Living Among the Dead

[Ialari Pythone]

Timestamp: Early Winter, 509 AV
Location: The Isle of Sahova; the Citadel and its surroundings

Many a day had passed since Ialari's first steps upon the sandy shores of Sahova. Never could she have imagined that following those steps would lead her to the strange alliance she now found herself in. She had saved Sahova from certain destruction at the hands of a magical creation gone awry and thus gained some amount of grudging respect from the island's unique inhabitants, the nuit. With that bit of respect came free access to the isle and its offerings.

Her hosts were not ones she would normally associate with. In fact, Ialari experienced varying levels of conflict at the idea of working alongside, with and around the undead. On one hand she wished the complete utter destruction of a race she considered unnatural and despicable. On the other she respected their wealth of forbidden knowledge and their proficiency at its use. Wise in many ways the nuit were however in regards to the living they were more than a little ignorant.

Mixed feelings aside, Ialari couldn't help but glow at the opportunity she was gifted with and made full use of her access to the Citadel. The Archmage even allowed her access to the traitorous wizards whom Ialari had saved the Citadel from. This went a long way in tempering her anger at the knowledge of her people having been used as experiments throughout the past centuries. Unfortunately for Ialari though, the Citadel did not offer much in the way of accommodations for the living. She had a hard time finding anything of real substance to eat. Most of what she found were handfuls of berries gathered from the few living plants on the island and the occasional sea-food leftovers she could find along the beach; left over from the few birds that feasted along the shore. Sooner or later she would have to take a trip to the mainland for some real food or perhaps even make the journey north to the island of Mura. She had heard of the Isle of the Konti and wanted to see if it was all that she had heard about or just another over-inflated legend.

As she pondered her future, Ialari made her way through the twisting corridors of the Citadel. Thanks to her earlier experiences with being mentally linked with the Citadel itself, she had become intimately familiar with the Citadel's internal layout and was able to navigate the maze of tunnels without really thinking about it. When granted access by the Archmage, Ialari had set to claiming a small chamber; abandoned long ago, as her personal study and laboratory. Filled with a variety of dusty but functional items useful in a number of different experiments, the small lab was more than enough for her. As she wandered the tunnels on her way to the lab, Ialari, almost out of instinct, avoided specific corridors and antechambers that she knew held some nasty surprises for members of the living. While the nuit had nothing to fear from these parts of the Citadel, Ialari was not so lucky.

Eventually she arrived at her laboratory and entered. Considered small by comparison to many other chambers in the Citadel, Ialari's lab contained a collection of small tables where sat a variety of alchemical devices, tools and related implements. She had set up her own poison and alchemy kits and complimented them with the other items already present when she claimed the chamber. There were a few shelves of dusty tomes as well as a simple bed, wardrobe and desk. The majority of the chamber however had been devoted to the imprisonment of and experimentation on renegade nuit. There was only enough room to hold two nuit at any one time with both being restrained to by a series of chains bolted to the floor. The renegades had their ability to access djed removed and were of little to no threat to Ialari. Upon entering the chamber, she took a few steps toward the two nuit that were currently present. She smiled and said, "I am feeling a little bored today. Shall we see if there is any excitement to be had?"

[Tarot]

The two prisoners stared blankly at the Isur. A superficial observer might have said that the first was male and the second, female, but Ialari's experience among the Nuit here had taught her that they did not consider themselves either anymore. The Nuit who spent their centuries in the outside world, clinging to the ways of the living, often managed to retain a notion of gender. These ones had trascended, or simply forgotten, the concept, so there was one Nuit in a male body and one Nuit in a female body.

Qiao had agreed to provide Ialari with a modicum of information on her subjects before she started her work, so that her efforts could prove more successful. Old documents had been dug out of dusty archives. It was fascinating, the sheer amount of documentation and bureaucracy going on before the Valterrian. People were apparently asked to fill out forms whenever they interacted with the government. Ialari had collected the material into neat files that she kept around for reference.

Subject #1, a male body looking to be in his forties, Vantha heritage suspected. Rawass Giznabaar, once a noteworthy student at the Royal Academy of Magic albeit involved in the rougher and darker side of fraternity affairs. Ultimately expelled over the murder of a freshman who happened to be the son of a high-level official. Circumstances unclear, but it had probably been an initiation rite gone awry. Turned to a criminal lifestyle, arrested on charges of eight murders, sentenced to death. Sentence converted into forced participation in the ARMED project - the codename for Mashaen's mass undead creation. Ialari had since discovered that Rawass' case was far from the only one. It appeared that few people had asked to be turned into undead, Qiao being one of the exceptions.

Subject #2, a female body in her thirties, of Zeltivan stock. Shalla wa'Nagat, a life spent as a bureaucrat and accountant at magical institutions. Hers was a case of 'abilities too useful to be lost', resulting in her being kidnapped after retiring and forcibly turned into a Nuit. Shalla had been an information gatherer, a keeper of secrets and a woman trusted with knowledge about the hidden workings of magical lobbies and groups before the Valterrian. Her file also mentioned suspicions of her being a spy for one of the Seven Robes, but the accusations were never substantiated.

"Here comes the Isur bitch," Rawass gave a derisive laughter, "we couldn't even get a proper inquisitor to play with us. How the mighty have fallen." The other Nuit said nothing, merely giving Ialari that distant look, as if lost elsewhere.

OOCI thought I'd jump in, but I can leave if you'd like to go solo.

[Ialari Pythone]

OOCNo, no, I am very happy that you joined in!

Ialari's smile widened at the nuit's biting tongue. She turned and walked over to the nearby desk where she kept the files on the two renegades. The male, Rawass, had been a criminal which in Ialari's rather twisted perspective, justified what she was about to do to him. The female, Shalla, seemed to have a relatively clean pre-Valterrian past yet the fact remained that she was now a traitor and on some level responsible for almost killing Ialari. That was enough to justify her eminent treatment. As Ialari reviewed the files, she couldn't help but marvel at the idea of actual viewing pre-Valterrian documents. The Citadel was filled with pre-Valterrian writings and other artifacts that in all, were comparably complete compared to the fragmented collection held by her clan back at the Silver Tower.

While Ialari was more than a little skilled with the use of poisons, she had really no experience with interrogating anyone, living or otherwise. Her knowledge of nuit anatomy was also severely lacking. This did not discourage her however since she had a rather large supply of renegade nuit to practice on. She didn't plan on wasting any of her "resources" though and planned to take things slow.

From what she had witnessed thus far, nuit, while not living in the traditional sense, did require their shells to be relatively whole in order to continue existing in them. Ialari remembered seeing the chambers filled with preserved corpses which she figured were used for some sort of transferal of the nuit's essence from one shell to another. With this vague knowledge in mind, she decided not only to go slow with her experiments but also strive not to do so much damage to the shells as to prematurely destroy them.

Turning from her paperwork, Ialari walked over to one of the tables holding various implements used in alchemy and poison experimentation. She retrieved a small, curved, surgically sharp blade from the collection of implements. Along with the blade, Ialari took a small black case, opened it, and took out a small brass syringe.

She then casually made her way to the two nuit. Looking from one to the other, Ialari sat her tools down on a small wooden pedestal positioned between the two subjects. "Alright, here is how this will play out. I am going to "play" with you two a little and see what I can learn about what makes you what you are. It will probably be quite painful and may last quite some time. If you know anything about an Isur though, you will recall how patient and oftentimes stubborn we can be so I do plan on drawing this out as long as necessary. Now, that said, I also want to add that if you have any information that may be valuable to me or those you rebelled against, it would make me very happy. If such information turns out to be legitimate and useful, I may be persuaded to go down to one of those little storage chambers and bring a fresh shell for you to move into. See, when I am through with these current shells you inhabit, there won't be much left of any use to you. If what you have for me proves to be very good, I may even be persuaded to secretly release you. Why would I do such a thing you ask? I am alive which makes me greedy, selfish, and easily persuaded by such things." Ialari was no fool. She had studied snakes all of her life. She grew up around them as if they were siblings. She often tried to mimic their mannerisms. She understood how deliberate, smooth and deceitful their nature was and she mirrored that in what she herself did.

These traitors were nuit and thus viewed the living as weak and easily manipulated. Their only real interaction with the living over the centuries were with the few who they engaged in limited trade with. Wise in the ways of magic, they were ignorant to the ways of the living. She would play on this ignorance and lead them to believe she could be convinced to free them. She could use that to her advantage to gain secrets and further forbidden knowledge for herself while also acquiring information to give to the Archmage and Qiao in exchange for more favors. She had no plans on letting them allowing them to "survive" her experiments much less free them.

With the blade in hand, she walked over to Rawass and proceeded to cut whatever clothing he was wearing from his body, leaving him completely nude. She traded the blade for the syringe and said smoothly, "Don't be afraid to tell me if this hurts at all. If it doesn't, please tell me that as well." With that she stuck the syringe into the spot right below Rawass' breastbone and pulled back on the plunger in order to capture whatever fluids may still be present inside the nuit's corpse shell.

[Tarot]

Even an inexperienced interrogator such as Ialari could instantly notice the differences between her subjects. One was arrogant and eager to talk back, the other just waited quietly without showing much emotion at all. Rawass did not seem like the type to plan things in advance, Shalla on the other hand was probably the more intelligent of the two. One thing was certain, though: they harbored no great hopes of being liberated.

"Greed and selfishness do not fade away in death, Isur," Rawass remarked as he watched the woman prepare her instruments, the nature of which did not really surprise either of them. "It's every man for himself down here... and you probably know that. Qiao is using you like the manipulative little prick that he is... always has been. He was the headmaster of the Royal Academy of Magic at the time I enrolled, when he had the entire place under his thumb. He turned the teachers one against another, promoted one faction to isolate another, played all the little games in the book. We, the students, were just fodder. I would not be surprised if that was his opinion of you, as well."

Rawass grinned, now stripped naked. His body was a sickly grey, gaunt and emaciated. The syringe crushed what was left of his skin when Ialari plunged it in, and the grin turned into a strained smirk. "Think about it..." he whispered, "I didn't have a clue Drainira would betray. I just saw an opportunity for freedom and ran for it. It didn't work out. Shalla here didn't even do that much. She stayed in her place. Her only fault? Qiao never liked her from the start, thought she was a spy. He has the power now... he's purging this place, turning himself back into a headmaster. It's no coincidence he re-established a five-man council like back then. He just wants to play that game again and you happen to be the pawn of the day, Isur."

The syringe was now filled with the essence of the Nuit, the mysterious 'ichor'. It was a white fluid, slightly thicker than blood, and surprisingly cold - so cold, in fact, that the temperature of the brass syringe dropped almost instantly. If the rumors were true, drinking enough of this might turn someone into a Nuit, though the outcome was far from guaranteed.

[Ialari Pythone]

Ialari's lip curled upward slightly in disgust at Rawass' rotting nude appearance. The bodies of the nuit were the epitome of weakness as far as Ialari was concerned and her response was more geared toward that than the appearance of slowly decaying flesh.

The coolness of the syringe following the retrieval of the nuit's internal fluids intrigued Ialari more than surprised her. Of course something that dead was bound be cold but the fact that she was able to extract the strange ichor was a mighty bonus as far as she was concerned. Upon removing the needle and glancing at the syringe for a moment, Ialari looked at Rawass and said, "Whatever Qiao sees me as is of little concern to me. He is using me just as I am using him; as I am using all of you. As for games, we all play games, Rawass Giznabaar. In fact, I believe you played a few in your earlier days with your little collection of murders. Wasn't it the murder of a freshman to the Royal Academy of Magic that started it all? Let me guess, jealous little human couldn't take the competition and tried to take the easy way to a win?"

Ialari walked back over to one of the tables where sat some of the various laboratory equipment. She sat the syringe down and reached for a small glass bowl. Taking a needle, she pierced the tip of her finger and allowed several drops of blood to fall into the bowl before picking up the syringe and allowing a single drop of its unliving contents to fall onto the blood. Her immediate goal was to see if there would be any reaction. The whole time she listened to whatever words the nuit chose to speak. Rawass was a talker and any information she could gain from him, about anything, may be useful at some point.

As far as her long term plans went, Ialari had been mapping them out since being granted access to Sahova. Though she despised the nuit, they had their uses and those uses could lead to something greater. They were immortal after all and that had possibilities. While she would never herself consider of becoming one of the unliving, she toyed with the idea of perhaps acquiring a handful of her own. She wasn't looking for free-willed servants instead she imagined having a small number loyal followers; immune to the frailties of the human condition and capable of assisting her with finding a solution to the human problem as a whole.

First however, she wanted to find a poison that could actually harm a nuit as it would grant her an initial means of termination in case any of her experiments got out of hand. Then she could work on the actual method of control. Of course, along with control, she would have to work on a way for servants to maintain the appearance of health, strength and youth as a rotting corpse would simply not do.

She figured that the best place to start with all of it was in her own blood. Her blood contained the foundation of her own health and beauty. Also, due to her birth mark of Izurdin, she could access Izentor and thus impart some of herself upon an object. Using her own blood, Izentor, a bit of alchemy and magecraft, perhaps she could create an item of some sort that could allow her control over a small number of unliving servants while also reversing the process of decay and enhancing their appearance. An ambitious task to be sure but one that would not only bring her closer to her goal but also bring her quite a bit of respect back at the Silver Tower.

[Tarot]

"Lies!" Rawass exclaimed in what was perhaps the most lively manifestation of feeling she had ever gotten out of a Nuit. The elaborate shackles that grounded the wizard's magical abilities rattled softly as he stirred with surprising vehemence. "I will admit to the other murders, of course. Those were my work… I had to, and my purpose was not unlike yours right now. But not that one, not the obnoxious kid with a stutter. I didn't kill him. I was just a scapegoat for the real culprit."

Rawass continued to speak while Ialari went about her business, turning her back on him. "His father wanted someone to blame, right? And if you were the Master's council, who would you rather blame? One of your own who pushed the boy too hard during an exam or the difficult sophomore with a history of bullying and abuse?"

The reaction Ialari was looking for did not take long at all. As soon as a drop of ichor touched the spilled blood, it reacted with strength, and a sizzling sound could be heard as the two fluids seemed to fight for dominance. It was as if the ichor was trying to convert the blood into more of its own substance, but the blood was attempting to resist. In the end, there wasn't enough ichor to turn the blood, and the reaction stopped, leaving a layer of dark, clotted blood on the bottom of the bowl.

"So you may be interested in immortality, Isur," Rawass laughed, "but don't you start thinking you are the first to try these tricks. The ichor… but they used to call it SV back then - Soul Vector - keeps a soul attached to a body, like glue. Simple as that. Like all the best inventions, Nuit are simple things from a theoretical standpoint."

[Ialari Pythone]

Ialari marveled at the reaction caused by the mixing of the ichor, or Soul Vector as Rawass had called it, and her own blood. According to Rawass, the ichor acted as glue when binding a soul to the body; apparently even after the body fails and dies. Ialari pondered for a moment and concluded that if the ichor consumed and replaced the living blood, the body of course would die yet the ichor itself would keep the soul tied to it. Ialari returned her focus to Rawass and picked up her conversation with him in a calm tone.

"So, you didn't kill him." She said more as a statement than a question. "Let me guess then, the real culprit, the one who pushed the kid too far was Qiao? Is that part of why you despise him so?" In truth, it didn't matter much to Ialari but the conversation was proving useful in opening Rawass up and got him to talking even more. While talking didn't appear to come difficult to the nuit, getting him to divulge secrets may. Allowing him a verbal outlet for centuries of anger however, might prove useful in getting him to leak a bit more than a few samples of ichor. Besides, learning a bit more about the nuit political structure and that of the Academy of old could actually be of some use as well.

"Oh, and just for the record? My experiments have nothing to do with me becoming immortal through the use of SV. My lord has already provided me with a path toward immortality in the realm of the living. I can tell you though that my work, if successful will, among other things, restore the appearance of health, youth and vitality to a nuit's unliving vessel. Now I imagine that such a thing means little to you. However, it may or may not be worth something to those of us who are, were, or who always wished to be beautiful?" Ialari gave a side-long glance to Shalla. All women, regardless of age, had the desire to be beautiful. If it were true what Rawass said, that greed and selfishness did not fade even in death, perhaps some of the more feminine traits such as vanity, still remained in Shalla.

Shalla was for later however and Ialari returned her gaze to Rawass. "No, my ambition is much greater than even your ancient, immortal mind can comprehend. You can either cooperate with me, suffer a comparatively small amount of pain and share in the rewards, or suffer terribly during your final moments and vanish from existence with only the memory of your crimes; real and imagined, left behind." There, she tossed him a crumb and left it up to him to bite. If he failed to, there was still Shalla along with a number of others in waiting. She had been given the traitors to do with as she pleased though she knew that she was probably being monitored by Mashaen and certainly watched by Qiao. She dared not reveal the true motivation for her experiments but she saw no harm in revealing otherwise useless bits and pieces of it; especially the parts that were of no real concern to those monitoring her. Getting Rawass and the others to talk also made it seem like she was trying to pry information from them to fulfill her end of the deal with Mashaen and Qiao.

Just like a snake, she tasted the air and slowly; patiently slithered a path toward her target. For now that would do but eventually when she neared her target, she would feign hypnotically back and forth; leaving her target unprepared. After a patient wait for the right moment, she would strike and her goal would be realized.

"What did you hope to achieve with the other murders? You say your purpose was not unlike mine? What purpose was that?" She walked back up to Rawass and began picking off pieces of dried, dead flesh from his body. She had an idea of how the SV may work, now she had to test the properties of the flesh in order to get an idea of how to restore its vitality. She had a working theory based on what Rawass had said about SV being a glue of sorts for the soul.

From her religious studies, one's soul contained an image that one creates of themselves. The Isur soul, beautiful and gifted as it is, sees itself as being just that and thus those properties are reflected upon their physical form. With Izentor, those soul properties are then imparted upon an object thus making it stronger and more beautiful. With her blood, her soul properties of beauty and vitality, she could impart them with Izentor into an item. Though she was not fully learned in the use of more advanced catalysts, Ialari theorized that the use of SV and nuit flesh had to be key ingredients for magecrafting the simple item that when aided by Izentor, would create the perfect storm for her plan; an enchanted heart that when implanted in a nuit would bind them to her for control, grant them her beauty and vitality, and maybe even grant her favor in the eyes of Izurdin for such an innovative creation.

There was still the matter of a poison to help easily eliminate any potential dangers from her final creations but that too was looking promising. All she needed to do is find a way to focus the potency of her own blood so that it could combat the nuit's SV and thus transfigure their unlife to final death.

[Tarot]

Rawass seemed to have calmed down for the time being, but there was still a flash of anger behind his glazed, dead eyes. "No, not Qiao," he said at last, "he would not tolerate to be in the presence of a useless kid long enough to kill one. For him to take the life of a freshman would be akin to a god going out of his way to crush a cockroach. He delegated his exams to others, though, others who were not as lofty. Like Aelobius the Voider, one of the five councilmen. When he was done with the kid, his lower body was missing entirely. He charmed women into marrying him with Hypnotism, but they had a tendency to disappear when he got tired of them. We thought he was on some kind of quest to fill the Void or something."

The Nuit laughed bitterly, a creepy sound coming from the undead, but raised a thin brow at Ialari's statement of intent. Shalla was unperturbed by the same words, simply staring in the general direction of her captor. Indeed, she gave off the impression that she would be much, much harder to crack than Rawass. "Good for you, Isur," the man gave a predatory grin, "I can even admire your ambitious designs to a small degree. Do allow me to share a few recollections from before the Valterrian, though. Our propaganda machine called this thing the 'child of ambition', the 'magical success of the millennium' and 'the ultimate breakthrough'. And what was it? You've guessed right, it was our beloved Supervisor. Mashaen had the same dark light in his eyes during his research seminars about what would become Project Drainira. You know the end of the story."

"Mind you," he chuckled, "I'm not saying you have a tenth of Mashaen's talent in bringing dreams to reality. But if you tread the same road, you can and will find the same bumps eventually. Too bad I will most likely not be around to see it when the time comes." Rawass' black tongue flicked between his dead, parched lips. "I know because I, too, have been on that road… though I did not go as far as I might have wanted before they stopped me."

"I scarcely have two years of attendance at the Academy on record, and several murders under my belt," his face twisted in a mask of gleeful hate, "but they still picked me over others. Of course I received further… education outside the Academy."

"But I don't feel like telling you, bitch." He lifted his head in a mad expression of defiance at the Isur woman.

[Ialari Pythone]

Ialari peeled the flakes of dead flesh from Rawass body. She doubted the flesh itself contained any real use for her core project however she pondered whether or not it could be useful as part of a poison. The body parts of various creatures were often used in the crafting of poisons and the skin of a nuit may work in a similar manner. She noted the name of the councilman that Rawass had mentioned; Aelobius. She assumed he was still around somewhere in the Citadel and perhaps he could be of some use in the future.

It was when Rawass had spoken of Drainira and a bit about "her" origins that Ialari became more genuinely interested. The former Supervisor had tried to kill Ialari. It didn't matter to the Isur that Drainira's original intent was to eliminate the nuit; it had become personal. Such was for a different time however as Rawass was actually beginning to reveal some potentially useful information; information that Ialari may be gain some insight from in her further experiments.

When Rawass abruptly ceased his conversing and once again threw on his stubborn denial to cooperate, Ialari remained patient. She click her tongue and in a disappointed, motherly tone said, "Now Rawass, we were just starting to get a long here and you had to and be difficult." Ialari took a few steps and retrieved an old copper urn from a nearby shelf and brought it back to Rawass. She positioned the urn between the nuit and herself, took hold of his left arm with her own metallic one. With her other arm, she allowed the chains restraining the nuit's arm to the floor to slide ever so slightly; just enough to allow her to extend his arm toward her slightly while keeping the magical bindings in place. Releasing the chain for a moment and displaying the razor-like blade, she then squeezed Rawass' arm just above the wrist.

The overall power and grip of an Isurian arm was such that it could actually twist, bend, and otherwise shape metal without the need for tools. Ialari clenched her fist ever so slightly around the nuit's arm; enough that bone would begin to split and fracture. She then used the blade to slice a small cut into the nuit's flesh thus allowing more of his SV to be released and drip into the small copper urn. She looked from Rawass arm to his face; a calm look on her own, and said "I am a reasonable person, Rawass, but I will get what I want. Remember what you were willing to do when you had focus and wanted something? I would prefer not to have to shatter every bone in your body and slowly drain you dry of SV. Yet, If that is how you prefer it, I will most surely oblige. Do let me know however if you feel like cooperating again." Her patience with the nuit was strong; perhaps stronger than she would have expected. Her focus, her all-consuming goal, added to her patience for only by being unfathomably patient could she hope to crush the will of the undead.

In the back of Ialari's mind, she could feel that something was different about her yet her acknowledgment of it was light and fleeting. She had always been one willing to do whatever it took to get what she wanted but now she was experiening a tingling of enjoyment from what she was doing. She was in control, she had complete power over an individual who had existed much longer than she and who otherwise possessed much more skill in the arts of djed manipulation. She was now the manipulator learning to pull the strings of the being before her in order to get what she wanted out of him. Her brief moments as the Citadel's Supervisor; trapped in a sea of chaos planted by Drainira before her departure, had caused some changes in Ialari and her current state of mind was perhaps only the beginning.

[Tarot]

Rawass grimaced in pain as Ialari twisted his arm and cut it open. The Isur's iron grip could rip a Nuit's frail body to shreds if she wanted to. His ichor dripped into the urn with the slow, methodical rhythm of Dira. Her control over him was total, and she could see his hate even through the glazed eyes of the undead. It did not burn like that of the living… it was a cold, relentless feeling, slowly released like acid venom. His hate was absolute, yet not entirely directed at Ialari. No, the Isur was but a manifestation of the things Rawass had grown to hate… only the last fragment of something bigger.

"Get what you want, eh?" His lungs filled up with air. Normally, the Nuit only breathed when they needed to speak, unless they had trained themselves to blend among the living. "Only preoccupied with yourself and your goal, you will be your own downfall. The question is not what kind of magics I studied. That is meaningless… meaningless, I say! The question is, why did I want to leave? Why did so many want to leave when Drainira gave us the chance? Why did we want freedom when we had power? You do not see, you just won't see it."

Rawass struggled against his bindings in vain, only accelerating the loss of his SV. "We all saw how meaningless it all was in the end. How many of us could have survived the perils of the outside world without any prior knowledge of it? One in three, if that many. We still ran for it. The road to knowledge ends with the realization of its own lack of meaning. Once you realize this, you end up like Mashaen and just stop caring… or shut yourself in your little toy world like Qiao. Perhaps Drainira is indeed the most fortunate, for her meaning lies in her hard-coded purpose… being a Supervisor. You and I are not so lucky. Power will not fill the hollow pit we all have inside. Not forever."

The Nuit's voice was getting weaker from the exhaustion of losing his SV. Already the urn was half-filled with the precious ichor. It seemed like that the Nuit had less of it than people had blood. It made sense, given how their bodies were significantly light-weighted. "It will be over in a few minutes," he announced, his voice much calmer and more quiet now. "Show me what is in your heart besides your greed and ambition. Show me what makes you different from Drainira, for you are dangerously similar. Do you not have people you love? Have you craved power from the moment you got out of your mother's womb? Does anything lie beneath the venom and machinations?"

He squinted to take a good look at her. "Bare your soul and I will bare mine. Or just wait till I am dead, either way is fine."