28. Digging Yourself Deeper (Patreon)

As my diplomat body fills itself with pleasure and tunes out from the stress of actual diplomacy, I'm still very busy on the surface optimizing my living space. I think I'm preferential towards relatively small bodies for now, which is what I've gone for when designing my digger. I didn't want to make them too big to fit in pre-existing Sthrenslian tunnels, but unlike the ETEs, there's certainly no need to keep them small enough to fly within tunnels. More size means more strength, and more strength is incredibly helpful for digging more efficiently. Also helpful: acid.

The finalized design is my first foray into having six limbs. I started with a relatively tiny humanoid base, about twice the size of my Tinkerbells. The extra pair of arms has Sthrenslian digging claws, and I also have a long tail to help myself keep balanced as I lean forward in smaller tunnels, the tip of which has the first iteration of my acid cannon design. My digging body is only equipped with Sthrenslian acid, not sloth acid, because while sloth acid is substantially more powerful in general, Sthrenslian acid is more than enough to dig quickly underground and significantly less damaging to my own body. Obviously, I also give the body bioluminescence and tunnel whiskers so I can actually navigate underground.

I've named the body Evelyn Terrestrial, or ET for short. Unfortunately, no matter how much I wish otherwise, she can't phone home.

I laid six of her, since I suspect I will probably need to do some significant underground work in the near future. If talks go well, I will be hanging out with Sthrenslians. If they go poorly, I will be needing to at least have a few whiskers in the nearby tunnels to give me early warnings against any ill-advised offensives.

Most of my bodies are hunting, gathering food and resources for OMNIDOME when it finishes growing a stomach. The rest of the ETE squad is en route to the True People, just in case things actually go well and I'm allowed to hang out with them. Speaking of, the mushroom my diplomat is eating is pretty good, I guess. Because it grows underground it primarily spreads itself by allowing animals to eat it and having them poop out seeds; a spore-spreading strategy just isn't very effective when there isn't much open space. Outside of a few interesting compounds, however, there's nothing in this meal that I haven't already gotten above ground. Still, it's new and delicious, and I savor it down to the very last thread of mycelium.

I let out a deep, satisfied breath as my meal ends, blinking a little as I catch up on the conscious awareness I allowed to take a backseat. Thankfully, no one tried to disturb me, but as I feared a few people seem disturbed. Upside, at least: the massive influx of dopamine has drowned out my prior panic attack!

Although, thinking back on what I said during the panic attack… holy shit I made myself look like a complete fucking menace, didn't I? Ah, there we go. It's coming back already.

"S... sorry for the wait," I manage to quietly sputter, as of course everyone else at the table finished eating long before I did. "Thank you very much. It was delicious."

"Yes, you certainly have a ritualistic way of eating, don't you?" Chlrehistra comments politely. "Very slow, but very precise. Almost calming, in a way."

I look away awkwardly, a nervous chuckle escaping my lips.

"Well… thank you, I think?" I say.

Is she serious? Actually, I guess I was just eating a mushroom, not a corpse. That probably looks a lot less creepy?

"I just can't believe you ate the fucking roots," Hsthressis mutters, shuddering. "So gross."

"Mycelium, actually," I correct.

A pause.

"...Nye-see-lee-uh?" Chlrehistra prompts.

Oops, I said that word in English. I guess they don't have it in their language. Which makes sense, how the heck would they know the difference?

"Er… okay, how to explain. Plants have roots. Right? But mushrooms aren't actually plants. They're fungi—"

"Thun-guy...?" Hsthressis tries to repeat.

Fuck, I keep forgetting Sthrenslians don't have lips.

"…Sorry, my language has a few sounds you can't make, but yeah that's close enough. Anyway, plants create energy by absorbing it from your sun—which is the, um... hmm. Well, it's the thing that heats the world from above and also does a few other important things that you guys, uh, have no real concept of because you lack any of the organs necessary to detect light. But anyway, the point is, plants turn this energy into food that things other than plants can eat. Fungi do not do that; they gain energy by decomposing dead stuff or parasitizing live stuff or whatever. So while they have structures that look very similar to roots, and those structures perform some of the same functions such as giving stability to the flower, mycelium have a few fundamentally different uses, mainly permeating organic matter to slurp it up."

The silence that follows my speech indicates to me that I have completely forgotten that I am here to negotiate, not lecture on science, and probably lost my audience almost immediately. Cool. Very cool. I'm doing really good at this so far, I can tell.

Hopefully they just take me up on my offer to kill me over and over.

"I… admit you lost me in most of that," Chlrehistra starts slowly. "But are you claiming that surface plants eat the Fire of Khlasinas?"

Oh, shit, I probably just stumbled into more blasphemy! Really, just fantastic work here, Evelyn! …But also, this is just science, and it's objectively true, and they should probably just learn to deal with that. Or I guess more accurately, if they can't learn to deal with that, I am going to keep slipping up because science is awesome and sometimes I babble about it without thinking. I may as well run headfirst into this problem now.

"I'm not one hundred percent sure that the thing I'm talking about is 'the Fire of Khlasinas,' but assuming it's the big ball of flaming gas in the sky that's impossibly far away and supplies all heat and light to the surface, then... basically yes?" I hedge. "But it's less that I'm saying 'surface plants eat the sun' and more that I'm saying there is no such thing as 'surface plants.' All plants are surface plants. If it survives without sunlight, it's something other than a plant.  ...Unless it's a holoparasite, I guess, but we can ignore those."

There's a pause. A long pause.

"This is demonic nonsense, clearly," Talrissark grumbles.

"Well, no, it has a certain logic to it," Chlrehistra acknowledges. Yay! Logic! "Plants near the surface are an inherent duality. They start their life in the ground, but half of them grows away from Sss while the other half grows towards him. The part that rises above is tainted, and if it absorbs the Fire of Khlasinas, that explains why."

Er… not yay logic, I guess. Fuck. That entire train of thought is bullshit, but at least they don't hate me over it. What's interesting about that conclusion, however, is the assumption that surface-parts of plants are 'tainted.' I know offhand that a significant number of surface plants would be entirely safe for Sthrenslians to eat. I suppose a few are poisonous-ish, but the worst they would do is give them the runs. ...I guess that's enough to make a plant tainted, though. Alternatively, the problem could be poisonous bugs that might have also ended up on the leaves of whatever plant was trying to be eaten. There are some of those that could kill a Sthrenslian.

"Evelyn is always like this, mom," Hsthressis explains knowingly. "She says all kinds of wacky nonsense that's kind of understandable but half of it is words that don't even exist and the other half feels like you're completely missing the context. I can't tell if she's crazy smart or just crazy."

"Wow, thanks Hsthressis," I grumble.

"You're welcome!"

"The worst part is that I can't even call you wrong," I tell her, scowling. "I've been kinda going batshit up there. But it's still not fun to listen to people talk about how crazy I am! ...Even if it is more fun than listening to myself talk about it. But anyway, back to my point: please let me stay here! I'm sorry I said all that weird and crazy stuff, and I'm just terrified I'll get kicked out at this point? I really am willing to do whatever you want as long as I can not be alone anymore."

Talrissark makes a hissing noise that's more or less the Sthrenslian equivalent of a dry laugh.

"Well, there is something oddly refreshing about a loon admitting their own madness," he admits.

"Hah, yeah, can't be that bad if I'm sane enough to know I'm crazy, right?" I joke desperately, because even though Talrissark is a huge jerk I do kind of need him to not hate me. "I'm still hopefully at least like eighty percent Evelyn. It's fine. I'm fine! The ship of Theseus is just whichever one he's currently sailing on!"

I scowl for a moment as I realize which words I just spoke in English: 'ship' and 'sailing,' of course, but most frustratingly, 'percent.'

"Ugh, you guys don't even have mathematics?" I grumble. "Gross."

"I apologize on behalf of my War Leader, Ambassador Evelyn," Chlrehistra says politely. "Although on the subject of not insulting each other, cryptic comments regarding things that my people lack are... difficult to appreciate."

Evelyn Experimental, currently lying at the bottom of the river, blushes furiously.

"Oh my god you're right I'm so sorry, that was thoughtless and dumb and I should not have said that out loud I should have shut up, I need to shut up I just..."

I clamp my mouth closed, actually shutting up this time. Hopefully. At least for a little while.

"If that's the case…" Chlrehistra hums politely, "would you mind giving us some time to discuss things privately?"

"Oh, uh... n-no! No, not at all, um... go for it!" I babble.

"Thank you very much, Ambassador Evelyn. Hsthressis, War Leader Talrissark, if you would?"

The three of them depart alone, leaving me to sit awkwardly alone with Sthrenslian guards standing firmly at every exit. Hsthressis and the others walk far, far away; it's nearly ten minutes before they stop and actually talk to each other, which I know because of course I'm constantly aware of Hsthressis' position and velocity at all times due to my inter-body proprioception. When the conversation starts, I am way too far away to hear even with the incredible acuity of my adapted Sthrenslian auditory system. My ETE has no chance of picking up on any of the words.

...But Hsthressis is in the room, and trying to purposefully ignore the things being said is like trying to not think about pink elephants. I am intensely stressed about the conversation, and no matter how hard I focus on attempting to ignore it I find myself failing, over and over, to meet that goal. I can't even resign myself to only getting bits and pieces, ignoring most of the conversation as I desperately pull my mind to other tasks, because while I do manage to keep my attention out of the mind of the girl I killed at least ninety-five percent of the time, the five percent I am listening comes with the memories of every conversational bit I missed.

"Okay, let's get the most important thing out of the way," Chieftain Chlrehistra says, and then immediately pulls Hsthressis in for a hug.

Sthrenslian hugs are a bit different than the hugs I'm used to considering that Sthrenslians are very horizontal while humans are very vertical—their hugs involve a lot more face-nuzzling than I'm used to. But even as a disgusting voyeur, the vicarious experience of receiving my first hug from someone else since arriving on this planet nearly brings me to tears.

"Mooom..." Hsthressis grumbles. "Mom, cut it out!"

"Hsthressis, indulge me a moment," Chlrehistra orders. The two of them stay like that for a while, and the disgust I feel at being witness to it quickly starts rising. This is not my place to experience, not my moment. Yet here I am.

"Now then," Chieftain Chlrehistra declares, finally breaking away. "Before we discuss anything else, I want to hear your version of the events that happened, Hsthressis."

"May I just say that I am of the mind that this is a mentally unstable demon," Talrissark butts in. "The fact that it can speak is noteworthy, I will grant you, but if anything that only makes it more dangerous. In our conversation before the meal it gave impossible promises, then offered its own life directly before claiming to be invincible in war and spouting gibberish."

Um. Wow, okay, that's fucking rude. I mean, I am absolutely going batshit, but still.

"Talrissark," Chlrehistra snaps, "I am speaking with my daughter. And may I remind you that you are not a priest, and you are certainly not a chieftain. I will determine, with Sss's guidance, what does and does not constitute an enemy of the faith. Hsthressis, if you would?"

"Okay, so, I remember digging… and then I found a hole, I think, because I didn't feel anything above it… but before I could get back to safety a rock fell on me from above and that... hurt. A lot. I was in so much pain and then something lifted the rock off of me and I tried to move and then there was more pain and... yeah. That was the end of that. Then I remember thinking about… no, dreaming about a fight? I dreamed that I was in a frontline warrior band and I was fighting something. And then the dream stopped and I heard Evelyn's voice. She said she wanted to help me, and I freaked out because I couldn't feel or hear anything around me, her voice just… was. So I thought she was Sss, but she said she wasn't. So then I thought she was Khlasinas, but she said she wasn't him either. She told me she killed me, but she wanted to bring me back. And then she just said the weirdest thing."

"What?" Chlrehistra prompts.

"I asked if she was sure she wasn't some kind of god, but rather than give a straight answer she said 'I'm sure I don't want to be.'"

I shudder. Yeah, I mean, I don't. That just sounds like the worst sort of responsibility.

"Anyway," Hsthressis continues, "I asked her what happened and she told me about your fight with her, I asked her what she was and she said she didn't really know. Apparently she's never brought someone back to life before, but she was just kind of… pretty sure she could do it somehow? Which was kinda odd but whatever. Um... she seemed really scared about the prospect of me being brought back to life but then hurting someone? Then she agreed to 'make my body,' but immediately afterwards she started freaking out about my soul, I guess? Apparently she ate me—"

"She ate you!?" Chlrehistra yelps.

"That was my reaction! And I started freaking out about it but then I just… I dunno. Something weird happened, and I calmed down like… instantly."

"That's incredibly suspicious," Talrissark grunts.

"Hush," Chlrehistra snaps back. "Then what, Hsthressis?"

"She told me that my soul was stuck in her body, and she couldn't unstick it, she could only, uh, do like a merger thing, or make a copy of it? And I didn't want to be a copy, so—"

"What do you mean by a 'merger thing,' Hsthressis?"

"Uh..." Histhressis hedges, trying to figure out what lie to give. At this point, I don't care. I'd rather tell the truth.

"I suspect this is related to the way the demon persistently refers to itself in the singular and calls itself lonely despite having multiple allies," Talrissark butts in, to my surprise. "We know the one in our chambers is not the only demon that can speak."

Chlrehistra doesn't chide him for interrupting this time.

"Is that true, Hsthressis?" she asks instead.

"…Please don't freak out," Hsthressis mumbles. "I think Evelyn is being honest. But… yeah, she says that she's one person that can like… separate into other people, I guess? Split apart?"

"That's hardly the least startling thing you've mentioned so far, Hsthressis," Chlrehistra says. "This is all incredibly concerning."

"I know mom, but Evelyn really isn't so bad. I think she actually does want to help us out. Can we at least give her a chance?"

"I do feel like, if nothing else, we are lacking information," Chlrehistra considers. "It is difficult to compare this situation to any of the teachings within the Stories. This 'Evelyn' is a strange creature, but if she wishes to live within the embrace of Sss, we would be remiss to cast her out and force her to continue suffering on the surface."

"She is a threat," Talrissark grunts. "I feel compelled to protest the presence of any creature, demon or otherwise, that is capable of manipulating souls, duplicating itself, and other absurd magics. Even if it is friendly now, we all agree that it's mentally unstable."

"If it becomes something we must destroy, War Leader Talrissark, I will inform you," Chlrehistra says firmly. "And your advice is duly noted. That time may very well come, and I will rely on you if it does. But we must keep hope. We must at least offer the chance for salvation, or we risk losing the chance ourselves."

Talrissark grunts again, but doesn't protest any further. Wow. Wow, I... I actually might not be banished! This is amazing, it's… it's information I stole by spying on these people by using Hsthressis. I shouldn't be happy about this. I...Shit. Shit!  Now I feel morally obligated to tell them! At minimum, Hsthressis deserves to know, I should have explained immediately but I was an arrogant shithead and thought I could just 'not abuse the power.' I have to tell them, and there is no way it won't fuck everything up.

It doesn't take long for them to return after that. I'm twitching with nervousness and fear, but when the three of them file in it doesn't take me long to blurt the truth out.

"Thank you for waiting Evelyn. I'm sure you'll be happy to know that we decided—"

"I-I know," I stammer. "I overheard everything, I'm sorry."

Chlrehistra twitches a whisker in surprise.

"Well, that's… impressive, thank you for telling us."

"It's not because I can hear really well," I explain. "It's because I can hear through Hsthressis. It's part of the… soul-thing? I guess? Um... That's also why I know how to speak your language. I sort of took the information from her, and I didn't really mean to but I did and I'm scared that maybe more than she wants me to know will leak over sometimes? And I'm really not sure what to do about it. Parts of me might leak over to her as well and I've been trying to figure it out instead of saying anything and I'm really sorry that was stupid of me I should've told her everything I knew immediately, and—"

"Slow down!" Chlrehistra says. "Ambassador Evelyn. Please calm yourself."

I shut up and take a few deep breaths, trying to do exactly that. It doesn't work great, but it sort of helps.

"It's not Ambassador Evelyn," I murmur. "It's just Evelyn."

"So you can hear through my body?" Hsthressis grumbles. "That's fucking creepy. What else can you do?"

"Well, I always know your relative position compared to the rest of me, I guess."

"What do you mean 'the rest of you?'" Hsthressis asks.

"The answer to that is obvious," Talrissark growls.

"War Leader, please," Chlrehistra says calmly.

"Your daughter has had her soul taken by an intelligent demon," he accuses anyway. "She's a threat to the entire colony."

"Talrissark, enough," Chlrehistra demands.

"Duty requires me not to, Chieftain. Please, hear me out. I am no expert on demons, I will admit, but it explains both your daughter's story and our guest's strange behavior. When she said that we can't kill her, that she would just keep coming back every day… this is why. This monster has tied her soul to your daughter, and cannot be slain unless we kill Hsthressis."

Silence.

"That's ridiculous," Chlrehistra says flatly.

"It's…. um. Technically true, actually?" I squeak quietly. "But I promise it's just an unintended side effect."

The way Chlrehistra tenses up puts the entire room on edge. I've fucked up now, I guess. Whatever. I deserve it.

Being a good person sucks.