Obviously I pull my blow on Lyn, not wanting to hurt her or myself. I'm not moving as fast as I can, I'm not stabbing as directly at a vital as I might otherwise. Yet when my mom flashes a contemptuous grin and easily steps to the side, I start to wonder if I'm about to once again get a lesson on arrogance.
Even with the way my soul's core grows much denser than a human's does, I have significantly surpassed the size of my mother's soul. Lyn is powerful, extrely powerful by most trics, really, but I suspect if I really put my back into it I could rip her from her flesh with only minimal trouble. That is the skill I am best at, the skill that I use most often, and my most devastating offensive capability. As I make another lunge, which Lyn sidesteps by barely an inch without seeming the slightest bit worried, I can't help but be a little tempted to use that power.
I don't, of course. This is about landing a hit on her, and she is trying to prove that I can't. I'm not interested in just sitting back and letting soone walk over . I have recently reached the next stage in what I sort of think of as my lifecycle, considering that the first step was hatching from a soul egg. I am a bit proud of my advancent, happy I finally get to stop using my hideous, inefficient muscles for everything. I want to prove my superiority. I want to beat her.
To my annoyance, however, it is clear that Lyn is very, very good at dodging.
"So obvious!" she taunts stepping around another stab and punching just under the ribs.
I barely feel it, and try to grab her with my free hand only to watch her leap out of the way again, cackling all the while. Damnit! I should be stronger than her! It doesn't help that I have much less practice using a knife than I do with using my spear. Lyn doesn't even feel that fast, it's just that she seems to always be barely fast enough to avoid whatever it is I'm doing. I could maybe surprise her by suddenly using my full speed, but of course then I would have to go see Penelope to get my body unbroken again. Plus, I think there's another secret here. Despite how much I care for her, Lyn and I don't exactly talk a lot and I don't even know what exactly her talent is. Or, as I'm starting to suspect, what her talents arethe longer we fight the more Im sure she has two separate ones. One of them she keeps on a constant low purr, ramping it slightly up in power every ti I lunge for her. I don't know what it is, other than clearly not being offensive. The other just turns on and off, and I'm pretty sure that's her speed talent. Whenever she makes a little burst of movent, that one flares.
The problem is that, even though I know this in advance, I don't have any idea what to do about it. She's using both talents at once, which Capita never did, and both of them seem to be useful in a brawl. She's not trying to stab , despite the knife in her hand. If anything she's using it as a handicap, giving her one less arm to punch with. But I am still getting my butt kicked.
"You're trying to teach that no matter how strong I am, I lose to soone whose talent is specific to the current situation," I deduce.
"No, trying to teach you that you are slow as shit and I'm better than you," Lyn answers imdiately.
Rowan facepalms, and I try to stab my mother again.
Lyn laughs, dancing around . Our fight is indoors, and the room is not very large, yet she always seems to have exactly as much space as she needs. Can I box her in sohow? Get her into a corner? I start directing my thrusts, encouraging her to dodge closer and closer to the edge of the room. The mont I think she's cornered, though, she just vaults over , sticking her tongue out at as I track her through the air.
"Quit trying to fight like I'm a monster!" Lyn says. "You know I have a brain too, right? I'm not going to move without a plan."
She dashes in for the first ti and I jump back in surprise. Now all of a sudden, I'm the one cornered! It looks like she's going to punch in the face, but she feints and brings up the knife instead, the blade barely kissing against the skin of my neck without drawing blood.
"Dead," she tells , bursting backwards before I can stab her back.
"Does that count?" I ask, grinding my teeth. "Because if so"
I burst forward again, lunging for another stab at bringing my tentacles into the mix as well. To my surprise, Lyn seems to notice and jump backwards, but I press the attack and soon the only place she can dodge within the small room is inside my range. She avoids five of the eight tentacles I try to grab her with, but three wrap around her and squeeze lightly.
"Dead," I hiss back. "I'm surprised you dodged any."
Lyn shudders, pawing at her belly as if trying to rub so warmth into it as I let her go.
"Danger sense, rember? I can't see any of what you do but if I listen to my instincts I can feel sothing is coming at . So. Point in your favor, I'll grant you. But you still haven't touched ."
I scowl, tossing my knife to the side and flexing my fingers.
"Fine," I growl, right before feeling the snap in my right leg as I lunge at Lyn as fast as I can.
I'm not a knife fighter, as much as I should probably learn to use them a bit since I have them as a backup weapon. But ultimately, if I am going full power, I would rather not accidentally kill my mother with a blade.
Her eyes go wide for an instant as I close the distance far faster than I have up to this point, but her surprise is not quite enough for to capitalize on. I swipe at her, miss, then break my other leg performing an instant change in direction. Penelope won't be happy, but she'll deal with it. I wrap the breaks with tentacles as a makeshift splint, bearing down on her again and very, very nearly catching her. She was surprised at my speed before but isn't now, bumping up the power in her own talent to compensate. That's fine by . She's not moving at levels beyond my perception, and I don't need to keep up with her perfectly. I just need a particular kind of opening.
If our family actually owned anything, everything in this room would have been destroyed by our engagent as we blast around, always on the offensive. Rowan has been functionally forced out, he and many of the kids peeking hesitant pairs of eyeballs around the doorfra, trying to avoid becoming collateral damage. There's one more reason I dropped my knife, and I'm just waiting for Lyn to give the chance to take advantage of it. She's right. She's not a beast, and I need to treat her as soone thinking a few steps ahead. If I can't dismantle her soul, I will dismantle her plan instead.
--
"What's politics like?" I had once asked Penelope.
Our team had been walking through the forest silently for a few hours, the monsters either fleeing in fear from or dying instantly whenever they tried to engage. I was thoroughly bored and feeling safe enough to start a conversation. Penelope turned to slowly, her languid glare and pattering soul indicating she was still a bit miffed about telling the whole team that she had a crush on . Still, she deigned to answer.
"Hiverock dropped an estimated ten thousand or so eggs on us," she said, which sounded like a complete non-sequitur but this was Penelope so I knew she was going sowhere with this. "The drops were all in groups, yes? About fifty to a couple hundred eggs per group. According to reports, our best guess as to what happens the mont those eggs start to hatch is that every single one of the newborn vrothizo imdiately tries to kill and eat all of the other ones. As soon as I finished reading that I thought to myself: damn. And here I've been trying to go to the forest to avoid politics."
I blinked in confusion, but Norah imdiately busted out laughing. Along with Mateo, of all people, though his hissy monster laugh seed to kill the mood for everyone else.
"I don't get it," I said.
"I know," Penelope answered flatly. "But despite the laughter I do not at all an it as a joke. Politics is about seeing how much aggressive cannibalism you can get away with in your path to power. Figuratively, I an. While I would not be terribly surprised to learn of a noble engaging in literal cannibalism, I do not personally know of any."
"That's good?" I hedged.
Penelope sighed.
"Yes Vita, the fact that our governnt does not openly engage in literal cannibalism is good. Anyway, on the subject of specifically Valka politics, I would have to describe the three major factions as the Royalists, the Church, and everyone else, really. Let's call them the rcantile faction, although they arewell, we are, I suppose, but if anyone asks I'm a Royalistthey are only a faction insofar as being united by a common hatred of the other two and a general desire to leech specific powers from each of them. For example, the Church de facto controls the entire tal trade due to the religious significance of tal. Because it is the duty of the Templars to prevent a perception event, and perception events can be caused by an overabundance of tal in a single place, the Church has decided they therefore possess a divine mandate to control every single gram of tal on the market and micromanage who is allowed to buy any given amount of it. And if this sounds like an open power grab more so than an actual devotion to a deity, that's because it very certainly is. And yet sohow the audacious bastards actually get away with it!
Norah scowled, but didn't respond.
But youre asking about politics in general, arent you? Penelope continued. The crux of the taphor is thus: political power is finite. To acquire it, you must necessarily take it from others. The more people with power, the less power everyone has. It is possible to increase the maximum available quantity of political power, but to do so you have to actually contribute to society and that tends to be rather more difficult than simply eating your rivals. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your proclivities, rather than soul-rending teeth politicians fight with sches. To defeat a rival and claim their power, you must understand what they want, how they intend to get what they want, and how to make their thods of gaining what they want destroy them rather than help them. Considering the degree to which vrothizo are single-mindedly obsessed with constantly eating every living thing they co across, I imagine the pleasure they get from the act of consumption may very nearly be comparable with that a politician gets from twisting a forr rival into a pawn by correctly anticipating and manipulating their actions with indirect levers that cannot possibly be traced back to their original source."
I blinked.
"Um, any chance you could maybe repeat all that but exclusively using words that a holess street kid could understand?"
Penelope smiled a little.
"If you and soone else both want the sa chunk of bread, Vita, true victory is not found in taking it from them, but in learning how to make them give it to you.
She quickly glanced over at our trio of Revenants.
Generally without using animancy.
--
My fight with Lyn continues, my attacks getting more and more reckless as I push to get my hands on her. Going barehanded against soone with a knife tends to be a poor decision, but Lyn has been completely refusing to cut , leaving her as the one with the handicap. At least until suddenly and without warning, this changes.
I'm not stupid. I'll admit that I usually don't understand people very well, but a large part of that is not putting any effort into it. Well, I shouldn't say that. It's hard to put effort into it, harder than it is to put effort into most things, and I feel very little desire to try, even if I know it would be helpful. But I'm still clever, I can still read emotions, and I'm still a trained conwoman. Lyn makes a jab towards my hand with her knife in order to force to abandon the attack, and I barely avoid grinning in triumph.
My recklessness is real, but it's calculated. I want her to think I'm taking advantage of the fact that she won't attack with her knife, but what I actually want is for her to commit to a defense with her knife so I can capitalize it in a way I know she won't expect. I don't abandon my attack, doubling down and letting her blade impale my palm. From there I grab the hand holding the knife in my own, and it's over. She tries to squirm and escape, but while she may be faster than I am much, much stronger. Despite the difference in size I force her to the ground.
"There," I hiss in triumph. "Fooled you. Got you. I win."
Lyn, breathing hard, glances at my hand before backup to my grinning face.
"That you did," she admits coolly. "Was it worth it?"
I blink in surprise, not entirely understanding the question.
"Was what worth it?"
"Well, you beat in a fight," Lyn says again, and she doesn't feel like she thinks she's lost at all. "It took ten minutes of your ti, plus a hand, and therefore however much effort it will be to get that healed. Assuming you don't start to bleed out."
I extract my hand from her knife, blocking off the blood vessels so my hand is barely stained red from the initial stab and nothing else. I flex my fingers.
"I'll be fine," I insist, declining to ntion that I also broke both of my legs.
"So you'll be fine," Lyn says. "But was it worth it? Did you really have to take this fight? I goaded you into this. You didn't want to, but it didn't take much pushing to change that. And what do you get out of this? The satisfaction of knowing you can beat up your mother?"
I scowl.
"So this was the lesson," I mumble. "I thought you were trying to teach to fight better."
Lyn shrugs, getting up off the floor.
"Well if I did that, that's great too. But what Rowan and I are really concerned about is more that you keep getting into fights in the first place. You've killed thirteen people since Angelien, hon. That we know about. Have you thought about that at all? I know Rowan wants to give you the moral spiel, and I can't say I'm super happy about you using your talent that way, but I get that sotis you gotta do what you gotta do. I've killed people on jobs before. I've hidden bodies, I've stabbed folks that probably don't deserve it. What I want to know is how much that's been eating you up inside, Vita. I want to know why you keep doing it. I want to know if it was worth it."
I swallow, chewing a little on my lower lip.
"I didn't have a choice," I say quietly. "Norah was going to forcibly take into the church, or at least tell them about . I would die, mom. The Templars already tried to kill once, they're just looking for an excuse."
Lyn nods.
"What about the group that killed Angelien?"
A chill settles over the whole house, even the youngest of us icey with fury.
"Yes," I answer firmly. "That was worth it. If anything, I should have killed them sooner."
Lyn nods again.
"And the group with Capita?" she asks. "The whole fight with Capita, really. Was it worth it?"
I open my mouth and almost say yes, again, of course it was worth it, I had good reasons for what I was doing and the n I killed all pulled weapons on . I just made a point of thinking about how I'm not stupid, however, so I think about it first instead.
"No," I conclude reluctantly. "It all made sense at the ti, but in retrospect I could have avoided the fight entirely. I nearly died fighting Capita and didn't actually get anything out of it other than a bit of information, which wasn't worth it."
Lyn walks up close to , patting on top of the head.
"Okay. That's all I wanted to say, really. Don't forget why you beca a hunter in the first place, kiddo."
What? I beca a hunter to eat monster souls and beco strong.
"I'm not a kiddo," I insist again.
Lyn smiles.
"Go back to your friend Penelope," she says. "There's a hole in your hand, honey."
I look down at my palm. Oh yeah. Nodding, I exit my ho, lost in thought.
Most of my life, the question of is a fight worth it has always been the sa as can I win this fight, the answer to which was almost always no, so every other aspect of a fight was obviously not worth it. I lacked power, so I could not fight. Now I have power, so I do fight. And in the forest, that's a strategy that works pretty well. Monsters need killing, and if we can kill them without being hurt we generally always should. But that's not at all how people work, is it? There are other ways to deal with people, none of which I'm good at, but it's also simply much more difficult to know if I can win the fight. Monsters are stupid, so power is everything. People are not stupid, so power is just one of many tricks in the toolbox that can be used to hurt or the people I care about. I know this, I'm just bad at it. I have no experience thinking this way.
I had been considering avoiding Penelope in order to try and minimize the awkwardness of whatever is going on there. That's not going to cut it though, is it? Between how often I get myself hurt and how much I need the help of soone that can actually think about this stuff with any competence, I kind of need her, don't I? The realization doesnt rankle as much as I thought it would, at least. Im okay with relying on Penelope, even if she can be weird sotis.
I sigh, opening up our lab and heading downstairs. Ti to get another rant on why I shouldn't be breaking my own legs, I guess.
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