really do about it, though. Anyway, I just wanted to drop Lark off. Have you two decided if you want to come with us to meet Nawra?"

"Wait, is that happening soon?" I ask turning to face her.

"Yeah," Vita nods. "Apparently, Nawra and I will have a lot more freedom in the coming days because the Mistwatcher is distracted. She wants to meet as soon as possible."

I don't like the sound of that. Vita just shrugs, not really looking all that excited herself.

"I want to go," I decide. "I know it's probably not a good idea, but I want to meet the woman that made my kind. I want to know who she really is."

"I understand," Vita nods. "I'll come get you when we're leaving, then."

"You know that no matter what, Nawra doesn't define who you are, right?" Jelisaveta says. "She doesn't get to decide who you get to be. What she wants from you isn't what you are."

I sigh. I know that. It's hardly the first time she's insisted on telling me so, but unfortunately she still insists on doing the human thing where she tells me the same thing over and over again as if I didn't remember it the first time. It's not about Nawra defining me anymore, though. I just… I want to know. That's all. I know I'm not going to like the answer. I know I'm not going to be able to do anything with the answer. But still, I have this undefinable urge to understand where I come from. She's part of my very soul. How could I skip a chance to meet her?

"I want to go," I repeat, since humans apparently need so much repeating.

"Alright," Jelisa nods. "Then I'll go too, if that's okay?"

"Of course," Vita nods. "I mean, I literally already invited you and everything. Anyway, I'll probably be back in the next few hours maybe, so see if you can help Lark relax."

"Couldn't you ask me to do something easier, like kill the Mistwatcher?" Jelisa smirks.

"…Hey," I grumble.

Vita just laughs and flies off, leaving me with a smarmy-looking Jelisa. She shrugs at me and chuckles, opening up her arms as an invitation to hug. I accept, stepping forward and burying my face in her shoulder as I squeeze her lightly with all four arms. I'm home. Vita was right, I needed this. Not that I'll ever admit it to her.

We head inside and are immediately greeted by Melissa, who is doing a great job of wearing the clothes I made for her without letting them sink into her body or dissolve. She's boiling some potatoes for Jelisa, so Jelisa thanks her and takes over, leaving Melissa and me to grab some of the caged rats we keep for our meals. We have a nice… breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? I don't know what time it is and I don't know how many meals the others have had today, but it is nonetheless a beautiful moment that I'm happy to keep in my memory forever.

I don't deserve this, I remind myself. I know I'm not supposed to think that way, but it's hard. I've been thinking that way most of my life, after all. Jelisaveta can explain why it's okay for me to be happy over and over again, as many times as she wants, and sometimes I can even believe her. I think back now and look at the times she held me in her arms and I did believe her, but they still somehow feel fake when I'm not in the moment. It hurts. I don't deserve this. I can't believe otherwise right now.

But maybe later. Maybe I'll be able to believe in myself again later. I can remind myself of that, if nothing else. Sometimes it's possible, even if it isn't right now.

We don't do much until Vita returns with Penelope, but that's okay. Just eating, chatting, and being with the people I love is more than enough for me. It ends too soon, but that's just how it is. There's always something else that needs doing. And with Vita around, sometimes that thing is speaking to evil demi-goddesses that are also kind of my mom.

There's a knock on the door, and Vita calls out to us.

"Are you guys ready? I know there hasn't been a ton of time to prepare, but I don't want to take risks on our time window here."

Jelisaveta gives me a questioning glance and I nod back to her. I'm ready.

"No sense delaying, then," Jelisa calls back, the two of us standing up. "It's not our apocalypse, right? You be good while we're gone, Melissa."

"Okay mom!" Melissa answers happily.

Jelisaveta freezes for a moment, then walks over and wraps the slime girl up into a big hug.

"You little rascal," she murmurs. "I love you so much."

I hesitate, shocked and a little confused by this interaction. This is the first time Melissa has called Jelisaveta mom. I mean, she kind of is our mom, but it's weird to say that, right?

"Get over here and join the family hug," Jelisa orders me, trying not to cry. I, uh, I guess I can't say no to that. I embrace them both, soaking in Jelisa's warm strength and Melissa's cool pliability. I really do love them both. Like I loved August. Like I imagine a family to love.

"…Do you, um, want me to call you mom?" I manage to quietly mumble.

Again, Jelisaveta stiffens, not quite sure how to answer.

"I don't know if I'm old enough or wise enough to be the mother of two wonderful girls like you," Jelisaveta answers. "It's a bit embarrassing. Definitely… definitely not something I ever expected to hear."

I continue hugging her for a little while before admitting, "I don't know if that's a yes or no."

"I don't know either," she chuckles. "But I guess if you want to call me that you are more than welcome to. Both of you. I'll… try to be worthy of it."

I squeeze her a little harder, and then pull away.

"Well, you're about to meet your competition," I remind her. "I doubt she'll be a difficult one to beat."

Jelisa laughs, wiping a tear from her eye as she gives our favorite slime girl one last squeeze and waves goodbye, following me towards the door. Vita, Penelope, and… Nugas, of all people, are waiting for us on our porch.

"Only two moms, huh?" Vita smirks. "Amateur."

Immediately, Nugas busts out laughing as Penelope puts her face in her palm, muttering something about it not being a competition. I'm particularly confused about why Nugas is here, especially since she's uncharacteristically dressed in some very practical light armor rather than her usual, rather less covering outfits. It very much looks like she's dressed to travel, but the only place it would make sense for her to be going is…

"Nugas, are you coming with us?" I ask.

She smiles, and I already know that means yes. I can't help but feel a little nervous at that, no matter how guilty it makes me. She looks exactly like Vita did, back when I was little. Certainly much more expressive, and her eyes are a lot more blue, but other than that? It's like a spitting image of some of my worst memories, and when I first met her I nearly had a breakdown.

Tensions have cooled off a lot since then, though. Nugas and I actually see each other a lot, since she's responsible for a lot of the managerial work that goes into maintaining Mimas. Whenever I was needed for something other than my usual monster patrols, she was usually the one giving me my instructions. She would kind of be my boss, if Mimas worked that way.

But of course, just when I was starting to get used to her, I learned why she looks like that. I learned that she's an animancy victim on a whole different level than any of my Revenant friends. I learned that she was, by her own admission, tortured and murdered. She says that she's a different person now, a new person, and she's happy that way. I can't help but find it horrifying, though. Partially for the obvious reasons, like the murder and the animancy abuse and all that.

But it's also partially because I find the idea of being wiped away and replaced with a better, happier person to be… terrifyingly appealing. I don't like how I have a yearning for it, for something that's so much more beautiful than suicide but still far too uncomfortably close. Just thinking about it twists my insides into knots and reminds me of all the ways my mind just doesn't work right. The more I think about it, the more it makes me hate myself. And of course, that only multiplies the wish to be someone else.

I thought I'd gotten over wanting to die. But is this really any different?

"I admit, I may have invited myself along," Nugas grins, snapping me from my thoughts. "It seemed to me that Jelisa would need some help keeping the rest of you out of the wrong kinds of trouble."

"…I can't say it fills me with confidence to hear the implication that there are right kinds of trouble," Jelisa sighs.

"Don't you worry about it one bit, Jelisa," Nugas titters. "You can leave all of that to me. And in truth, I'm mostly just curious. I've been quite negligent in meeting my Lady's future in-laws."

"…We are not engaged, Nugas," Penelope mutters, blushing slightly.

"You wanna be?" Vita asks casually.

Penelope blushes far deeper, rubbing her hands against her temples. Everyone else goes silent. Did… did I just witness a proposal?

"Let's talk about this later," Penelope manages. "In private?"

"Sure," Vita shrugs. "Well, if nobody has anything else to do, shall we get going?"

We all confirm that we are ready, and moments later an… invisible force wraps around us, pushing up against the bottom of my feet and lifting me into the sky. I jolt in surprise and stumble, falling backwards onto solid air. A flying platform of some sort? I feel around with my hands as we continue to ascend and find that it's more than just a platform, it's an entire bubble that protects us from falling out and shields us from the high-speed winds as we accelerate. Gosh, and I remember having to travel in Vita's arms just a few months ago. People have often told me that it's terrifying how quickly I learn new things and become stronger, but this is another level entirely.

We blast off into the sky at incredible speed, and soon enough I see the entirety of Verdantop below me. The massive, vibrant forests are of course the most obvious feature, the brilliant green doubtlessly giving Verdantop its name. I can also see Baldone, floating in sync with us despite not technically being connected to the main island, along with a much smaller chunk of island that I think is called Litia. Two holes in the forest mark Skyhope Crater and the salt flats New Talsi was built on. There are plenty of other places I've never been to or really even heard much about. There's a tall mountain up in the corner of the island that I've heard be called Claw Peak. A big city, visible even from up here, sits on the edge of a peninsula, with a crowd of tiny specks that I think might be tamed flying animals hovering around it. I've seen maps before, but they have nothing on this view.

As Verdantop gets smaller and smaller in our view, other islands become prominent, each beautiful in their own way. Even the stone they're made out of can be dramatically different in color, but I've always known that just by looking up. Seeing the tops of all these islands, seeing how dramatically different their trees can be, catching glimpses of animals I've never seen before, seeing structures that look nothing like anything made by humans… I realize how small we are. I can see, suddenly, how this world we live in could have been born from the fragments of a hundred different worlds all devoured by our horrible, false god. Which one of these islands are we going to, though?

"You all may as well get comfortable," Vita announces. "Even at this speed it'll be hours before we start getting close to Nawra's island. It's pretty damn high up."

Sure enough, as we enter the giant, empty column of air that the Mistwatcher left through, it becomes obvious that there are... goodness. Maybe thousands of miles of islands above us? At least hundreds. I don't think I've ever seen this far before, so I don't really have any way to know the distance.

"Isn't it risky to get closer to the Mistwatcher like this?" Penelope asks. "I assume that, even if it's paying less attention than usual, it still won't allow anyone to escape."

"Don't worry, it's way up there but it's not in the top row," Vita assures her. "Everything should be fine, assuming this isn't an elaborate plot on my sister's part to get the Mistwatcher to slap us. Which, no, I don't think is likely."

Well now I can't help but be nervous about it! Oh, well. It's not like there's anything I could do about it. I try not to feel bad about that. I'm not coming along to help with anything, this is just… a personal interest, I guess. It's a social visit. Vita is going to meet family and I guess I am too. Nawra. My progenitor. The woman at the other end of my soul. I don't have to care about anything else. We won't be fighting, we won't be staying long, there's nothing for me to worry about. It will probably hurt a little to get to know her, but I'm used to pain.

So I wait, curling up and entering torpor since I don't really have anything better to do. But a few hours into our journey, the sky starts to change. At first, I think the white pinpoint of light are starting to wink out. But I realize that the ones that are disappearing are the dimmest, and it's not that they are going away but rather the blackness around them is getting brighter, getting tinged with yellow.

It's very slight and hard to see up until a moment where, in the corner of the opening of the sky, a searing glimpse of unparalleled brightness peeks over the edge. It's so bright that looking at it is painful. It's so bright that just by it being there, I feel a little warmer. What is this? What is this searing light in the sky? Is the Mistwatcher going towards it?

Vita stares at it open-jawed, her mandibles hanging as she quietly says something in another language.

"What?" Jelisaveta asks, holding a hand over her face to block line of sight from the glowing pain.

"God's Avarice," Vita whispers. "Back home, in Liriope, at the top of the cavern there is a great flaming ball of light made by the Progenitor. She named it... the best translation I can think of is God's Avarice. It means 'that which is insatiably coveted by the divine.'"

"But that…" Jelisa gulps, "that looks to be as large as the Mistwatcher."

"No," Penelope whispers, somehow staring right at the screaming, burning sphere without blinking. More and more of it moves into view, making the world ever brighter. "Given the scales involved, and considering how the Mistwatcher still seems to be approaching it… it's larger than the Mistwatcher. Considerably so."

...What? How could... how could anything be…?

"Nawra says it's called a star," Vita announces. "There's apparently nothing to worry about. I guess this has happened before."

"What's it going to do with something that large?" Jelisa asks.

"The same thing he always does with everything, I imagine," Vita shrugs. "He's going to eat it."

No one has anything to say to that, so the conversation drops awkwardly into silence. I curl back up onto the floor, carefully letting my quills stretch and start to vibrate, soaking in some of the excess heat that's getting trapped in here with us, beating down on us from above. We spend the next few hours like that, the orb that's too bright to look at growing larger in the sky as it gets closer, and the Mistwatcher growing smaller as it floats farther away. And eventually, Vita announces that our destination is in sight.

We have arrived on the Island of Life and Death. The place where my kind was birthed to devour the world.

It's a solemn and unassuming place, made of stone so dark it's almost black. The whole place seems to be a vast tundra, with no forests on its surface, only the occasional shrub. But the island is thick, with miles of stone between its top and bottom, and already I see many openings in the sides of its walls, entrances to a vast and dark underbelly where I suspect the majority of Nawra's work is done.

Vita seems to know where to go, and sure enough we approach one of the great holes in the side of the island, floating into an empty tunnel lit by glowing lichen crawling on the walls. The dull blues and greens only cast a dim light, just enough to see by and nothing more. It is cool in here, the air thin, but it doesn't take long before we find a carved stone platform, flat and wide enough for us all to land on it together. Standing there, waiting for us with a placid smile, is a human woman, flanked on either side of her by what look like two servants.

I took them all over carefully as we land. The servants are wearing simple white robes, hoods over their heads but nothing covering their face. I'm fairly certain that one is male and one is female, but they both look strangely similar, androgynous and unremarkable. Their faces are blank and their arms are clasped in front of them. They make no motion to even acknowledge that we have arrived.

The woman in the middle, conversely, keeps a grin locked to her face, her figure exaggerated and voluptuous. She has long black hair, wears a smooth black dress, and most notably of all she has pitch-black eyes. In exactly the same way Vita's human body had the whites and irises of her eyes turn blue, Nawra's eyes—for this must be Nawra—are a deep and all-consuming black. Unlike Vita, this consumes her pupils as well, turning her eyes into a homogenous darkness without any indication where she might be looking.

I have to admit, I find her appearance both strangely familiar and oddly surprising. A human? Really? For such an old monster, I never imagined that she would be human. Why do I find her so familiar, though? Is it just because she made me?

"Welcome!" Nawra says brightly, raising her arms in greeting. "You have no idea how happy I am to have you all here. Vita, it is so delightful to finally see you face-to-face."

Her voice is beautiful and oddly soothing, but something about the way she talks puts me on edge. What is it? What's wrong? I guess she kind of reminds me of Vita, but the reasons for that are pretty obvious, so… no, wait.

"It's great to see you too, Nawra," Vita answers, stepping forward and raising her own arms for a hug.

The hair, the eyes, but more than anything it's the face. I glance to Nugas, and then I glance back to Nawra. They look very similar. Nawra could very easily be Vita's older sister. But… they're not related that way physically, right? Of course not, that wouldn't make any sense. The body Nugas is based on wasn't even Vita's original body.

Nawra twitches slightly as Vita hugs her, but her face snaps back up into a smile and she quickly returns the embrace.

"Come, come!" Nawra insists, motioning for us to follow her as she turns and heads deeper into the tunnel. "There's so much we have to catch up on!"

It's then, as she turns, that I spot it. A thin tendril of flesh runs out from the bottom of her dress, barely as thick as a thread. It's not like a tail, but more like… a cord. Or a wire. It snakes off down the tunnel, camouflaged against the dim darkness of the stone, but it's still there, leading off to who knows where.

This isn't Nawra at all is it? It's like... a puppet. A puppet she shaped to look like Vita's hypothetical human sister. Is she trying to be creepy!? Her servants turn to follow her as she walks off, the little tendril of flesh connecting her to whatever is at the other end of this tunnel twitching and moving out of the path of her footsteps, never staying behind her. Like something is reeling it in the closer she gets to wherever it leads.

"There's so much I have to show you, sister!" the puppet says excitedly. "We're going to have such a lovely time!"