Vigor Mortis

“Is that the place?” I ask, pointing towards an utterly nondescript building in front of us.

“Indeed, oh work of art! Your vision sees true!”

I frown, nodding without looking in Capita’s direction. It’s easy to guess the right building since I can feel Rowan’s soul underneath it. Rowan markets his street cons as games of skill partially to draw arrogant customers, but mostly because gambling is illegal in Skyhope. There’s little question that the casino is owned and operated by the Drakens, and it makes as much sense to me as anything that the place would be hidden underneath what looks like some kind of warehouse.

I sigh, heading towards the entrance with what feels like stone in my legs. I’m not at all looking forward to talking with Rowan about this. It just… how could he betray us like this? How could he piss our money away when we’re starving to death? I could almost understand Lyn doing it, but Rowan? He’s supposed to be the responsible one, the smart one, the cautious one. He’s supposed to know right from wrong.

I’m the one that made a promise to him, but it feels like he’s the one that broke our agreement.

With Capita leading the way, we have no trouble entering the warehouse or the secret area underneath it. The main floor itself seems to be actually used for its intended purpose, with members of the Drakens moving around crates of who-knows-what inside. The pink-haired woman is instantly recognized by the gang members, who step aside without question. A palpable fear fills the halls wherever we walk, the people who see her apparently wishing they didn’t.

“I get the impression that you’re not really well-liked around here,” I comment.

“The Sky is beautiful ‘til it rages, destroying all that tempted that fearsome wroth,” Capita shrugs lightly, her smile casual. “Joyful are those that see the Sky once the storm clears, but never is the lightning loved.”

I nod, doing my best to pick up on the pink-haired monster’s nonstop metaphors. As humid as it is, we don’t get much rain here, let alone thunderstorms. I do remember a couple, and I’m frankly quite glad we didn’t get them more often. Rain is awful when you’re homeless. It chills you to the bone and forces you to choose between taking fights for shelter that you might not win or risking a cold that hungry bodies can’t afford to have.

Evidently, the majority of our water comes from vast underground reservoirs deep within the stone of the island. One of the hunters told me that part of why the forest is so damn hard to clear is because the roots of the major plants dig all the way down to it; even if Gladra the Annihilator scoured a thousand acres into ash, the majority of the plants wouldn’t even be dead. Just… trimmed, for maybe a week at best. It would probably kill a lot of monsters, though, which sounds handy enough to me. Oh, well. I hardly mind the easy souls in the forest nearby. Better than letting the Watcher get them.

Soon enough, we climb down into the warehouse basement, opening a pair of dutifully guarded doors, revealing colorful land of excessive opulence. A massive room stretches out before us, kynamancy enchantments dotting every surface with color. Rows of card tables are stretched out next to a bar selling alcohol for cheap, many of them lipped to catch dice as well. All sorts of crazy luck games are scattered around, from wheel-spinners to a weird ball-dropping game to a few tables I can barely divine the purpose of. Off at the far end I spot a stage on which a half-dozen barely dressed women are dancing in confusing ways that I think are somehow supposed to be sexy. Opposite to them is a similar stage for equally-undressed men performing equally-confusing dances, though I find myself staring idly that way regardless. One part of me is thoroughly annoyed by how much another part of me enjoys the sight. My fascination doesn’t last long, though; the dancers have such shriveled, underdeveloped souls that I soon tear all three of my eyes away from them in disgust.

Countless numbers of far more interesting people are here anyway. A few positively massive souls dot the tables and bar, some of which are dressed in such fancy outfits that I suspect Penelope might bow to a few of them. There’s no way there aren’t at least a few nobles in this building, possibly even True Nobles. And with Capita frequenting this place…

“Do you see it, oh work of art?” Capita asks, flashing a lazy grin. “My incision is small, but it will not have healed this soon.”

Oh yeah, Rowan. I pull my attention away from all the new sights and souls to focus on the beautiful prismatic spirit of a betrayer. Rowan sits at one of the tables, glancing at his current hand with a perfectly neutral expression on his face. I ignore the anger bubbling inside me for now, taking a deep and detailed look at his soul. At first, I see nothing out of the ordinary. His spirit is colorful, beautiful, and as far as I can see, untouched. I scowl and take a deeper look, pushing my senses to the inside, forcing myself to understand his spirit as more than the simple, pretty-looking orb it appears as to my senses. There is more to a soul than that, after all; a folded, maze-like complexity of depth and nuance waits just beneath the surface, always there for me to see, but so far beyond my capacity to understand that I barely ever bother. My power, after all, is intuitive. I don’t know how it works or why it feels the way it does. I’m granted no insight and no satisfaction in pushing my senses to that level of detail, so why should I try? I could spend a day this deep in someone’s spirit and have nothing to show for it. It doesn’t feel like a proper part of what I am, just an added detail that I happen to be capable of by coincidence. I eat and I control, but this? I don’t resonate with this.

Now I have a good reason to do it anyway. I scour the inside of Rowan’s soul, my senses flitting through pathways and directions alien to the understanding of my physical body. I know what I’m looking for, if Capita’s description is to be believed. A cut. A crack. A chasm. Sure enough, I eventually find it. The slightest deformity, a tiny opening I’d never have seen had I not been looking for it. The walls of the wound glow ever so slightly purple, the same color as Capita’s threads.

“...I see it,” I murmur. “Now fix it.”

“Yes, yes, I shall!” Capita agrees happily. “And you shall watch, oh work of art! Come, come! Play with us!”

She grabs my arm and starts dragging me towards Rowan’s table.

“Wh- hey! Let go of me!” I demand.

“My superior you may be, but my master you are not!” Capita laughs. “Come, you will play! Play and understand!”

“I don’t even know how to play cards!” I protest.

“Then learn!”

Capita yanks me into the chair next to Rowan, to his immediate shock and confusion. She sits at the table as well, grinning giddily as she holds two fingers up at the staff member with the deck.

“Deal us both in, please! Two more for the game!”

The three other players at the table take one look at Capita and drop their cards on the table, pulling out of the game immediately. They quickly gather their things and leave, while the attendant looks like he wishes he could do the same.

“M-miss Capita?” Rowan stutters, sweat forming on his forehead as he fails to hide his growing fear. “Vita? What are you… why are you both…?”

“My cards are good cards!” Capita announces loudly, glancing at her hand as the threads of her soul snake slowly in Rowan’s direction. “What of you, oh work of art? Dare you bet your cards are better?”

“I just… I literally just told you, I have no idea how to play this.”

Capita laughs.

“The game is as easy as life itself! You must bet if your cards are better, or pay to draw if they are worse!”

“I’m not paying you anything. Besides, how am I supposed to know if my cards are better or worse than yours?” I demand.

“You don’t!” Capita says happily. “Did I not just explain? The game is as easy as life!”

“Vita, what are you even doing here?” Rowan interjects, gawking at us.

“I was planning to ask you the same thing,” I snap back.

Capita smacks some money down on the table, looking at the dealer while pointing in my direction.

“Tokens for that one,” she orders. “Bet them, oh work of art, that I may win them back!”

I glower at her, watching with my third eye as her threads silently push into Rowan’s soul. My full attention is on ensuring she does nothing other than fix that gap, and sure enough all her threads seem headed that way, snaking ever so carefully though the impossibly complex pathways that comprise the inside of his being. Though when the staff member running the table takes Capita’s money and hands me cheap wooden tokens in their place, I deign to look at my cards as well. I suppose I don’t mind betting if it’s going to be with her money.

“Vita, why are you here?” Rowan demands again. “You shouldn’t be in this kind of place.”

“Oh, so, you know that, and yet you’re here anyway?” I grumble. “How much of our money have you lost today?”

“I’ve made money tod— no, wait. This is none of your business. Why are you here with the second in command of the Drakens?”

“To play King’s Dominance!” Capita interrupts testily. “Now declare dominance or pay to draw!”

Rowan sighs, the tiny gap in his soul pulsing slightly as he weighs his need to know with his fear of refusing Capita. No prize for guessing which one he goes with. Bah, whatever. I get the impression that he needs to be nearby for Capita to undo her magic, so a card game is as good an excuse to keep him in place as any.

“Dominance,” Rowan relents, putting a card face-up on the table.

“Dominance!” Capita parrots, putting a card from her own hand face-up.

“Um, Dominance I guess,” I say, picking a random card and putting it face-up as well.

“Ooh, a four coin?” Capita coos. “Bad hand! I challenge your dominance!”

During this farce, Capita’s soul threads had reached the scratch in Rowan’s soul, slowly but surely teasing the purple glow out from around it. Where the foreign glow is removed, the scratch heals itself naturally, closing up on its own. As Capita heals what she’s done, I start actually picking up some rules of this Watcher-forsaken game.

King’s Dominance uses a standard set of cards, each of which has a number from one to ten and a symbol: Sword, Word, Fire, or Coin. Your hand is worth the sum of all the card values in it, and you get a bonus in value if you hold multiple of the same symbol… but you also put yourself at risk, as certain symbols counter other symbols. If you focus on one, you stand to gain the highest values but have the biggest weaknesses.

“Sword is like… an assassin, I guess, so it kills the guy writing the Word,” Rowan explains. “Word controls public opinion and incites or prevents riots or whatever, so it beats Fire. Fire burns wealth to nothing and beats Coin, and Coin controls your capacity for war, so it beats Sword. Or something like that.”

“Wait, is Sword supposed to be an assassin, or a whole war?”

“Uh, both? Kind of? Just don’t think about it too much.”

The fucking stupid part of the game is that to draw more cards, you have to pay every other player based on the number of cards they have face-up in front of them. Those cards are still part of their hand, which gives you insight on which cards to hang onto if you want to beat them. After a certain point, however, players that keep winning can eventually construct hands that are so good, it barely matters whether or not they’re revealing the entire thing; by the time you construct something to beat them, you’ve already paid them more money than you could ever possibly get back. The entire experience is annoying, confusing, and ridiculous. I don’t see the appeal of it at all. When Capita finishes her soul-surgery, I drop my cards on the table.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m done playing.”

“Ah! A wise surrender,” Capita compliments. “Next round, then?”

“No, I mean I’m done playing King’s Dominance.”

“Silly work of art,” Capita chides, smiling thinly. “You are always playing King’s Dominance.”

I roll my eyes, double and triple checking that the part of Rowan’s soul Capita had manipulated is firmly returned to normal, with nothing else added. It looks good to me, and to reassure myself I start looking around at various other members of the Drakens that work in the casino. Sure enough, a good chunk of them have similar purple-tinted scratches, signs that Capita instilled something of her choosing deep inside their minds. What strikes me is how invariably tiny her changes are, each and every one so miniscule it’s nearly impossible to notice.

“Yeah, I think I’ve waited patiently long enough,” Rowan snaps, tossing his own cards back at the dealer in a huff. He’s not as afraid anymore. Fancy that. “Miss Capita, what are you two doing here? Why are you with Vita? I thought your deal with Lyn was to leave our family alone.”

“Fear not, little gambler! Your daughter is uncoerced, unharmed, unimpeded, and in regards to our offer, unconvinced. It is against no deal to ask a simple question, and certainly against no deal to correct a simple lie.”

“What?”

Rowan glares down Capita and I as if we’re the ones doing something bad here, and it almost makes me want to sock him in the jaw. Why do I have to deal with this? Why do I have to call out the person that’s supposed to be the one supporting me?

“The Drakens tried to hire me,” I explain, scowling up at him. “I said I didn’t want to join the people extorting my family, and they said they never extorted you. That you fucking gambled it away. And here I am, finally back from risking my life outside the walls, the first time we’ve seen each other in almost a month, and where do I find you? In a goddamn casino!”

“Vita, I had no idea you’d gotten ba—”

“No,” I snap, cutting him off. “Nuh-uh. That doesn’t even matter, Rowan. Come on, we’re going home.”

“Huzzah!” Capita cheers. “To see the home that houses such a glorious—”

“You are not coming!” I growl, turning on the cognimancer. “And I’m checking Lyn next I see her. I’d better not find any evidence of your bullshit.”

Her smile drops, another moment of apparent lucidity flashing on her face.

“Best hopeyou do find it, oh work of art,” Capita answers solemnly. “I cannot heal that which is scarred over.”