Mage Tank-Chapter 240: Prison Princess

Joma recovered from Nottagator’s tail whip by landing feet-first against the wall and springing back towards the creature. The Atrocidile juked to one side, but Joma twisted and her trajectory changed in mid-air. Nottagator’s head appeared to multiply as Joma approached, and as she fired off several rapid punches, the heads collapsed back into a single instance, having avoided every blow.

Nottagator shot forward to strike Joma with its skull. Joma took the hit, grabbing onto a thick scale to hold herself in place and deliver a vicious elbow just above Nottagator’s right eye. The Atrocidile went into a roll, trying to dislodge the grappling Yeti, but Joma jumped clear before she was crushed.

She landed facing in our direction and caught sight of me and Etja for the first time. Joma’s eyes went wide and she froze in place, apparently stunned by our appearance.

Nottagator took this opportunity to recover from its roll, push into the air with all six of its legs, and bodyslam the tiny woman with its multi-ton bulk.

The move cast up a thick cloud of dust and debris, which Etja swept away with a careful application of Siphon. I could have sworn that Nottagator looked smug as it peered down into the rubble while lumbering up from on top of Joma.

The Atrocidile finally took note of us as well, blinking its bulbous orange eyes and letting out a chuff. It produced a growl that sounded like an irritated grumble, then dug into the pile of gravel that had once been the floor to grab Joma. Nottagator set the Yeti down on her feet, then slunk off to the lake where it slid down into the water. It kept its monstrous eyes peeking above the surface, watching us.

Joma swayed and coughed as her fur lost its metallic luster. She shook some stone dust from her coat until one could almost tell she wasn’t normally a dark gray. She looked awkwardly from Nottagator and back to us, then tentatively walked over.

“Hey Joma,” I said once she got close. “Are we interrupting something?”

The Yeti waved a hand vaguely towards Nottagator. “No, no,” she said. “You’re not interrupting anything.” The Atrocidile protested her answer by moaning like a thousand dying lions. Joma gave the beast a sideways glance. “Er, yes. It’s Notty’s playtime.”

“Playtime?” I asked. “I didn’t know Atrocidiles had, uh, playtime.”

She turned back to me and jerked as though my presence was a surprise. “We were almost done anyways,” she added in a rush. “Notty gets grumpy if she doesn’t get her exercise, but we already worked through a lot of her stamina.”

“Nottagator’s a girl?” asked Etja. She waved at the mostly submerged Atrocidile. Nottagator stared, unblinking.

“Oh, well, she likes being called pretty, as opposed to handsome,” said Joma. “And I painted her cave pink after she scratched all the blue off the walls.” Her bushy eyebrows lifted as she appraised the wading monster. “You can’t tell an Atrocidile’s sex externally. There’s… ways to figure it out but I’m not going to go poking around where I’m not welcome.” She considered that statement for a second. “Nor would I even if I were welcome.”

“Yeah, fair enough,” I said, purging any ideas about how to sex an Atrocidile from my mind. “Anyway, we wanted to chat with you about something. Do you have a few minutes?”

Joma kicked at the ground in thought, winced, then reached down to pull a shard of stone from her furry foot. It was the only sign of injury she had from the ‘playtime’. “Sure, sure,” she said, flicking the bloody stone away. “I serve at your pleasure, after all.”

I suppressed the desire to disagree with the woman’s characterization of our relationship because anything I said would have been disingenuous. She was literally my prisoner. She had to do what I asked, no matter how weird that made me feel. I was really hoping we’d learn something that convinced me to end her sentence.

I gestured toward the patio of the nearby palace facade. One of the columns along the portico had been destroyed when Nottagator fought Captain Pio’s Littan Delver team, but most of the rubble had been removed, leaving it with a tasteful, ancient ruin look. Within the palace were a collection of cursed items, but their effects didn’t range beyond the palace walls.

The three of us hopped up onto a clear portion of the patio and I pulled some comfortable armchairs from inventory. Nuralie and Etja had done some shopping while in Eschengal to replenish our furniture supply. Etja pulled out a coffee table to place between us as Joma and I sat, then produced a tea set. She dropped a handful of loose leaves into the pot and tapped it, sending a pulse of mana into the porcelain. I watched the mana pass through the weaves, then heard a gentle trickling sound as the pot provided its own water and heat.

Etja then started laying out some bread, meats, cheeses, jams, vegetables, and other sundries. Joma and I watched her work, neither of us having expected to receive a full spread of tea-time delights. Etja began making dainty finger sandwiches with one pair of hands as she organized a tray of cookies with the other. The treats smelled freshly baked.

I shook off my surprise and moved on to business. “For the last few months we’ve been dealing with some lingering influence that Hysteria buried in our souls,” I said, watching Joma closely to see if the Yeti had any particular reaction. “We recently managed to purge those compulsions. Now, we’re free of any control Hysteria had over us.”

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Etja pushed the platters of sandwiches and baked goods to the center of the table and put a small serving plate in front of each of us. She gestured for Joma to help herself, then grabbed a few things to start nibbling on. The teapot gave a gentle chime, and Etja lifted it to pour each of us a cup.

Joma looked over the food hesitantly. “Okay,” she said.

The Yeti didn’t appear to have any opinion on what I’d just told her. She sat on the edge of her seat and selected two finger sandwiches, moved them delicately onto her plate, and then scooched back in her chair.

Etja handed her an embroidered napkin, which Joma gratefully accepted before taking the tiniest nibble of a sandwich. She chewed and swallowed, then dabbed at her mouth despite the absence of any crumbs. The Yeti sank deeper into her seat, a small amount of tension fleeing from her body.

“Given that your party was working for Hysteria when you attacked us, I think there’s a decent chance that Hysteria was using their influence to push you in certain directions,” I said. “Part of the process of undoing Hysteria’s changes to our souls was learning how to spot them in the first place. I’d like your permission to see if I can find any evidence that Hysteria was using coercive mental effects to alter your behavior.”

Joma finished off one sandwich and held the plate in her lap. She met my eyes, expression studiously blank. “Are you afraid that I’m still under their control?”

Etja’s teacup made a light clink as she placed it on a saucer. “We’re not coming from a place of fear,” she said. “More like a place of hope.”

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“What are you hoping for?”

“Mainly, that we don’t have to do all this,” I said, waving at Joma and the room beyond. “I have no interest in being a prison warden, but I’m also not willing to let someone who’s tried to kill me walk away so they can come back and try it again with better prep. If it turns out that your actions were forced by Hysteria, then we have no reason to keep you.”

“Oh,” said Joma. A series of subtle expressions crossed her features, but I was having trouble getting a read on her emotions. All the fur really helped with the woman’s poker face.

I was also carefully holding back on my Sight until Joma had assented to allowing me to take a closer look. There was no emergency that required me to be invasive, and I didn’t want to get into the habit of prying into people’s souls as a matter of course. Skimming the surface to get a measure of someone’s strength and demeanor was fair game, I felt, but going any deeper felt like abusing an evolved form of X-ray vision.

“What if I was in control?” she asked. “What if Hysteria wasn’t doing anything to me?”

“Then we can talk more about what things will look like for you here,” I said. “I’m not looking for a reason to punish you. If anything, I’m looking for a reason to trust you.”

“How does it work?” she asked. “How do you see if they did anything?”

“Hysteria’s long-term manipulations involved making a semi-permanent alteration to their target’s spiritual essence,” I said. “I have a revelation that lets me look into people’s souls. If I–”

“That’s what you do when you look at me?” Joma asked, cutting me off.

“It’s always on,” I said. “So, yes? I try to keep it at a light reading unless I have reason to do otherwise.”

“Is that something you noticed?” asked Etja.

Joma crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. She shifted in her seat, then crossed her arms again. “Yes,” she said. “It’s uncomfortable.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “Most people don’t feel it.”

“Or they just don’t say anything,” Joma muttered. She narrowed her eyes at me. “What does that mean when you say you ‘keep it at a light reading’?”

“I can generally see how powerful someone is and get a basic read of their personality.”

“Power?” she said. “I can look at you and see your Level. Is it more involved than that?”

“I can tell what kinds of Delves someone has done, and it encompasses strength that goes beyond Levels. I can see that you’ve finished forty Gold Delves, for example.”

Joma’s brow shot up. “And my personality?”

I glanced across the base layer of the Yeti’s soul. “You feel like you’re crossing a frozen lake in Spring. The surface is calm and smooth but threatens to crack and swallow you up. You aren’t afraid of the cold, but there’s something else hidden in that lake. Something you are afraid of.”

Joma blew out a breath. “That’s the basic version?” She picked up her second sandwich and stuffed the entire thing into her mouth. She chewed three times and then swallowed. “What does a heavy reading entail, hmm?” She glanced at Etja. “Has he read you?”

Etja nodded. “Arlo’s been looking into my soul since I got one,” she said. “It saved my life the first time.”

Joma looked like she was going to follow up on that mildly confusing claim, but I held up a hand. “It’ll be invasive,” I said. “I’ll learn a lot about you, but it will let us know what actions have been your own.”

“Assuming I believe what you tell me.”

“Well, sure,” I said. “Unless you let me use Reveal as well, but that’s another can of worms entirely.”

“I do not want to be ‘revealed’,” said Joma.

“That’s fine,” I said. I started to say something else but Etja placed a hand on my arm.

“We won’t force you to do anything,” she said to Joma. “But we also don’t want to punish someone who’s truly a victim. Arlo’s ability lets him understand you on an emotional level, but it doesn’t give him access to specific memories.” She let her hand drop and picked up her tea again.

“Do I get time to think this over?”asked Joma.

“Hmm,” I hummed as I rubbed my beard. “I don’t want to rush you, but the more time that passes, the more difficult it might become to see whether any changes were made.”

“Hmph,” she snorted. “That’s not a straight answer. Which is it? Do I get to think about it or not?”

“Hysteria’s dead,” I said. “Their power was maintaining the changes in our souls. Now that they’re gone, I believe anything they’d hidden inside others will slowly begin to unravel. I’m not sure how well I can find evidence of the manipulation once a soul has healed it away.”

“Dead?” said Joma. “I thought they were some kind of god.”

“Avatars are like twisted shadows of a greater divine being,” I said. I sent her the kill notification the System had given us, making sure to redact the rewards. She blinked and read through it.

“I feel like this is probably incredible,” she said. “But I don’t really know much about… avatars. Maybe they die all the time.”

“From what I know, they’re generally considered unkillable,” I said.

“Impressive, if true,” said Joma.

“Look, I’m not trying to impress you, just giving you confirmation.” Joma sniffed but didn’t respond. “Like Etja said, we won’t force the issue, but I’d much rather find a reason to let you go.”

“Right,” said Joma. She shifted in her seat again. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair tight enough to tear the fabric. A bit of off-white stuffing spilled out. Joma looked down at the damage and made a trilling noise. “Hells,” she said, then threw up her hands. “Fine. Just do it.”

“Are you sure?” asked Etja.

“If I weren’t sure, I wouldn’t have told you to do it,” Joma said testily. “Just go about this soul-reading thing you want to do.”

I nodded and did as she asked. I increased the sensitivity of my Soul-Sight, then began the process of going through the Yeti’s soul in fine detail. Hers was much more… turbulent than those of my party members. There was a significant trauma in her past, a deep twist that represented a harsh demarcation between her childhood self and who she was now. The experience reached out to thread itself throughout everything that had been built after, imprinting onto the small woman’s entire life. It was so profound that I instinctively examined it for Hysteria’s influence, but it looked naturally formed. It was more than a decade old, well-settled, with nothing holding it in place.

But there was a deep tension to the trauma that felt odd. Like the threads running from it were being pulled too taut. I followed those influences, seeing how they impacted her worldview moving forward. While the trauma itself didn’t seem to originate from Hysteria, I found ample evidence that the avatar had taken advantage of it.

The trauma sat like an ember in most of Joma’s new experiences, smoldering with anger and cynicism that clouded even the pleasant-feeling memories. More recently, whenever a thread from the trauma wove itself into something new, a force pulled deeply upon it, shoveling embers inside until they burst back into a flame.

I felt the familiar tang of Hysteria’s soul, working like a tireless pyromaniac to encourage this spread. There was nothing deific about it, the avatar was nowhere to be found, but the entity’s fingerprints lingered. Joma was healing, but so long as this remnant haunted her, it would take much longer for the Yeti’s soul to reset itself.

As I considered the best way to deal with Hysteria’s spiritual remains, I was taken by surprise when the energy reacted to my presence. It was a mindless force, carrying out its last issued task as it wound down to nothing, but it shifted when I gazed into it. It seemed willing, somehow. Willing to let go, to depart if I asked it.

I ignored the temptation to do just that. It was probably better to answer the questions I was actually here for, rather than experiment with controlling Hysteria’s spiritual corpse while it lingered inside an unaware Delver.

I felt that I should at least get permission before I messed around with it. So instead of doing some soul-based grave robbing, I mapped out what effect the manipulation might have had on Joma while it was in full swing. Yes, my self-control was as awe-inspiring as ever.