My eyes… are blue?

“How are the pupils?” I ask immediately.

"Pupils?" Penelope mutters, pulling my face in closer. "They seem normal… perhaps slightly vertically ovoid, but not enough that anyone will notice. Why? What do you know about this?"

"My soul is a big blue eye with a vertical slit pupil," I explain. "So if my real eyes are becoming blue too... that's my first guess as to what's happening. My eyes used to be green, right? Do you think people will notice?"

"Yes and yes," Penelope grumbles. "Probably not most people, but the team will. Your family too, but you can just tell them the truth."

"I mean, I don't know the truth. I've been practicing pulling mana out a lot, and my mana is blue. Sort of. It feels blue in the same way souls feel like they have colors, anyway. That's about the only super relevant thing I did since you last saw me, unless getting into a fight to the death counts."

Penelope blinks incredulously at me, then sighs.

"Of course you mention that as an afterthought. Explains the blood on your face, I suppose. Who was your unlucky victim?"

"Nah, don't worry. That's all my blood."

"How reassuring," Penelope answers flatly. "I shall sleep soundly tonight. Anyway, if the team asks you can blame it on me. It’s not like they can get any more insufferable about the modifications you told them I was making."

"Ugh, I'm sorry. Are they bothering you about that? I genuinely did not realize they would make such a big deal about it."

"It's fine," Penelope sighs, waving me off. "...And not something I ever expected an apology for. Still, I am an expert at ignoring stupid, ignorant opinions. It isn’t a major issue. Now, other than your recent death battle, are there any other shocking revelations you'd like to unveil before you forget?"

I think for a moment. Is there anything I've been meaning to tell Penelope but forgot about?

"The souls inside your lobotomized rats are all wrong. They don't grow anymore. They still function like souls, and they still seem to be involved in controlling the body, but they've become stagnant."

Penelope's eyes go wide.

"Oh! Oh, my goodness. So there is a link? Soul growth…"

"Yeah," I confirm. "I've been thinking about it for a while. The Mistwatcher puts souls in us, but we don't need them to live. They grow bigger as we grow, and it just eats them when we die. We're like a fucking farm.”

Penelope frowns, tapping her chin.

"That checks out, I suppose. All the more reason to never die. Though to be fair, it’s not as if we don’t get anything out of the deal. I’m not sure how one would channel mana without a soul."

I guess that makes sense, but ‘ol Misty still seems like an asshole to me. Hmm… what else? There are some other things I haven't told her, right?

"Oh yeah, also when I focused really hard on channeling mana I entered a seemingly infinite expanse from where I apparently pull it all, and then I fell over because I forgot to breathe."

"Wh—"

"And after nearly killing me Capita heavily implied that her gang is trying to assassinate the King."

"The King!? Wait, your fight was with—"

"Also, a High Templar walked up to me and said that the Inquisitors are coming."

Penelope stares at me. I stare back.

"Is that all?" she asks. "Are you done?"

I think about that for a moment, sucking on the inside of my cheek. Penelope crosses her arms, tapping her foot.

"Yes," I conclude. "I'm pretty sure that's all of it, at least for now."

She lets out a huff.

"Okay, then we—"

"Oh, right!" I interrupt. "I fixed Fulvia's soul! Well, mostly. Heavily damaged souls seem to absorb raw spirit dust the same way that Revenants do!"

Penelope takes a deep breath in, letting it out slowly.

“Okay!” she says, doing her best to sound only slightly exasperated. “Well, that’s all very interesting, but we should probably be getting back to the guild. The Inquisition is going to be bad news.”

"I was afraid of that," I grumble, following after her as she walks towards the exit.

"Bye, mom!" Vitamin calls out.

"I said quit moving!" Margarette snaps.

"Bye, you guys. Good luck while I'm gone!" I respond, waving at them both. “So what’s the Inquisition’s deal?”

"While you shouldn't go around saying this to anyone, it's an open secret that the Inquisition is the church's animancy branch. Not, ostensibly, for any sort of nefarious purposes, however. As you may know, at least a small modicum of animancy is necessary for detecting animancy. It's an amusing conundrum: animancy is against the law, but in order to be even remotely capable of enforcing the law, animancy must be used."

I scowl.

"So at the very least, these guys are going to have the ability to see souls?" I ask.

"At the very least," Penelope agrees. "They’re not supposed to be capable of much else, but I wouldn’t be overly surprised if they are. Power like yours is a bit too tempting. You are going to need to avoid them entirely either way, that much is certain. Thankfully, there are exceptionally few Inquisitors. A bit over a decade and a half ago, that entire branch of the Templars was gutted when the High Inquisitor at the time was found guilty of… shall we say loosely interpreting the doctrine on animancy. Over half the organization was compromised, and the loss of personnel and reputation is something they’ve yet to recover from.”

"And how am I going to avoid them? They're looking for me, aren't they?" I ask.

"You're the scout," Penelope dismisses. "You manage to avoid half the monsters in the forest, so you figure it out. They have no official capacity to investigate yet, which means if the Inquisitors are being sent it's because they're hoping to catch you in the act. They may not be able to run an official inquiry, but they can bypass most of the bureaucracy we're tying them up with if an Inquisitor personally witnesses you performing animancy. You have more than just your own soul in your body, and that probably counts, so you need to make sure you are never seen."

I nod glumly. This... this might make saving all the souls inside me a little more difficult.

"Let's try to hurry up on this immortality thing," I sigh.

Penelope chuckles dryly, locking up the lab as we exit.

"Well, it's a good thing you said so, because before now I was planning on taking things as slow as—"

A beeping noise suddenly cuts her off, causing her to scowl and fish around her collarbone.

"Penelope?" Lord Erebus's voice asks from the necklace when she pulls it out.

"Johann," Penelope grumbles in answer, weaving a silence bubble around us. "What do you need?"

"Penelope! There you are! You weren't answering! I've been horribly worried!"

"I told you already, Johann, my experiments are too delicate to be letting rogue mana signatures invade my lab. I won't get calls when I'm working. What do you need?"

"Well, would you believe that one of my highest-profile suppliers has invited us to have a meal with—"

"No, Johann," Penelope snaps immediately. "You know I hate those things."

"I know, but he's quite the family man and I feel it would be somewhat of a faux pas for me to show up without my fiancée. I’m sorry Penelope, but you know how delicate these things are."

"I'm being called to the hunter's guild, Johann. I won't even be in the city. I'm sure your supplier will understand."

"A mission!? Penelope, but your hand isn't healed yet! And the hunters lately have been dying by the dozens, you can't—"

"I. Can't. What?" Penelope hisses into her necklace. "What I can't do is sit around and eat fancy dinners with rich old fools while my city is in shambles and my country is under siege! I am a Vesuvius! I slaughter Valka's enemies and uplift its kings. Do not presume to tell me that parading around as your accessory is more important than how I choose to use my time!"

Penelope is red in the face by the end of her tirade, hand clenched like she would crush the metal bead at the end of the necklace if she was able. Lord Erebus is silent for a good while after that, to the point I almost think he’s ended the communication.

"Is that… is that what you think I've been doing?” he answers eventually. “Penelope, I… you've barely spoken to me since you got that research lab. You got injured on your last mission and you didn't tell me!"

"And who says I have to tell you?" she demands.

"No one, Penelope. But why aren't you? Is it not reasonable for me to be worried about that? I love you, Penelope! I just want to see you from time to time!"

She sighs, some of the anger deflating out of her.

"I'm sorry, Johann. I know you do. Now just... isn't a good time. But I will work on keeping you better informed. Okay?"

A sigh is heard from the other end.

"All right. Be safe."

"Of course I will, Johann. I can't be going and getting myself killed before I'm immune to it. Oh, and you may wish to know that the Broken Drakens have implied plans to usurp the King while attempting to recruit a certain member of my team. You think you can use that to our advantage?"

“That’s… hmm. Yes, probably. I’ll see what I can find. Thank you, Penelope.”

"Goodbye, Johann."

She tucks the necklace back into her shirt and sighs, seeming suddenly exhausted.

"Um, you okay?" I ask.

Penelope chuckles, shaking her head as we resume our journey back to the hunter's guild.

"You're a lot like him, you know," she says. "Very… focused. Though while Johann sees people as a series of tasks to accomplish, you tend to not see people at all."

I scowl, confused and offended.

"That's a weird way to respond to me asking if you're okay," I grumble. "I'm trying my best."

She smiles, squeezing my shoulder with a still-growing hand.

"Thank you," she says. "Somehow, I like being one of the people you try for. You joke about it, but... it feels like you're the only person who understands me and still actually wants to be around."

I tilt my head.

"Um, you're welcome?" I hedge. "Why wouldn't I want to be around you?"

"In addition to... all of the prior reasons I have given you, Johann and I are using you in a scheme that will hopefully corrode the political power of the Templars enough to loosen their control on the metal trade," Penelope says. "It's been going on more or less since you met him, but I... declined to mention anything until now."

I nod. Less power for Templars sounds good to me.

"Okay," I say. "Neat."

Penelope laughs.

"You’re not even surprised, are you? Or angry? You made me promise to tell you things like this and I kept it a secret and you're not even angry?"

I shrug.

"You told me now. So, that’s progress. Why would I be angry? You’re not gonna hurt me or my family, so anything you do is fine."

She laughs some more, shaking her head.

“See? This is what I mean. You seem like a fool, but you just have... your own personal logic. And it’s beautiful! I don’t have to worry about what you’ll think of me. I really can just tell you anything. I can speak my mind.”

“So why don’t you?” I ask.

She stops walking, staring towards me for a moment. Then she shudders.

“Habit, I suppose. Do you ever…”

Another pause as she gathers her thoughts. I let her, saying nothing.

“When I was young, I would kill things for fun,” Penelope manages eventually. “My talent developed quite early, and… well, I was like a child with a new toy. Insects, at first. But it escalated. Rapidly. The sight of watching something fall apart from the inside out was— is— beautiful to me. But when I showed that to my parents, well… they were disgusted. Of course they were, really. They thought they were raising a Watcher-damned serial killer. They said they loved me, of course, but… even if that was true, even though they did everything they could for me, it was in service to what they wanted me to be. Not what I was, because they hated that. Feared it. Even a child could tell they did. My grandfather was… different, but not much better. He saw opportunity in me, the chance to continue the True Lords of Vesuvius. I was more or less raised by biomancy tutors from then on, and… well, my parents never complained about me being too busy to be around.”

She huffs, pulling at one of the loopy swirls of hair on the side of her head.

“You don’t really understand any of this, do you?” she asks. “Parents, social pressure, obligations… your life never had these things.”

“No,” I agree honestly. “I don’t really get it. But I can tell it hurts you.”

She swallows, nodding slowly.

“R-right. Well, most of that doesn’t really matter anyway. I was taught to be a healer and a proper lady. I admit to liking some of that. Magic is beautiful. Solving problems, discovering new spells, advancing knowledge… I am glad I was taught those things. But every single other aspect of myself I have to hide. I knew, at the hunter’s guild, that I would be found out. That I would be hated. That my guise as the beautiful and intelligent Third Lady Vesuvius would collapse and reveal the person underneath that just wants to watch a creature’s skin boil and pop as it screams in agony. But you found out, and you don’t care. Worse, this is the part you understand. Even if my whole background is nonsense to you... this you get, don’t you?”

A grin forms on my lips.

“The only thing more satisfying than watching Revenants scramble to fulfill my orders is the feeling of a life sliding down my throat and dissolving into raw power,” I tell her. “And it is so horribly infuriating that I know I’ll end up regretting it if I just do that to everyone we meet.”

She grins back, slightly at first but growing wider and wider as she speaks.

“Right!?” she agrees. “Why can’t I just kidnap everyone I don’t like and use them to figure out how many plagues I can incubate in a single person before they ultimately expire?”

“Yeah, so, it turns out people get whiny about human experimentation,” I say shrugging. “Who knew?”

“Ugh, but why?” Penelope groans. “How am I supposed to figure out how a spell affects a human without using humans? Rats only go so far! We could skip so much wasted time and effort by skipping to human trials.”

“Yeah, well, I bet I could solve our animancy problems really easily if I could just bring an army of Revenants to deal with Capita and the Inquisition. We’re trying to cure death! Why is that bad?”

“It turns out people get whiny when you try to cure death, too,” Penelope complains. “Be it immortality or undeath or… anything, massive swathes of morons will cry ‘no, you can’t, death is a part of life for all these reasons I made up! It’s wrong to prevent death, and definitely not the ultimate goal of all medicine! You overstep your bounds, wah wah wah!’”

We both burst into laughter, a comfortable and joyful moment of shared frustration finally let out. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt her this relaxed before.

“Things sure would be easier if we could just kill the people who thought like that,” Penelope sighs. “But alas, that would be wrong.”

“Yep,” I agree, nodding glumly. “That would be wrong. Fun to think about, but… really, it would make me feel like shit.”

“Indeed,” Penelope confirms. “I often wonder if I’m a psychopath, so it’s nice to remind myself once in a while that I probably would feel terrible if I did that.”

“Probably?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

She shrugs.

“Probably.”

We both giggle a little at that, recognizing it for both the joke and the fear it is.

“And so we go to slay monsters,” Penelope intones, “lest we become monsters ourselves.”

“And also because they are delicious,” I add.

“And also that,” Penelope snorts, “assuming you are an uncouth gremlin whose appetite defies all reason and sense. I need to teach you the meat-treating spell, if only so you’ll stop bothering me about it.”

I gasp, jumping in front of her.

“Would you!? Oh, that would be amazing!”

“Of course I will,” she scoffs. “We can start… well, actually, you don’t suffer mana backlash so I suppose we can start today. I’ll teach you on the trip.”

I jump forward and hug her tightly.

“Best! Friend! Ever!” I cheer. Meat-treating spell! Yes! I will never be hungry again! Never!

“Erm… yes,” Penelope mumbles, squirming uncomfortably under my iron grip. Her soul starts playing all sorts of rapid, chaotic notes, so I give it a hug too.

“Eep!” she squeaks, in one of the most amazingly un-Penelope-like sounds I have ever heard. “W-what are you doing?”

“Soul hug,” I inform her simply, looking up at her amusingly red face.

I’m not normally much of a hugger, but for some people I have to make an exception. Penelope is one of those people, now. Still, I have mercy on her, eventually giving my friend one last squeeze before releasing her so we can restart our trip to the guild. To my endless amusement, Penelope’s face stays a bit red the entire way.

...I have no idea how to handle the things she’s currently feeling, though. Maybe the hug wasn’t the best plan.