29. Avoiding Disaster (Patreon)

"Explain," Chlrehistra hisses, and not just in the usual Sthrenslian way.

Shit, I'm so incredibly bad at talking to people. I did not think about how Hsthressis technically sort of being a living horcrux might come off as, uh, freaky black magic, I guess. Okay, now that I am thinking about it it seems really obvious, but I can beat myself up over it later.

"Ch-chieftain Chlrehistra, I… I promise that my motivations were entirely and completely focused on saving your daughter. But I—"

"It doesn't matter what the motivations are," Talrissark grunts. "What matters are the facts."

"Talrissark, if you interrupt anyone in this room again you will be dismissed," Chlrehistra snaps. "Am I understood?"

"…You are, chieftain."

"Good. Explain, Ambassador Evelyn."

"I, um," I stutter and stammer for a bit before actually managing to catch hold of any words. "I… okay. So basically, I had two imperfect ways to bring... er, to heal Hsthressis. She sort of… existed inside of me, and I didn't really understand that until I looked for her. But then I found her and I just don't have a good way to get her… out of me, I guess?"

"Go on," Chlrehistra says coldly.

I take a deep breath, knowing that I probably already dug myself in too deep. Just ever so slightly, I give into the temptation to wipe my own anxiety away, clear my head, and try to actually think about a way out of this.

"…So, you have a word in your language that, in my language, is two very different words. When you say soul, in my head I am confused because I don't know if you're referring to 'mind' or 'spirit.' The mind is your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, your reason, your memories. It is the tangible, demonstrable aspect of who you are. You can prove, at least to yourself, that you have a mind... in fact, it's impossible for you to disprove that you have a mind because doing so would require the use of your mind. But the spirit is something more than that. The spirit is the parts of you that do not act on the world, the parts of you that are not held within your physical body. A spirit passes to the afterlife on death, a spirit is metaphysical, ephemeral. It cannot be seen or felt or demonstrated. And this distinction between two aspects of soul is important because I know exactly where Hsthressis' mind is, but I know nothing about her spirit. I don't know if separating her from me would be safe."

"But you would do it if you knew it was," Chlrehistra presses.

"Of course I would," I say. "I mean, I absolutely can separate her from myself. I can do it right now. But I talked with Hsthressis about it, and both of us are leery on what it would do to her soul. Personally, I'm afraid that if I separate her from me, part of her will still be trapped with me and I will have to either keep it asleep inside me or destroy it. And while the Hsthressis we see here would be perfectly fine—or at least I'm pretty sure she would—I would still be sort of killing her as well."

"And I'm afraid that when Evelyn makes a copy or whatever, my soul will only go to one of them," Hsthressis butts in. "Or that it will get broken or something. This just seems like the safest option, mom. I didn't want to go fucking around with it."

"This is… insane. This is absolutely, impossibly insane," Chlrehistra sighs.

"I… I'm sorry, Chieftain," I mutter. "But if nothing else, I absolutely agree."

"Why would Sss even create a soul-manipulating being such as you? This is not a trial I ever thought I would have to face in life."

"I mean, same. This is all pretty unexpected on my end, as well."

"Apologies for the disrespect, Ambassador Evelyn, but the degree to which you share my feelings does not at all alleviate them. You have, not to put too fine a point on it, entrapped my daughter's soul, used her as a spy, and bound her life to your own. And now you present to me a puzzle that must be solved before she can be freed."

"Well... on the upside, your daughter is also kind of immortal now," I point out. "The reviving thing goes both ways!"

"Wait, seriously!? That's awesome!" Hsthressis says excitedly.

"Enough," Chlrehistra demands. "I need time to digest all of this. War Leader Talrissark, have your men escort the Ambassador somewhere comfortable, but keep her under guard. And… do the same for my daughter."

"At once, Chieftain," Talrissark responds. "I trust that won't be a problem, Ambassador?"

"It won't be," I answer. "Like I said, I will do anything you guys want as long as no one gets hurt. Except me, I guess."

"Are you serious, Evelyn?" Hsthressis grumbles. "Oh my god, this is going to be so boring…"

"For you, maybe," I say, letting myself grin a little. "But I'm doing a dozen other things right now, so I doubt I'll have that problem."

Speaking of, now I need to figure out what to do with all these bodies I brought into the tunnels. I'm about halfway to the True People’s home with my pack of ETE bodies, but it looks like I probably won't be super welcome there. Should I just turn around and go home, or what?

Meh, I guess I'll explore. There are a ton of tunnels branching off every which way down here. Maybe I can find another society of Sthrenslians and get a do-over on this whole 'meeting people' thing. I desperately need a do-over. Besides, each of the ETEs are fed enough for about three days of constant runtime before they starve to death, assuming they don't fly at all. Flying burns a lot of energy.

Speaking of, I think I finalized another body design. Enter the Evelyn Short Take-Off and Landing, henceforth referred to as the ESTOL. I wanted to get a true VTOL body working, but unfortunately vertical takeoff is not at all within the realm of siphon-based fluid mobility, at least with my current musculature. What the ESTOL can do, however, is hover while already in the air, and that's really important when it comes to being able to defend an area and also accurately aim acid shots so I don't hit anything I don't intend to hit.

The body works like this: a fuzzy base platform holds a series of tubes that run through the body and can be aimed in any direction I need them to. Six of them intake and expel air, two of them produce and expel acid. I've extended the bat-like wing system stolen from those awful bird-things that ate my cute little fairy-mes into a larger, wider structure, optimized for gliding and able to provide enough air resistance to act like a parachute. My siphons can expel air in order to keep me stable during the slow, controlled descent, and a single flap of my wings will give me significant altitude. It's not a perfect hover, and I certainly don't have the maneuverability of something like a modern-day drone, but it should be stable enough to aim and fire the acid cannons without needing experience at being a fighter jet.

While my already-terrible social skills have not at all been helped by my transformation into a horrifying pseudo-necromantic hive mind and everything about my life is horrible right now, I do have to admit I like designing bodies. Even as I squat down to awkwardly plop out an egg half the size of my torso, I can't help but notice how quickly I've gotten used to doing that. I guess it doesn't hurt (though it doesn't exactly feel particularly comfortable either) so it just kind of ended up as routine. It kinda feels like that got normal way too fast. Maybe it's alien brain bullshit but honestly, having a ton of brains seems to be messing with my sense of time and the speed of my mental development in general. I've been here for like… gosh, I don't even know, a week? It feels like months, though.

That train of thought is quickly cut off when I suddenly hear a hissy scream resounding somewhere far down one of the tunnel branches I've been exploring.

Immediately, I burst all nine of my nearby ETE bodies towards the sound. That sounded like a Sthrenslian in trouble! Screw my energy reserves, flying is way faster than running and I'm getting there as fast as possible. One of my bodies turns a total corner and immediately has to stop, however, or else I would have rammed headfirst into some kind of sticky, fleshy membrane that has been stretched across the entire tunnel. What is this, some sort of trap? It's completely opaque and, even at a glance, it seems way too obvious to have any chance of catching anything. But then I remember why I was rushing full speed down this tunnel in the first place: according to my echolocation, there's nothing here but more tunnel.

To a Sthrenslian, this thing may as well be completely invisible.

Well, shit. I pull three bodies to join me in this tunnel and send the others and other tunnels to try and get around it. This is either some kind of mimic creature or it has the unfortunate position of being between me and someone that needs help.

"Hey!" I snap at it. "Are you smart? Can you understand me? Because I need you to react or get out of the way. If you don't, I'm going through you and you won't like it!"

There's no response, and according to my echolocation my words simply travel down the tunnel as if there was nothing in the way. My eyes, meanwhile, have no idea if there even is more tunnel on the other side of this thing. It's very disorienting. Still, no response comes, so I stepped forward and grab one edge of the creature, where it meets with and forms a seal against the tunnel wall.

Immediately, as I expected might happen, the sticky creature snaps shut like a Venus fly trap, deflating and folding itself in half over my hand. There it forms a new seal against my wrist, and a burning liquid starts filling its mouth as I struggle to pull my hand away.

"Acid," I hiss in irritation. "It's always fucking acid on this planet!"

The upside of this whole situation is that only one hand of one of my bodies is trapped, and now the tunnel is unblocked. Whatever this creature was doing to render itself invisible to echolocation no longer works while it is trying to digest me, which is interesting, and while I really want to devour it and see how it ticks, right now I need to go find whoever screamed. My free bodies burst past where the monster and I struggle over control of my arm and continue on down the tunnel.

Crucial seconds pass as I fly forward, listening intently for signs of struggle other than my own. Eventually, I hear what I'm looking for: another one of these odd sticky membrane traps closed around something. This time I don't bother to talk to it: I tackle it with a half-dozen bodies and start biting it apart.

These ambush predators are large enough to completely engulf a Sthrenslian, which are already about eight times the mass of one of my ETEs. They do not, however, have any appreciable amount of armor on their bodies, as it looks like they create the seal around the inside of the tunnel by inflating themselves, relying on glue rather than muscle to hold trapped prey in place. In short, I have no trouble biting this thing the fuck open. My teeth tear through its elastic skin, puncturing through to the closed trap that's now full of acid. The burning, wretched liquid pours over my faces but I shut my eyes and continue my assault, ripping open larger and larger holes. The creature struggling inside was faltering, but it seems to figure out what's going on and redoubles its efforts to live, thrashing around inside and eventually tearing itself free from its captor. The Sthrenslian bursts out of the fleshy, toothless 'mouth' with a good chunk of the glue-covered skin still attached to its body… but no longer attached to the body of its attacker. The Sthrenslian's entire body is covered in acid burns, enormous chunks of exoskeleton missing to reveal the vulnerable bits underneath. Coughing and choking, suffering from severe internal and external damage, they nonetheless remain standing, trying to walk away from what likely seems to them to be a fight between a predator and an unknown predator. I leave three of my bodies to finish killing the acid-beast, send four more to help my trapped body kill that acid beast, and have the last carefully approach the possibly-dying Sthrenslian.

"Hey! Hey, are you okay?"

Ragged, panicked breaths on my only response as the Sthrenslian continues to drag itself away with only three working legs. All right, so maybe that was a stupid question, but it's still concerning that they didn't react to it.

"Hey! Can you hear me?"

Oh shit, maybe he can't hear me. His whiskers have all been melted away, functionally rendering him deaf and even more blind than usual. There's absolutely no way he's going to be able to make it home in this state, but I can't take him home if I don't know where his home is. But maybe, if we're lucky, I won't have to. I take a deep, deep breaths with all of my bodies in the tunnel.

"HEY!" I shout at the top of many pairs of lungs. "HELP! WE NEED HELP! SOMEONE HELP US! HEY!"

The injured Sthrenslian seems to react to my screams, surprisingly. Maybe some internal bits of the whiskers still work, they just can't pick up sounds very well while damaged.

"YOU'RE GOING TO BE OKAY!" I assure him. "PLEASE STOP MOVING! REST!"

I don't want to touch him and physically try to restrain him, because I feel like that's likely to just make him struggle more, and his body is no doubt in a lot of pain that would be exacerbated by contact. Thankfully, my screams seem to reassure him, and he stops crawling painfully down the tunnel. I continue my screams, sending various bodies further down whatever tunnels I can find until finally, after many tense minutes, I hear someone shout back.

"Identify yourself!"

"I'm Evelyn!" I answer. "I found a Sthrenslian that needs help!"

Three or four Sthrenslians scurry towards me, though they stop once their close enough to echolocate my shape.

"What are you?" one of them demands.

"A friend!" I promise. "Please, come with me! They're severely injured!"

There's a tense, terrifying moment of pause... but then they start following after me. They don't seem to recognize my name, so they probably aren't part of the True People.

Time to aim for a better first impression, I guess.