"W-what did you just do?"

Bently stands shaking, so overwhelmed by confusion and terror that he denies the obvious reality I made sure to keep explicitly clear. Norah's corpse lies face down in the grass and dirt of the forest, collapsed like a doll after I cut her strings. The inflexibility of her armor forces her into an awkwardly slumped-over position, her knee caught under her belly and her arm splayed at an awkward angle that keeps her chest up off the ground. Only after a slight nudge from my boot does she finish her collapse.

"I killed her," I say clearly.

Orville looks away. There's a slight spasm in Bently's body as he suppresses an urge to vomit.

"She was our friend," Bently whispers.

"Yes," I agree. "She was. But she was going to get me and lots of people I care about killed. She wouldn't listen."

"I just…" Orville starts, his breath catching. "It's so sudden. Just like that and she's gone?"

Sudden? I warned her. She just didn't listen to that either.

"Wasn't there some other way?" Orville presses.

I scowl at him.

"I tried using words. I'm not good at words, you both know that! But I mean what I say. She was going to get me killed. It was her or me if she kept pushing. I told her. I told all of you! And none of the rest of you said or did a damn thing!"

That shuts them up. Fine. All I need from them is to shut up.

"So now I have to ask again," I growl. "Is anyone else going to make the same mistake?"

I'm going to start getting used to being stared at, at this rate. Orville takes a few moments, staring at what was once Norah, before slowly shaking his head. Before, he just didn't think I was in the wrong. Now there's a bit of fear mixed in, but he's smart. I don't think he'll betray me. Bently, unfortunately, is not smart... but at this point he's broken.

I watch in real time as his mind starts to unravel and snap at the seams. It's not as dramatic as it sounds; just the tearing apart of a fundamentally good person who until now saw everyone else the same way. Someone who genuinely believed that there would always be a way to resolve our conflicts. Someone who thought his axe would only ever be for big, scary monsters that thump around in forests and nightmares.

Frankly, I'm not opposed to disabusing him of that ridiculous notion. So long as he doesn't seem willing to raise that axe to me, I don't care. And as I stare at him, I know there isn't a chance he'd risk losing another one of us to this. That would be too far. The puppy is still loyal.

"Good," I say, nodding.

Next item on the agenda would be the body, then. I have an idea, but it involves Mateo and I don't want to accidentally force him into agreeing. I glance at Penelope, then indicate Norah's corpse with my head, hoping she has a similar train of thought. She smiles.

"Mateo, I realize this is somewhat distasteful, but would you be so kind as to take a bite out of Norah for us?" she asks.

Good old Penelope. I can always count on her. I mean, that's super brutal and not what I was going to say at all, but it works! Mateo squirms uncomfortably, which is honestly pretty cute to watch on a twenty foot long murder serpent.

"I sssee the logic, but dissstasssteful doesss not begin to cover it," he rumbles. "It would not be a proper hunter'sss burial."

"We should strip the armor," Netta says. "And then we should poison the body and use it as bait. A good hunter protects the city even in death."

I look around, seeing a lot of nods of assent. A Hunter's death. People who die in the city tend to be burned, but a hunter's body, already out in the forest, can be used for more.

It's tempting to keep Norah's body. Perhaps much later, when I no longer have to worry about her, I can put her back in it. But there's just no way to justify dragging the body back and bringing it with the others. How are we to make the case that Norah died to a monster when we have her corpse, completely intact, brought back with us to the city? We'll probably have to throw away a fair chunk of her armor for the same reason. Well, we could get Mateo to munch that probably. A lot less distasteful to smash the armor than it is to bite a human body, I suppose. I personally don't see the fuss, but I have to agree using the corpse as bait is a better idea anyway.

Penelope apparently does too, as she heads over to the body to cast on it, filling it with who knows what sort of terrifying cocktail of diseases. I should still offer what I was going to, so I decide on how I'm going to word it and then do so.

"Before we get too far into this, I was actually going to ask if you want Norah's body, Mateo," I say.

He has been getting a lot more comfortable as a big spooky monster these past few days, but I figure I should still ask if he prefers a humanoid form. Everybody just gives me a really weird look though, including Mateo.

"I guess that's a no?" I hedge.

"I would be lesss than comfortable in the body of a teenage girl," Mateo says slowly. "And I sssuspect no one else would be comfortable with that either."

"For many reasons," Netta agrees, disapproval radiating at me from all sides.

“Okay, geez, I was just asking," I grumble defensively. "It's not like she's gonna be using it.”

Bently starts to cry, and I take that as my cue to shut up. Humans are weird. I wait for Penelope to finish casting before addressing the next item we have to take care of before finally heading home from this bullshit journey.

"Mateo, Netta, what do you guys want to do? I can keep your souls safe until we find somewhere safe you can live, you can hang out in the forest if you want, or you could die-die, I guess."

"Forest," Netta answers immediately, and Mateo nods his agreement. "Didn't I just say? A good hunter protects the city even in death."

I nod. Good on them.

"Okay. You can't last forever like this, you will eventually degrade. We'll have to meet up every once in a while so I can feed you and keep you on your feet. You might be able to recharge by killing other undead, though, if you find any. Basically, smash them and you can take their soul dust. Otherwise, I can give you more of my soul to feed you. Don't worry, it doesn't really hurt me."

They nod.

"You're of course free to come with me if you want, Orville," I tell him. "Instead of visiting my family all the time, we can visit yours!"

He sighs, glancing between people, corpses, and those who are both.

"…Not quite how I imagined it would go," Orville mutters to himself.

"I never had much use for all the money the hunter's guild kept throwing at me," Netta grunts, "but legally it's all yours now, Orville. My will is at the guild and it says you are your own man."

He frowns.

"Thank you. Won't my heritage fuck with that?" he asks.

"I'll make sure it doesn't," Penelope dismisses. "There's no one better at abusing bureaucracy than my fiancé. You'll find the proper paperwork in your hands, Orville. One way or another."

He nods a thank-you and we finally depart for home, Bently remaining silent for the rest of the trip. I wave goodbye to Netta and Mateo, and before long the walls of Skyhope are in sight. Many of the guards watch me nervously as we wait at the gate, Penelope grumbling about the inadequacies of the biomancer checking us for parasites. I grin at one of the gate workers giving me a worried look to try and put them at ease, but he jumps a little and quickly looks away. I guess that backfired. Oh well.

We trudge through the streets of the city, returning to the guild and letting Orville give the report to our grim-faced branch leader. The loss of Netta, Alan, and Mateo is a heavy blow to the already struggling guild. I mostly don't bother to pay attention, a bit on edge from being watched by so many of my fellow scouts in the building. I know I feel dangerous and all, but this is getting ridiculous.

When Orville is done and the branch leader grimly instructs us to stand by, Bently finally speaks up.

"I-I would like to resign, sir," he stammers.

The branch leader seems entirely unsurprised, too exhausted to put up an argument even with our lack of staffing. He's not the kind of man to beg someone to go die for him if they didn't volunteer. I've always liked our branch leader, frankly. He's a good man, trying his best to keep our city together in the places he can. Bently's request is agreed to immediately, and our former teammate walks out, leaving Orville, Penelope, and I without anyone to act as a frontline. Well, I suppose I could do it, but I'm happy to not get sent on missions for a while. That one was... rough.

So Bently leaves. Penelope begrudgingly makes her way to the infirmary, where I can feel Claretta currently managing things. Fulvia is nowhere within my range. Orville heads to his room, and I to mine, quickly stripping out of my armor before digging Rosco out from under my pillow.

I sit down on my bed, squeezing my stuffed bird as hard as I can, tentacles poking and prodding the inert souls inside my body. I don't feel like myself. The starving, tiny girl who panicked and tried to give the soul back to a man who nearly beat me to death is a distant, embarrassing memory. Norah's bed taunts me from across the room, thoughts of what I could have said to just make her listen dancing in the back of my mind, arguments replaying over and over. Norah. Huge, beautiful, reliable Norah. She was my friend. She was my teammate. She was my lifeline. A good person, through and through.

But she just didn't believe me where it counted. She couldn't take the one step I needed her to take to stay friends. And now she's dead. I should feel sad, but I'm mostly just… angry. Furious at her stubbornness and her stupidity, her inability to just trust me with my own life and the seriousness of the things I do.

I suppose in some ways I can hardly blame her for not believing I know what I'm doing. So often, I really don't. Things just feel so out of hand, so out of my control. I keep trying to make the best choices I can, do the right thing as often as possible, and everything keeps blowing up in my face. I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know how to be the Vita that grabs the reins of her own life that I want to be. It just feels like every step ends in disaster.

At some point, I'm curled up on top of the bed, head on my pillow. At some point, I'm crying again. I hate this all so much. I hate my life, I hate my body, I hate this city, and I hate everything and everyone who keeps getting in my way. I wish I could just be free, take some time to think, let everything slow down so I can figure out what I even am before deciding on all the things I need to do. But life just doesn't want to wait for me.

I fall asleep, my pathetic body exhausted after days of fighting and travel with minimal rest. When I finally wake up, the darkness of an island above blackening my room, it's not to an emergency. It's just to the realization that for the last day and a half I seem to have forgotten to pee.

I extract myself from bed with an uncomfortable grumble, my soul sight unbothered by the lack of light as I make my way through the building and to the bathroom outside. I must spend at least half an hour there between exhaustion and constipation. I try to focus, trying to do what Penelope demanded I do and pay attention to my body. I can’t just ignore this disgusting bag of flesh and organs that I regretfully require to house my true self. It used to be so much easier, even a month ago, but now it feels like trying to scrape myself raw. It can't ever truly be the same, not with the veins of energy extruding from my core and wrapping through each and every nook and cranny in the meat sack other people see as me. In some ways I seem stuck between either feeling too little of my body or feeling far, far too much. My soul wraps around my heart, feeling it beat. It twists within my stomach, the sloshing acid inside far more apparent to me now than could possibly be helpful. The kinds of things my mundane senses are explicitly designed to ignore are all too apparent to the new senses in my soul. And yet, the information that’s actually helpful, the things my body needs to know in order to ensure that I function correctly, like pain and hunger and dizziness and bloat… these things do not have an equivalent soul sense.

It's not that I'm avoiding paying attention to what my body tells me, it's that I seem to be forgetting how. I don't want to admit that, but I am. Like Norah said, I'm just getting more Vita-like. I don't know what that means, but I hope it hurries up. The euphoria I got from achieving this stage of my metamorphosis wore off days ago. Only the displeasure is left, the irritation of not knowing what I'm supposed to be but knowing without a doubt that this isn't it. I let air out of my lungs, and perhaps against my better judgment I delve back into the deep blue abyss of my soul. If I forget to breathe and start suffocating to death, hopefully falling into the toilet will wake me up.

I pull at the mana, filling the spiritual veins and capillaries snaking through me as I trace their path backwards to the ocean of my true self. The channel is still too thin, too far. But for a single short minute, I can bask in the one part of myself that doesn't feel hideous and wrong.

My meat falls forward, and with a gasp of breath I return to the grim immediacy of the bathroom. Finishing my business, I stand up and prepare to depart, a scowl on my face. Something powerful, dangerous, and very annoying has approached me in the time I was too distracted to notice, although I don't sense ill intentions from him so perhaps that's why I didn't bother to acknowledge it. I open the bathroom door, willing myself to maintain focus on my body.

"Do you often stalk young women using the restroom?" I ask, staring up at the sky.

Or just at Sky, rather.

"Please excuse my terrible timing," the mob boss answers, floating in the air a solid ten feet above the rooftops. "We both seem to have quite busy schedules, and it has been so difficult arranging a conversation with you."

His soul just radiates ego. In some ways it's an invigorating sort of feeling, an arrogance built on a powerful enough backing to be almost attractive. Put a big, big emphasis on that 'almost,' though. Even the stupid meat part of me that occasionally, annoyingly cares about such things finds little to appreciate in his almost comically feminine frame. He's floating at an angle that lets the coming light of dawn silhouette his body, I think for dramatic effect? Yet all it does is make me realize that he has fuller hips than I do. Not that it’s much of a contest, but still.

"That's too bad," I say. "Good night."

Then I walk back into the guildhouse while he’s still surprised, letting him fume. I'm tired, and fuck if I'm dealing with him before getting at least another three hours of sleep.