Okay. Hmm. Weird slime parasites being inside my teammate and mentor seems... bad. Bently and I are the only ones awake right now. He, Orville, Norah, and— quick check— me are all clear. If there are any parasites in the rest of us, they don’t have souls.

Best not think about that!

The immediate problem are the parasites I can sense inside my team. I’m not sure if I can soul-kill them. I definitely might, they’re small enough in power that I’d normally be confident. But if my power is touch range and the parasite is inside the body, am I touching them by touching their host? Maybe yes, maybe no. Beyond that, is killing a parasite while it's inside the host even a good idea? Is having a parasite corpse in your body better than the parasite itself? The little slime I saw was the size of my fist, which is quite a thing to have lodged inside the body. At least, I think so? I don’t know much about parasites or biology or any of that... which means I should probably wake up the biomancer.

"Um, Vita?" Bently asks quietly. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I murmur back at him. "Some pretty big parasites are inside Pen and Remus, though."

His eyes bulge, and the poor guy looks absolutely devastated.

"O-oh my gosh, Vita, I-I'm so sorry, I didn't see anything, I—"

"Hey, hey! Hey. It's okay, Bently," I reassure him, trying to get him to quiet down. "Remus couldn't even see them during the day when I pointed one out. You're fine. We're just going to wake Penelope up and see if she can deal with it. Okay? It's not a big deal."

Bently nods solemnly, placated but clearly feeling no better. I try to grin at him to improve his mood, but it just seems to spook him more. Oh, well. As long as he’s awake and around, he can help defend me if the parasites make Penelope go berserk or something, and that’s all I really need. I make my way over to Penelope's sleeping bag, clearing my throat loudly. Penelope sleeps right through it, completely out of it. I nudge her sleeping bag with my foot, and she blearily starts to blink awake.

"Hey," I whisper softly at her. She looks really, really confused for a moment, but then glares fiercely at me.

"What do you want?" she snaps.

"Are you pregnant?" I ask.

She opens and closes her mouth a few times, her face mixing fury, concern and abject confusion in a way I’ve never seen on a person before.

"What the fuck are you on about?" she settles with.

"Pregnant," I repeat, trying not to smile. "Yes or no."

"No!" she hisses.

"Okay, then I think you have a parasite inside you."

That got her awake. Instantly she was sitting up, a look of all-consuming terror in her eyes. She hesitates a little, eyes twitching, before taking a deep breath and starting to cast a spell.

"Okay, do you know about where it is?"

I frown, focusing. It was hard to tell when it was inside Penelope's body; her own soul was so much bigger it acted as cover.

"Upper half of your body, I think," I tell her. "Neck, maybe? That seems like a weird place for an internal parasite."

"It... is," Penelope says slowly. "Okay, let me scan for it."

She’s breathing hard. Geez, I really spooked her. The girl must have a thing against parasites. She brings her hands up to her neck and lets the spell cast, running it slowly down and around her body. Eventually, after scanning from head to toe, she shakes her head.

"I don't detect anything."

"Well, I still do. There's one inside Remus, too, and when we encountered something that felt like it before, he couldn't even see it in broad daylight. It was this little slime thing, translucent, about as big as my fist. Would being a slime change the kind of spell you need to detect it?"

"No... it wouldn't," Penelope insists. "You're positive something is inside me? Even though I can't detect it at all?"

She looks really freaked out, but no sense lying about it, I suppose.

"One-hundred percent, yeah. They're the same things I felt inside burrow hounds."

She nods, slowly.

"Is it just Remus and I? There aren't any others?"

"As far as I can tell, yeah," I confirm.

"Vita's never been wrong so far," Bently chimes in, worry in his voice. "You might be really sick, Penelope!"

Penelope pinches her chin with her thumb, thinking.

"...Well, that's the problem. I'm not sick. As best I can tell, I'm as healthy as I've been all trip. We should wake Remus up, see if he has any insight."

I take a deep breath. Something was up, but I have no idea what it is. Just some hyper-camouflaged creatures evolved to be invisible to biomancy, maybe? Is that how nature works? Well, I don’t have any better ideas.

"We may as well wake everyone up,” I say. “I was keeping track of the parasites before I passed out, they must have slipped in during the few hours I was out. It might be dumb luck, or they might be smart. Camp could be unsafe."

Penelope nods slowly, a fear-induced stiffness throughout her entire body. I nod to Bently, who shakes Orville and Remus awake while I go to get Norah.

"Vita? What's up?" Norah murmurs as I nudge her awake. "I doubt a monster attack would mean I get this nice of a wake-up call."

"Parasites," I answer. She curses and stands up immediately.

I explain the situation to the group, with a bit of help from Bently. Remus stays stoic and silent throughout, only reacting when I explicitly ask him in the end.

"What do you think we should do, sir?"

Remus thinks for a while before answering.

"If Penelope can't detect them, we might need a more specialized biomancer," he says slowly. "Penelope, keep an eye on our conditions. I will arrange treatment for us personally when we return to Skyhope. In the meantime, if something catastrophic starts to happen, Penelope should be able to detect and treat it. Otherwise, without anything obvious to go on, we eat extra rations and pray to the Mistwatcher that it's just leaching nutrients."

He nods at Penelope. She relaxes ever so slightly, nodding back.

"Should we move camp, sir?"

He grunts.

"Your call, scout."

Internally, I groan. Remus would kick my ass back at the guild if I didn't play it safe, but what was more safe in this situation?

"I think we keep the camp in place rather than try to move at night," I say. "I'll stay awake the rest of the shift, and I'll know if any more parasites come."

Orville and Norah sag with relief, while Remus nods.

"Fair enough. Let us know the moment you detect any changes, if you do."

I nod, letting everyone get back into bed. Time to wait until everyone passes out so I can snack on my bounty. So I wait. And wait. And wait.

Penelope was just not fucking sleeping, though. I glance her way. She was pretending to sleep, or at least trying to. Yet it has to have been at least a couple hours, and she hasn't passed out at all.

Slowly, quietly, I get up and walk back over to Penelope's sleeping bag, sitting down next to her. She tenses, her full body coiling like a spring.

"Hey," I whisper to her. "You doing okay?"

She doesn't respond, still pretending to be asleep. Well, if she was going to play it like that...

"You know, this kind of reminds me of the one time a kid I knew died and the guards actually cared," I murmur softly. "There were maggots in his brain. Some kinda bug had laid a bunch of eggs in his ear, right? And apparently, over time, they hatched. These maggots started eating his brain, kinda like what you do to those rats. We knew about it, but it was like... what do you do? We’ve got no chance in hell to afford a biomancer. Dude's got maggots in his brain, sucks to be him. But one of the older kids realized they were some kinda monster bug eggs, and he got a reward for showing the guards the corpse. I think he mighta known about it while the kid was alive, but waited until he died so we didn't have to share food anymore. Can you imagine? Knowing someone's head was slowly getting eaten from the inside out and deciding—"

"Okay, okay, stop!" Penelope hisses. "I'm sorry I slapped you. Okay? Is that what you want to hear?"

"No, but thank you for apologizing. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I could tell you weren't really sleeping."

"I am, by all methods I'm aware of, completely fine," she whispered back.

"But...?" I prompt.

"But I'm terrified," she admits. "I'm clearly in danger, I don't know how to handle it, and I don't want to die."

I nod. Not dying was a goal I could totally get behind. This… might be a good moment.

"Well... I guess I should say, then. You pretty much already know, but I'd like you to keep it secret."

Penelope glances my way, rolling over a little to see me better in the darkness.

"You were right,” I tell her. “I can kill things I touch. It works better on smaller, weaker things. So I think... I might be able to use it on your parasite, without hurting you."

Her eyes go wide. That, for whatever reason, seems to make her even more afraid. Did I fuck up?

"No. No, Vita, please do not touch me. I will deal with this on my own."

I frowned.

"You sure?"

She swallows.

"Completely sure. You might kill me. Or you might kill... the parasite, and I still wouldn't be able to find it. You said it was large. If I can’t find it to remove it, that could cause even more damage. So we have to do this the right way. Does that make sense?"

"I guess so. Um, you're not worried about my deathtouch thing, right?"

She manages a little bit of a smile. A rare sight, from her.

"Well, you can touch someone and kill them. I can touch someone and kill their whole village. So... no touching!"

I blink, smiling back a little. Oh, thank goodness. She doesn’t care about that bit. That went well, then?

"I'll wake you up if I feel anything weird with you or the parasite, okay? You can relax."

"Thank you, Vita," she says with a slight nod. "I will try."

"Wow, a thank you," I comment, grinning at her. "You must be shaken up!"

Her smile freezes for a moment, but she quickly turns over and buries her head in a pillow.

"...Go back to guard duty," she murmurs.

"You're welcome," I respond quietly, getting up to do just that. "Let me know if you change your mind."

Nearly another hour passed, and Penelope finally, finally goes to sleep. About damn time. I’ve been hankering to munch all day.

With monumental effort, I keep the huge soul in storage and continue to only eat a few of the weaker ones, like I have on previous nights. I want to eat the big one so goddamn bad, but "in the middle of a possible crisis" seems like a bad time to indulge. We make it through the night without further incident, and the next two days the team focuses on getting back to the city as quickly and safely as possible. There are a few more fights and scrapes, but nothing as dangerous as what we cleared on the way out.

I keep a close mental eye on Remus and Penelope, but they seem mostly okay. Penelope runs hourly scans and continues to turn up nothing harmful. I’m not sure, but the parasite souls might be slowly getting bigger. It's difficult to tell, being hidden in souls so much larger than they are, but I point out the possible strength increase to the team and resolve to keep an eye on it. Both Remus and Penelope are eating a lot more than usual, but whether it’s need or stress is difficult to say, even for Penelope.

Remus is as unflappable as ever, but the closer we get to the city the more Penelope starts to freak out. I hope she’s okay. For a girl that systematically experiments on animals, she sure is freaked out by having something in her own body. Maybe it’s the fact that she herself couldn't detect it, that she had to rely on me to trust it was even there. I won’t complain too much about that; I need all the trust I can get.

When the trees start to thin and the edges of Skyhope Crater come into view, a palpable energy flows through the team. We made it. Orville and Norah are beside themselves with glee. Bently is still oddly reserved, but he smiles at the sight. Remus is as stoic as ever, while Penelope looks like she'd shat herself. For my part, I’m absolutely looking forward to going home and seeing Lyn and Rowan, giving them a huge hug and chatting about my adventures. Yet a big part of me can’t help but look back at the jungle and lament the future lack of free souls that would be popping up all over the place. At least I have plenty stored to chew through while I’m stuck in the city.

...I certainly worry about liking souls a little too much, but they’re just so damn tasty! Monster souls didn't even have the existential angst behind them, I can just eat them and it’s fine. Y'know, probably.

Before we knew it, we were at the gates. They opened for us, the hunters returning from a successful mission. People got out of the way, letting us pass them in line to reach our home first. Deference… that’s an even more surreal experience than having a whole extra sense.

Speaking of, the abundance of human souls nearby startle me with their sheer variety all over again. It had been a constant pressure in the jungle to identify groups of like monsters, but now there are no groups, at least not beyond the tiny, barely-worth-noticing vermin of the city. Humans are all unique, each of their souls an individual work of art.

We all trudged back to the hunter's guild. Remus gave us the rest of the day off, grabbing Penelope and hauling her away to find a healer. There was only one place for me to go: the shack.

After dropping my things in my room and grabbing a meal, I sprint to the stalls, buying more food and rushing back home. A small voice yells my name and soon the kids are pouring out of the shack, grabbing at my clothes, at the food, asking what being a hunter was like, if anyone died, if I’ve seen any cool monsters...

Then Lyn and Rowan were there, grinning proudly from the doorway to my shitty, dilapidated home. But it is my home, and after finishing a hug with each of the kids, I launch myself into their arms next, squeezing them with all my no-longer-inconsiderable might. They lean down and hug me back. All is right with the world once again.

"Welcome back, Vita," Lyn said.

"Lyn! Rowan! I can't believe you're both home! I'm so glad you're okay!"

"That's our line, shrimp!" Rowan said back, giving me a friendly noogie. "Did you seriously survive outside the walls this long?"

"Yuh-huh!" I confirmed. "I'm a great scout! And we have a biomancer so we can eat monster meat! It's so tasty!"

"Feels like that's not all you've been eating," Lyn murmurs quietly, grinning conspiratorially.

I nod rapidly, pointing down below. She laughs and the three of us descend to the room under the shack. I’m finally back together with people I don’t have to hide anything from! There was so much I wanted to talk about!

But first... I pull out my massive, humongous, stored super-soul that I’ve been salivating over for the last three days. Lyn and Rowan can’t see anything, but they went still watching my hands as I hold something only I can touch.

"Lyn!" I say, grinning. "Tell me how much more dangerous I feel!"

I swallow it. The massive, muddy, musical soul is a symphony to my senses as it slides towards my stomach. Something else is waiting for it first, however, pulling it apart and slurping it down like soul spaghetti, filling me with delicious, delicious power.

I let a satisfied exhale escape my lips as I finish devouring the massive monster soul. I feel... good. Like my whole body is lighter. Lyn's eyes are as wide as saucers.

"What the hell did you just eat, girl???" she asks, stunned.

"Deviant burrow hound soul," I respond smugly, pulling out a smaller soul for dessert. Aaaaah, so delicious! "It was bigger than the shack!"

"Vita, you just got way up on my radar, girl," Lyn said. "That shit's not even fair."

I did a quick comparison, then shrugged.

"M'still nowhere near as strong as you are."

"Yeah, Vita, but I've had my talent for way longer than you and I push it to the limit almost daily. I have to admit I'm jealous of how you can just make huge jumps like that."

I grin, letting myself look exactly as smug as I feel. I have the coolest talent out of all talents that might get my head chopped off by Templars!

"It's even super delicious to boot!"

Rowan covers his face as Lyn busts out laughing, grabbing me and hugging me again.

"You little goober! Don't rub it in!"

"Ooh!" I say, coming up for air from the cuddle, "I also saw metal for the first time! Remus has a metal sword!"

"Does he now?" she says, grinning mischievously. "Well!"

My jaw drops open. She wouldn't...

"Um, please don't try to steal from my boss, Lyn. I think he'd kick your butt."

"That sounds like a challenge!" she says, laughing at my increasing distress.

The day carries on and I tell them more and more of my adventures. I gush about how much explosion organs sold for, how I had to use my soul-pull in a fight, about Remus's insane slaughter of the burrow hounds, and the parasites they ran off to get a healer to deal with. As every detail of my adventures is laid out, they listen with rapt attention, jostling and squeezing and laughing alongside me. I promise to bring them my pay tomorrow, so the three of us could decide the right amount of money to keep the mob happy with.

Rowan took the job with the templars, but he’s tight-lipped about it. Apparently he can’t say much, but there also wasn't much to say. He and Lyn are putting in effort to be good little minions for now, to better blindside the Broken Drakens. I made them both promise to stay safe. Twice.

Eventually, as the hours pass, the next island starts to encroach overhead. I need to be back at the hunter's guild. Bidding my family goodbye, I run all the way to the guild. Pausing, waiting outside.

I couldn't feel Remus anywhere, but Penelope was in our room, still with the parasite in her. Curious. I head upstairs, finding her sitting on her bed rather than her desk for once.

"What happened?" I ask. "Where's Remus?"

"The healer he's insisting on can't see us for a few more days," she says glumly. "I have been ordered to stay here until you returned, then stick with you so you can 'monitor my condition' until a different biomancer can look at me."

"Oh," I murmur. "Well, uh... works for me, I guess. I wouldn't mind help carrying food tomorrow."

"Food?" she asks.

"You'll see," I tell her, quickly confirming no one was nearby before continuing. "Still not down for deathtouch experiments instead?"

"I am never going to be down for 'deathtouch experiments,' Vita," she insists. "Please don't touch me."

I nod, tossing most of my clothes off before hopping onto my own bed. I check, ever so carefully... yes! Rosco was there, safe and sound. I flop on top of him and squeeze my heart out. Penelope doesn't even make fun of me.

Sitting back up, I pull Rosco onto my lap to cuddle him as I stare at my woebegotten healer. Hmm. I’ve been having a lot more success talking to her since this whole slime thing. Maybe I can help.

"Are you still feeling okay?" I ask.

She glances up, swallowing.

"Yes, I still feel— and am— fine. If not for all the days we spent in the woods, I would call you mistaken or outright lying. But no one would believe that after your consistently flawless performance, not even me."

"Flawless?" I ask, raising an eyebrow. "You mean besides the time I nearly died to those tentacle guys and you were the only reason I didn't?"

She smiles a little.

"Well. Flawless in your role, I mean. You always knew exactly how many creatures we were up against, exactly where they were, their relative power level... arguing with you would be pointless. I can't help but be nervous, when you can see what's in me better than I can. Better than... everyone can."

I frown.

"Well... it's okay to rely on other people for stuff, you know. I'm good at sensing things, but I can't take hits. We're a team now, Penelope. You can rely on us."

She shudders.

"I really, really can't."

"Why not?" I ask, frowning.

She shakes her head.

"So many, many reasons. Sorry, but... now that you're here, I should try to sleep. I have plenty I need to catch up on."

"Me too," I say, nodding. "Big time me too. I got like... what, two or three hours a night?"

She smiles glumly a bit and nods.

"Mmm. Yes. I suppose so. Thank you, Vita. Good night."

"Good night," I answer, blinking away the surprise of getting thanked again.

Well, time for bed. Time to sleep. Time to do all the things a normal person would and should do after coming home from a dangerous mission. Except that my teammate still has an unknown parasite inside her, and only I can tell that it’s there.

Groaning internally, I get into bed, squeezing my best friend Rosco. I wait, patiently, for Penelope to fall asleep. Then I sit back up, pull out a soul, and munch down on it.

It was going to be a long fucking night, and I’ll need the energy. Damn slimes. I’m sure now that the slime soul is larger than it was before. Penelope's soul isn't getting any smaller, at least. Eating souls was still exclusively my schtick.

Still, I hope that healer Remus knows hurries it up.