Etude [Open]

[Chaeli Snowsong]

They should tremble, the snake said, and Chaeli did the same.

I would not bear children, the snake said, not as Chaeli had...

Vengeance, the snake said, and Chaeli saw clearly for the first time in her death.

“What?” She asked, even though she had heard every word. Her fingers dropped from their fists as thoughts of realization crossed her face, her staring eyes. For thirty years, she had been afraid, abandoned, hiding. For thirty years, she had known she could hurt them, and never thought she would. Hers were a happy people, but as a girl she had not been without her own little disputes and petty retaliations. Here was a bigger reason, a true purpose, and what had she done with it? What had she done, in thirty years?

“They killed me,” Chaeli explained absently, unable to keep her mind on any one thing. “With their child. It was not her fault—she was only a newborn—but he...” Shivering, Chaeli clutched her heart, even though she was not cold. She could not feel the cold, but they could. She could not feel pain, not anymore, only in her memories. But they could.

Chaeli was not dead. In fact, she was more powerful than she had been in life. If she was dead, then death was better than living.

“Y- yes,” she finally replied. Her eyes had been darting around, unable to take hold of the glowing water, the glistening rocks, the terrible white scales. But then they found that smile. It was malice; it was retribution. She wanted it. She should have been frightened, but her wheeling mind only saw hope. “But I do not know... What could you... What could I...” She huffed. “H- how?”

[Ssafirarhysati]

Rhysati watched the multitude of emotions cross Chaeli's ethereal facade as the ghost absently recounted her fate. Dead she may be, a mere shade of her former, physical shell, but it seemed that mortal habits still persisted for the Vantha. Confusion was there, a generous dosage of hurt and betrayal, and then...consideration. The fool ghost was finally beginning to understand what she could do in her condition! The Dhani smiled inwardly, fully aware how she had likely corrupted Chaeli's peaceful nature. "Don't you jussst - HATE - them for what they have done to you? Poor, poor human... Dying for sssuch a pitiful reassson, tricked by thessse ssspidersss to bear more of their kind - little killersss, jussdt like the one who made you fat and ugly while you carried hisss brat inssside of you! The only good thing isss that you bore a girl rather than another petcher like him, yesss? "Tell me, did you even get to hold her before you died?" It was another twist of the proverbial knife, another nudge to convince the ghost to join in Rhysati's mischief. Humans were such emotional beings. Even dead ones, it seemed. It did not take much. Rhysati knew she had Chaeli the moment the specter spoke again. "How? How?" she asked. It was a rhetorical question, for Rhysati did not wait for ghost to answer. She gripped a nearby stalagmite and, with her great strength, snapped off a good-sized portion of it. "Break them?" Rhysati took the piece in both her hands and wielded it like a cudgel. Holding it thus, she smashed it down against the rock formations that enclosed the grotto. The brittle, makeshift club shattered into a million crystalline pieces. The shards merely passed through the spirit, and not one scratched the Dhani's tough scales. "Crusssh them?" Rhysati dusted her scaled hands and then, without warning, lunged at Chaeli, fangs bared. The Dhani wrapped the thick coils of her frame ineffectually around the ghost's ephemeral form, squeezing nothing but air but causing Chaeli to vanish where she flouted. "Sssteal the breath from their lungsss?" asked Rhysati once the ghost reformed into a distinguishable form again. "But no, all thessse I could do, on my own and without you," she continued, her tone theatrically sad. "We ssshould make them feel the terror they made you feel, the helplessssnessss. I have the meansss for thisss by my toolsss are... limited. "But tell me, friend Chaeli, what can you do? What would you do? To them?" Rhysati's eyes glittered with interest as she expectantly awaited the specter's reply. OOCHope you don't mind, I took some liberties with your character. I can edit them out if you like, just tell me.

[Chaeli Snowsong]

Chaeli watched the woman closely, her expression an amalgam of hope and envy and resentment. She was unsure how to move, how to react; she did not flinch as rock shards assaulted her or as the snake’s great body violated her. Shredded by the intrusion, her soulmist’s cold grasp clung to those hard and slippery scales, but they could not hold on for long. The flailing wisps congealed into reaching arms and a desperate face, but both fell like hesitance as she felt herself reform again. She wanted to be like Delilah, or whoever she was: strong, menacing, beautiful. She could not break them, could not crush them, but...

“I can...” Her hands rose again, clutching uselessly at the air. Deliberation splayed over her searching eyes. She did not know... anything. She could not crush or break them. She could barely move a door. She could move them, if she tried. It must be all the same.

Her fingertips began to materialize and instant before she looked down on them, hard black stones that grew in into long, curling fists. “I can—” she did not know how to describe it. She looked up at her and rose in the air, lifting a pair of translucent eyes to just below Rhysati’s. Her little arms reached for true flesh, the cold and steady rhythm of the scaled woman’s heart. “I can—”

She pressed tentatively against the chest of that living creature with four dead fingers, lukewarm despite the heavy chill of her soulmist. The ghostly tendrils wrapped around Chaeli’s newfound ally, entwined the object of her desire, the source of her courage. The embrace was as easily broken as a ripple in water, but her concentration was as hard as steel. Another idea had formed in the back of her expanding mind. Materialized skin crawled like growing moss to her forearm, receded from her untouchable hand, removed her glove of flesh. Where it was once benign, her touch was a dagger of ice as she willed it to enter real, warm, solid flesh, scales, bone.

Chaeli did not know that she could inhabit this body, only that she could cross through it. Her unfeeling hands groped blindly for Rhysati’s heart, imbuing her with cold, pressing her with unnatural tangibility. There was a smile on her face as it began to grow patches of corporeality, of strength.

“I can make them cold,” she decided. “I can make them afraid.”

OOCSame note. Move your character out of the way at any point.

[Ssafirarhysati]

She saw the hesitation on the spirit's face, the unsurety. Rhysati began to rethink whether she had chosen the right plaything for the malice she intended to unleash upon Kalinor's unsuspecting denizens. This Chaeli looked meek and helpless - useless to her. The spirit's wispy fingers reached for her bare chest, but what could it do? The cold they emitted was uncomfortable to be true, but Rhysati had already shown that its effect on the living could be easily shook off. And then the ghost's limb seemed to gain substance. They touched her scaled flesh but for the briefest of moments. The Dhani's eyes widened as those digits made contact and then she threw herself backwards, diving back into the soothing warmth of the grotto's waters. More freezing than winter's chill, Chaeli's touch was unlike anything Rhysati had ever experienced in her century-long lifetime. It was a coldness that came from beyond the grave. She took her time resurfacing, allowing the water's warmth to erase the icy pinpricks of pain left by the spirit's fingers on her chest before she emerged. But when she did, there was a vicious smile on her serpentine lips. "Wonderful!" Rhysati cried in glee. "Sssimply wonderful! And who, pray tell, among thessse ssspidersss would you like to be the firssst to feel your loving caresssss? You can tell me. I will help you..." Her forked tongue darted out in anticipation, as if she could already taste the terror of their first victim. You will learn to enjoy what you are. As will I.

[Chaeli Snowsong]

The snake left her for only a moment, but that moment was an eternity to Chaeli’s warped and tormented mind. She felt abandoned, ecstatic, and furious all at once, and all she could do was scream. Her wailing passions boomed across the wet walls of the grotto, shaking the surface of the water and stirring the patient drops on distant stalactites. Her soulmist stretched her into thin wisps as she groped for the walls and the water, anxious with uncertainty and the tumult of this revelation that was also a frustration. Just as she thought to think twice about it, the snake rose again and revoked all of her doubt with a single exclamation.

Chaeli beamed, almost glowing with the happy gold of her Vantha aura as all of her pieces returned to her. Soulmist coalesced, condensed, and solidified on her face and arms. Materialized flesh even began to climb down through her small breasts, daring the same pride in nakedness that Delilah had shown in minutes long past. She hovered low, at her true (albeit meager) height, and spread her little arms wide in response to the other woman’s delight. Her hands lowered absently as her attention escaped to thoughts of potential victims.

A face that had once been so charming and beautiful swarmed like a flurry of distant snow at the front of her mind. She had seen that face so many times; she had kissed it, loved it, if only for a night. She had travelled with it, she had weaned hope and despair from it, and in the end she had learned to hate it. All she could remember of his raven hair was how it looked like black soot around his ugly ashen face. His amethyst eyes could crack like glass beneath her revenge, and she would watch him weep blood like she had wept his poison from her womb.

His was only one name she had known, in the hell that had been her final days.

“Lividus Nerium.”

OOCThis could be a good place to end it, if you want. Or we could follow it through, in a single thread. Lividus is the father of an existing PC and I’ve gotten permission from her to kill him.

[Macabre]

Thread Award!

Chaeli
XP: Singing +1, Materialization +4, Possession +1
Lore: Making Vengeance Fear

Ssafirarhysati
XP: Subterfuge +3, Intimidation +1,
Lore: Manipulating Ghosts, Shades of a Vantha’s Spirit

I very much enjoyed this thread, please continue with this story! I believe the skills awarded are pretty straight forward, but as always: if you have any questions or comments, don’t be afraid to send a PM my way.