A little known fact among the fleshed beings of the world:

When a Smoke Spirit is torn between two or more decisions, the smoke and sparks that form their body fray, strand of their essence splitting off and reaching towards the mutually exclusive paths they wish to walk.

If the decision is particularly momentous and difficult, the emotional turmoil can literally tear a spirit in half.

Arjasoot felt like they were being cleaved with an axe, parted down their center line, a searing pain that was waxed hot and waned. The dissenting part of his mind ––the sentimental part –– was mutating, sprouting new arms and joints, clutching at their main body, kneading and ripping at their own smoke-formed flesh, a rebellious spark trying to tear itself free from the main body…

...or was it the other way around? Were their thoughts of caution the voice of dissent?

“Stop,” Arjasoot said to themselves. “Stop. You’ll kill us.”

The other part of them quivered. A mouth and pair of lips grew from the back of Arjasoot’s shoulder and spoke.

“They need our help,” they said.

“We can’t risk it,” Arjasoot told their fractured-half, their half-torn version of themselves. “The Hearth-Vale needs us.”

“To the hells with the Hearth-Vale,” the mouth said. "They were going to kill us. Sacrifice us to the enemy. Let them all drown.”

“Even our parent?” Arjasoot asked.

Their other mouth fell silent. The extra arms and extra hands stopped trying to grasp and tug at Arjasoot’s flesh.

“Exactly,” Arjasoot said with a sigh. They turned away from the hole. “Stop struggling and return to me. We have a long road back home…”

One of their hands reached down, twisting violently as it drew Arjasoot’s sword from their sheath. Arjasoot reached out with their more obedient limb, seizing the traitor arm by the wrist before it could drive their blade through their throat.

“What are you doing?” Arjasoot said to themselves. “You crazy fool!”

“What are you doing?” They said back. “Giving up! Submitting! Baring your throat to the knife!”

“I’m not giving up!” Arjasoot pleaded to themselves. “I’m searching for the Godcarver!”

“Liar!”

“I am!”

“You don’t know where it is!”

“I know more than I did! Ina gave me a clue!”

“And now you’re letting her die!”

“You’re letting them die!”

Arjasoot blinked. Who said that just now? Letting them die. Did they say that…?

...or did they say that?

Unknown to themselves, Ajrasoot’s body had morphed into a cloudy nightmare. Masses of flailing limbs that beat against the dusty earth, a melange of fully-grown heads that met each other’s eyes and spoke in eerie harmony:

“I don’t want to abandon them.”

“Abandon who?”

“Varayana?”

“Arjasana?”

“Both?”

“Neither?”

“Their names sound so similar!”

“Why did we not realize that?”

“They’re the same for us, aren’t they?”

“We leaned on them too much. The dutiful child, the grateful servant... excuses for us to sup on their confidence.”

“And now we hold their lives in our hands. Who do we choose? Who will we save? Who do we kill? Who do we want more?”

“I want both."

“We can’t do that.”

“I want both!”

“We can’t do that.”

“WHY NOT?”

Silence.

Stillness.

Suddenly, someone behind them loudly cleared their throat.

“Is this a bad time, Arjasoot? Should I come back later, when you’re...well, less of a mess?”

Arjasoot snapped back together. Their extra limbs vanished, their vestigial heads withdrew back into their smoke-shaped body. Their fraying flesh solidified. Their traitor hand stopped trying to cut their head off. Gingerly, carefully, Arjasoot sheathed their sword and turned around.

A swollen, sodden human corpse stood before them, one of the deceased human residents of Wedwel Dom, clad in a fine purple shawl. A familiar light gleamed in the carcass’s eyes. A familiar lumpy growth strained at the seams of the corpse’s lacerated cheek.

“Chunky?” Arjasoot exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Arja!” Chunky replied, waving. “I took your advice and stopped trying to steal other people’s bodies!” They gestured at their current vessel. “I found this empty one just lying around and thought I’d take it for a ride!” The larcenous spirit smiled with their new flesh, revealing crooked, blood-stained teeth. “What do you think?”

“It’s...certainly an improvement,” Arjasoot said, electing to err on the side of diplomacy. “What are you doing here? This city’s not safe!”

“Where else was I supposed to find a dead body?” Chunky said defensively. “And you’re one to talk, having a breakdown outside the lair of a Sunken One!”

Arjasoot winced, wishing there was something they could say to refute the very salient point Chunky was making.

“No,” they confessed. “You’re completely right, Chunky. I’m acting like a cowardly fool.” A realization: “No. Worse than a cowardly fool. At least a cowardly fool would be decisive enough to actually do something!”

Chunky rubbed the back of their stolen head, a squeamish look on their stolen face. “Well,” they said. “I wasn’t going to say that flat out...” They desperately searched for a chance in topic: “So! Um! Where did that shapely human lass you were with go?”

Arjasoot turned their towards the deep, dark root-lined hole in the ground and stared.

Chunky’s borrow eyes widened. “Lard on a Stick,” they exclaimed. “Why?”

Arjasoot told Chunky everything that had happened, speaking in terse, simple phrases:

Varayana’s search for a way to lift her curses.

Arjasoot’s own search for the Godcarvr to save their home.

Vara’s family, held hostage by the cruel whims of a fallen God.

Arjasoot’s progenitor, doomed to be washed away by infernal tides if Arjasoot was killed in a distant land.

“What would you do in my position?” Arjasoot asked Chunky, after their tale was done. “When I apply reason, I can only think to leave this place and return home to save my parent...but when I try to go, my flesh rebels! I find myself at my wit’s end…!”

And I’m falling back on my old tricks, Arjasoot thought in despair. I’m relying on someone else to make my decisions. To give me conviction. I need to be more than this, but how can I create something that isn’t already there…?

Arjasoot abruptly realized that Chunky had fallen silent. Furthermore, they saw that Chunky was staring blankly at them, staring with their eerily cloudy corpse eyes.

“Chunky?” Arjasoot asked, a thrill of anxiety causing their voice to crack. “Are you alright?”

Chunky reached out with their stolen human hands and grasped Arjasoot by the shoulders.

“Chunky?”

Chunky shook Arjasoot back and forth, rattling them with the desperate energy of a sail back shaking a fruit tree.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Chunky shouted, their stolen cheeks flushed with anger. “Did your parent drop you on your noggin as a babe? Do you have some sort of sick death wish?”

“What are you trying to say?” Arjasoot said at last, pushing themselves away from Chunky’s grasp before the spirit shook their head off.

“I’m telling you,” Chunky said with a heavy weariness, “to stop obsessing over all this duty and honor business for a moment and think about yourself for once!”

Arjasoot stared at Chunky in confusion. “But-–” they started to say

“No buts!” Chunky said, pointing with their human figner towards the hole in the ground. “In that hole down there? An evil god that wants to kill you.”

They pointed away from the hole towards the city limits. “Back in your hometown? An evil god that wants to kill you.”

They turned back towards Chunky, the cyst on their corpse’s cheek pulsing with rage: “The sane choice is to stay the hell away from both those places!”

“If I do that,” Arjasoot whispered. “The people I love will suffer.”

“So what?” Chunky shouted. “Why do you have to give up your life for them? Shouldn’t they be able to take care of themselves?”

Arjasoot felt a surge of anger and stirred the heart-flame in their chest. For this body-thief to dare and call the lives they cared for worthless…!

...and just as quickly, Arjasoot’s anger receded.

There was no reason to be angry at Chunky, they realized. The corpse-thief had different principles, sure, but at least they stuck to those principles. Chunky spoke the truth: they shouldn’t have to literally sacrifice themselves for others…

...ah yes, Arjasoot thought. That’s right. That’s why they left the Hearth-Vale in the first place.

They were angry. Angry at the whims of the Gods, anger at a world that kept forcing people to choose between the lesser of two evils. A world that kept demanding sacrifice.

Family or Friends.

The Hearth-Vale or Wedwel Dom.

One Sunken God or another Sunken God.

...but then again, was that really the choice they had?

“Arjasoot?” Chunky waved their stolen human hand in front of Arjasoot’s blank face. "Arjasoot, can you hear me? You’re not going to start sprouting extra arms and heads again, are you?”

“...I’m starting to think you have a point,” Arjasoot said slowly.

“Blessed Groves, the child sees reason,” Chunky said with a sigh of relief. “How about you come with me, then? I caught wind of this trading convoy heading north along the desert rim: wagon after wagon filled with shipments of gold and silk…!”

“I embarked on this journey to find an alternative,” Arjasoot said to themselves. “To find a way to get the best of a Sunken God. If I can’t rescue a mere…” They made a quick counting in their head. “...seven humans from this Sunken God, then how can I expect to save the people of the Hearth-Vale from another Sunken God?”

“Exactly,” Chunky said, nodding enthusiastically with their stolen head. “It’s a fool’s errand, either way you cut it.”

“It’s just like you said!” Arjasoot declared, sliding their bronze sword back into it’s richly adorned sheath. “Both tasks are nigh-impossible...which is why I might as well try to do both!”

“That’s…that’s not what I said,” Chunky replied, their cloudy human eyes round with horror. “That’s the exact opposite of what I said, in fact––!”

Arjasoot reached for their shoulder and unslung their Fire Pot. “Here,” they said, holding the Brass Pot out to Chunky. “Take care of this for me, would you? Try not to let the flame go out.”

Chunky’s thief instincts were too strong: faced with a glittering, finely worked piece of metal-craft, they seized and clutched it to their chests on pure reflex. “Why are you giving me this?” They asked in a daze. “Wait, what are you doing, Arjasoot?”

Arjasoot loosened the clasp around their throat and tore their tattered cloak free, letting the city breezes carry the cloth away. They loosened their belt, letting their jewel-adorned kilt slide off to the ground. They drew their leaf-tongue sword from their sheath once more, resting the flat of their blade against their shoulder.

“I’m doing as I please,” they told Chunky “Which, thankfully, is also the right thing to do.”

With nothing but naked flesh and a naked blade, Arjasoot, Smoke Spirit of the Hearth Vale, Heir to the Tribe of Glass, threw themselves into the root-encrusted chasm, descending light as air into the Sunken God’s domain.

A Three-Part Halo, a crest of liquid light, shimmered into existence behind Arjasoot’s head, radiant as the sun, unseen to the wider world.

It must be said that Arjasoot was no fool. They knew that their resolve didn’t make them invincible. They knew that the odds of failure were high, that the cosmos did not smile upon the deeds of heroes or grant them happy endings.

All their newfound resolve gave them was possibility, a chance for victory that they could not see before.

And perhaps that was all resolution was, Arjasoot mused as they descended into the depths: a glimpse of new light in the dark.

Next Chapter: Chapter Thirteen