Completed Cold-blood meets No-Blood (Kuv)

[Licearsvansan]

Svan had tried to follow the man. He really did. The man however, seemed to be walking to a specific place with purpose, and spoke little to Svan as they walked. In fact the man hadn't even noticed when one of the sailors quietly pulled Svan to the side. The crewman spoke softly for Svan to follow him, and the Dhani, eager to find some kind of excitement was happy to oblige.

Svan was led down a series of roads and asked if he would like anything to eat. The snake thought it was curious that this man would wish to dine with him, but regardless he replied that some fresh meat would serve well to fill his abyss of a stomach. Suprisingly the man bought the food for Svan, and led him to a wooden table that sat on the coast. Svan looked out to the see and watched the waves rolling in. The rose, fell, and crashed against a large sliff that was not too far in the distance. The man sat down on a wooden bench and motioned for Svan to sit across from him. If Svan wasn't supsicious before, he certainly was now. "Okay, what's going on? You buy me food, you take me to the coast, and ask me to sit down and eat with you. I don't get it!"

The broad shoulders of the man slumped slightly at the snake's words, and he looked down as if there was something he didn't want to say. "I'm sorry, please take a seat and have something to eat. This isn't going to be easy for me."

Svan folded his arms but did as he was told. Part of Svan's paranoia begged for him not to trust this man, but the snake's appitite was greater that his fear. Svan soon began scarfing down food like a beast. It wasn't until he had finished the second slab of meat did he notice that the man hadn't said anything. The crewman had a solemn look and was staring down at the table while twiddling his thumbs. "So...?" the Dhani said impatiently.

Startled the man looked up and let out a breath before begining. "I heard about your uncle."

Oh? Svan thought to himself as he raised an eyebrow.

"Its a terrible thing see, and I'm sorry you had to. No man should have to go throu what you did, I can only imagine how horrible you must f-"

"Excuse me," the snake said with a mouthfool of lamb, "What exactly is it I saw?"

The man made the look of a parent explaining death to a child for the first time. "You really don't know do you? That man you met earlier. He was wearing your uncle's skin. Thats what Nuit are. They are monsters who walk around in the bodies of the dead."

The snake gave a confused expression as the cogs in his head began to click into place. So that was why this man was treating me. He felt sorry that I had to see a Nuit wearing my dead "uncle's" body. Doing his best to keep up the illution that it was indeed his uncle Svan slowly allowed his face to grow more sorrowful. "R-really?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so. However, don't you worry. We plan on putting your uncle 'back to rest' before long now." The man's voice grew from sorrowful to grim without any warning. He cast a glance towards the cliff and smiled vindictivly. "We will give him a proper sea burial."

As the sailor's words began to make sense, Svan's skin went bleach white and a half chewed peice of meat flopped out of his gapping mouth. "WHAT!? You're going to kill him? All he did was...was..." Svan could barely bring himself to say that the body was his uncle's any more.

The man seemed taken back by the snake's sudden outbust. "Well, thats not all he did. We think he also sabotaged the sails before our battle."

"OH PETCH!" Svan immediately lept off the bench and began a full speed sprint towards the cliff.

Petch, petch, petch, petch, petching PETCH! Why did the cliff have to be so far away. They looked like ants up there.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh could only hope that these men knew as little about Nuits as most people did. The fact that three of them were seeing to this "duty" actually gave him hope. if they knew intricate details about the Nuit condition, they'd know that Nuit rarely achieve even a low standard of physical prowess. Just one of them could have thrown him off the top.

Of course, he begged and cursed and threatened and made obvious lies about connections, mostly emphasizing the token that the captain had given him to smooth his introduction to the little seaside settlement. They just laughed as they wrapped heavy chains around him. "And if you had stayed in the town, you would have been protected by it." They torqued the chains tightly and cinched them with a padlock. The apparent leader of the three pulled a key and waved it tauntingly in front of Kuvarakh. "I'll give you a chance, skin-stretcher..." They all laughed at the reference to the painful stitching the man had inflicted on him earlier. "...if you can find the key, you can unlock the chains and free yourself. We won't interfere." This was accompanied by another loud bout of laughter.

Kuvarakh had no real difficulty instilling a tone of complete horror into a long wail of despair as the man hurled the key out into the breaking waves smashing against the boulders in the dark inlet below. He knew this was going to be a terrible ordeal for him. But he also knew it would not kill him, as these men clearly believed. They thought he still needed to breathe, else why assure his weighted submersion with chains? The real trouble for Kuvarakh was going to be the initial impact with the water, coupled with the battering he would take before he reached the bottom.

Growing up in Zeltiva, he'd heard plenty of stories about men overboard and among the things he'd remembered was that the water is roughest at the surface. Before the men had grabbed him, he'd honestly thought about grabbing a big rock and simply jumping. At least he'd have been assured of a feet-first entry. But this way, they were thinking they were throwing him to what he himself thought was certain death. They'd walk away thinking 'job well done', never suspecting that he'd survive to tell the tale.

But a gesture was in order. He wouldn't go quietly. He spat in the man's face. "At least I've actually been inside a woman in my life. You...boys...look like you're real 'hard astern', a real three-piece set! One big worm and a pair of nuts to back him up, or is one of you the woman here?"

One of the thugs grabbed him by the chains across his chest. "Petching bastard..."

Kuvarakh laughed derisively. "Yeah, I guess it must be you, you've got the mouth for it!" He pursed his lips with mock kisses.

The man roared incoherently and shoved him back and off the edge.

[Licearsvansan]

Svan wasn't sure if he was running, flying, or dying. His feet slammed against the ground ast blinding speeds, and the far away cliff was quikly coming into focus. However, with every step Svan felt as if his heart might just pop open. He was amazed that he had managed to suck down enough wind to stay concious at this speed. It couldn't last forever though. Eventually Svan's footsteps began to grow slower, and he was breathing in a hurricane's worth of air with every chime. Even if he made it in time he questioned what he would do to save Kuv. Wheeze at them to death?

Luckily, or perhaps unluckily for Kuv, Svan didn't have to climb the entire cliff. Before Svan was even half way up a man went flying over the ledge. The snake stopped dead in its tracks. Well thats that. he thought, suddenly unconcerned about Kuv's safetly. It was too far a distance to make out faces, but Svan doubted that the crewmen had suddenly doubted to align themselves with Kuv to betray one of their own. The snake collapsed into a heap on the ground and gasped like a fish out of water. Sucking in massive gulps of air, Svan wondered what he should do now. He could hurry back to the captain and alert her that her crew had killed her saviour. That however, required Svan to care enough about Kuv's death to bother running back before the sailors and risk having to reveal his own secrets. He could also continue up the cliff to reap Kuv's vengeance, but that also required the snake to concern himself over a dead man.

In the end Svan settled on doing nothing, and simply lied on the ground for a chime or two. Then a thought struck the snake. The Nuit's corpse might have carried money, and even if not its body would be a nice deviation from the exessive seafood to be found in this city. It wasn't the most respectable of ideas, but it was pragmatic and that was what had allowed Svan to survive this long in the first place. Having regained his breath Svan picked himself up and headed down to wear the body fell. It was a fair hike away, but he would beat the sailors to it considering that they had to walk twice as far down.

I hope "uncle" was kind enough to leave me a nice inheritance.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh arced and wrenched his body, trying to achieve vertical entry into the water. His success was marginal at best, feeling as though the entire front surface of his body, face and all, had been slammed with a massive plank by a giant. His angle of entry established an oblique trajectory down and away. The original inertia slowed to a stop after ten or fifteen feet, then he started to simply sink. Currents seemed to tug him several ways at once and he was pounded against the boulders numerous times.

Eventually, his feet hit bottom, soft, muddy bottom. This was going to make it difficult to hop, which was what his mode of transport was limited to. He made his way, after several chimes, to the base of the cliff. It was extremely dark and he knew that following the line of the cliff was the only way that he was going to find his way back to a beach of some sort.

There was a sudden gap and he floated to his face in the mud. He found the chains starting to give slack as he moved. Again, their purpose had been to restrain him only long enough to drown, not to keep him bound. The svefra crewman had no doubt feared that rope might help their victim float. Tucking his feet beneath him, Kuvarakh struggled back to his feet to find that he hadn't reached the cliff yet at all. What's more, the wall of what he thought was a boulder had the texture of brickwork. He found quickly, however, that it was no more than a large piece of rubble protruding from a massive boulder that had apparently smashed the building the brick wall was part of.

It dawned on Kuvarakh that all the boulders showing through the waves may well have been portions of the cliff, given way in any of the numerous earthquakes during the Valterian. He continued on in the direction he felt the cliff must lie, currents still whisking him this way and that, but much less severe, he was sure, than they were near the surface. The chains finally became loose enough to wriggle out of. He decided to keep hold of them, draping them over his head, in case they could be salvaged by someone in the village.

He found another cliff and began moving along it again. He came to another gap, but found it to be a legitimate crack in the cliff wall. He stepped inside to get out of the current's endless tug for a bit. He took a breathless "breather" as he absentmindedly moved around the small niche. His hand slid over rocky shelves for support and came upon a row of smooth round stones. They seemed to scatter under the pressure as he tried to catch hold of a few of them, and he quickly perceived that they did not fall from the shelf, but remained near his hand. He did get hold of a few of them and felt a series of them rest in a line across the back of his hand. They moved with his hand as he lifted it and he realized it was a necklace he had hold of.

He draped them over his head with the chains and stepped back out to continue on his way. The current seemed to have waned or redirected itself away from his location, because he found the going much easier now. In fact, it seemed almost as if the current was with him now. Still it was several bells before his head broke the surface. He was completely surprised and realized it was dark enough to prevent him from discerning the approaching sky as he neared the surface.

He shrugged and headed towards the village, with the chains and the necklace around his neck.

[Licearsvansan]

By the Goddess he came back from the dead! ...Again!

Svan was peering out from behind a rock roughly twenty meters from Kuv. The snake was in a state of disbelief as he watched the Nuit crawl out from under the water. The Dhani had reached the base of the cliff long before Kuv managed to escape, and he had quickly shifted to his snake form so that he could swim through the water with ease. Unfortunately, Svan had failed to realize that the Nuit had crawled away after sinking, and the snake had found neither hide nor hair of the man where he should have been. The snake had spent the last few bells searching farther out from the coast, believing that the Nuits body had been swept out to sea. Once the day turned to night Svan was forced to abandon his pursuit due to the dwindling light. Just before Kuv had resurfaced, Svan had been resting against a rock in snake form, doing his best to let the water slide off his body before hopping back into his clothes.

Svan slowly pulled his head back behind cover as the Nuit approached. The snake knew his dark brown scales masked him against the dark boulders in twilight, but if Nuits had the ability to survive such falls and resist poison then one could scarcely imagine what other abilities they had. For all Svan knew Nuits could have some kind of dark vision similar to his own. The Dhani wasn't too worried about being seen though. Even with both his normal sight and thermal one Svan could barely make out the man. As he watched the man make his way up the shore Svan the man's heat signature was not the usual red and orange of a healthy human, but the cool blue one of a corpse. Even the snake's own body gave off a slightly bright aura than this man's. "Yep, he is either dead, or was recently hugging a glacier." Considering Svan hadn't seen any hunks of ice floating around he assumed it was safe to catalogue this man as an undead.

Still hiding behind the rock, Svan considered his options. He had the options of leaving this man for once and all, continueing to act as his "nephew", or admit his mistake and beg fogiveness. Svan smirked at the thought of the last option. Hello Mr. Deadguy, The reason you got thrown off a cliff to your supposed death is because the sailors thought you murdered my uncle to get the body you're in, but the funny part is that I was lying the whole time. Don't worry though because I'm a vicious shapeshifting snake monster, and my lying is just what my people are known for. Well that and eating children of course! For some reason he didn't feel as if the truth would go over weel in this case. So that left him with two options; ignore the man, or continue the lie.

Svan mulled over the question as he shifted back into his human form and began to put back on his clothes. On one hand, keeping his distance was likely a safer choice as it allowed Svan to never have to see this man again. On the other, there was the possibility that this man would want vengence, and it was possible that he would see Svan as the cause of his near re-death. Still, this man didn't seem particularly vengeful or aggresive, but the snake had only known this man for a few bells. Fully clothed and still deciding, Svan walked out from behind the rock, assuming to himself that Kuv had long gone by. Timing however, was not on the snake's side, and he was forced to stop immediately in his tracks lest he crash into a very wet Nuit. Svan's eyes widened in shock, and his mouth was far too busy hanging to form even the simplest of sounds. Kuv stood not even a foot away from him, drenched in water and decorated with a heavy chain. A brief moment passed by as Svan's brained strained itself to think of an action that would break the awkwardness of this situation. Suddenly the snake unfroze."Thank the Goddess, you're alive!" the snake cried out as he lunged at the Nuit for a massive hug.

He wasn't exactly making the situation more less awkward, but at least he felt more comfortable with this charade.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh Looked around to make sure that the lie of the land was as it should be. It wouldn't do for him to have inadvertently found an island and think it was the coast. But everything seemed as it should. It did, that is, until the young man he had been having his ongoing misunderstanding with suddenly appeared right before his eyes, not a foot away.

"Thank the Goddess you're alive!" young Mr. Swanson rejoiced as he slammed Kuvarakh with a literally crushing hug. Kuvarakh felt the chain links being riven into his skin by the pressure. His skin and tissue had been softened by the water and the hug was considerably less than comfortable.

Kuvarakh didn't need to breathe to live, but he needed to breathe to speak, and "Oooooof!" had been the last thing he'd been able to say. He felt quite a bit of the water in his epidermis and clothing being squeezed out and running down his body to puddle on the ground. Now he was going to have lacerations from the chains as well as from the battering he'd received by the current and the boulders. This was going to hasten his need for a new body.

He managed to wrench himself free as Lyseer relaxed his hug. "Please! You're killing me...Damn, you are much stronger than you look!...Uhh..not that you don't look...fit...or anything. Oh, for the gods' sakes, I'm sorry, I'm just carrying a tiny bit of infuriated RAGE right now! I don't mean to take it out on you. Those petching crewmen tried to KILL me!"

He cringed suddenly with alert, looking around with narrowed eyes. His voice grew quiet, but maintained its intensity. "Did you see where they went? I'm sorry, I sort of lost you back there. Did you even see what happened? How those bastards followed me up the hill and threw me off the cliff? I want to see their faces when I show up again, but I want it to be with witnesses. I need to avoid them until we get back to town."

Kuvarakh's angry tone and glare clearly displayed that he didn't realize that his friend here might not want to be part of the "we" he had mentioned.

[Licearsvansan]

Svan immediately drew away from the man and his joyous expression began to sink into one of guilt. "Sorry", he said said as he rubbed the back of his neck in an embarrassed fashion. It was far to easy for Svan to forget that ordinary people where far less resilient than the Dhani race. Most were even weaker than Rattlers in their human form. Still, the snake hadn't expected the man to feel pain from something as simple as a hug, and he certainly hadn't imagined that it would be "killing him". He had after all, survived several bells underwater after a fall from a cliff and a healthy dose of poison. The snake had almost begun to think that the man was immortal. In this regard, the snake was honestly sorry.

When the man commented on Svan's lack of physique however, the snake fought back the urge to punch the man back into the sea. I had no idea that you were secretly a fitness critic, and here I thinking that "Nuit" might just be another name for walrus. Svan growled internally for half a moment until the man apologized and began to speak about the cause of his own rage. Svan was torn between laughing at the man's misery, and guilt of having caused it. Quickly deciding that Kuv would be unlikely to take laughter at his near death well, Svan decided to go with guilt.

As soon as the man finished, Svan clapped his hands in front of his face and bowed deeply. The snake's face suddenly resemble that of a child begging not to be punished. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm SO sorry! Its all my fault! I didn't mean for this to happen I just- I didn't know they would think..." The dirty brown haired man lifted his head back up and looked at the Nuit with pleading eyes. "The sailors, they heard me talking about Uncle Adonnie and they said-" Svan paused as if the words that followed were too almost difficult to say. "-they, they said you killed him. They told me that you're some sort of monster who walks around in other people's skin. That you killed Uncle Adonnie, and stole his body, but not to worry cause they were going to put it to rest for me." Svan stopped again to catch his breath. "Y-you didn't do it right? You didn't kill him. You're not Adonnie! He's not DEAD! He- he can't be..." Svan sounded as if he was on the verge of tears, and much to his surprise he actually was. He wasn't why though. Adonnie wasn't even based on anyone in Svan's life, but perhaps that was precisely why he was nearly crying from his own lie. He had often dreamed of having a parent who actually seemed to care about him, and that was precisely the kind of character Svan imagined this Adonnie to be. While the loss wasn't real, Svan's situation was. He was alone, unloved, and hopelessly lost. And now to make things worse, he was reminding himself about it with his own lie.

Nice one Svan, I wonder if they have any good corners to cry in on this rock.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh's discomfort grew with each sentence. He had no idea who this body had been in life. Much as he hated to do it, he felt it necessary to bring the young man's anxiety down to a more serene level. He did not like to twist people's perceptions in ways that seemed completely self-serving, but there were times it was just as beneficial to the target.

He took a breath and pressured the air in his lungs to bring a sense of "pushing" to his face. He felt the current of djed flow in a bubble to engulf 'Lyseer's' head and, by extension, his perceptions. He extended a sense of calm acceptance to him and let it sink fully in before withdrawing his djed.

"Okay, let me come completely clean with you. Many of my kind, many 'Nuits', ARE pretty accurately described as monster's who walk around in other people's skin. They want the extended life for purely selfish reasons and do not care about the people they "take" to further this existence. I know from personal experience that they will kill someone to have a fresh body to inhabit. The fresher, the better, for many reasons."

Kuvarakh's face grew hard, his eyes distant. "My daughter was such a victim...But is hardly fair to say that Nuits are the only people walking the face of the world that do evil acts for selfish reasons. As for me, there has only been one time that I killed a man and took his body. There is a very long story that stems from this, but I hope it will suffice for me to simply say that he was a mugger and murderer."

Kuvarakh shook his head slightly, as though coming back to the present. "Anyway, I'm afraid I have no idea whose body this is. If your uncle died in Syliras a day or two before we took to sea, then I suppose it's possible. But I swear, I did not kill him. I took this body from the morgue." His face grew angry again and he turned in the direction of the village. "As for those bastards telling you an exaggerated version of events just to get you on their side...Well...their debt just continues to grow...And I mean to collect!"

[Licearsvansan]

"Okay, let me come completely clean with you. Many of my kind, many 'Nuits', ARE pretty accurately described as monster's who walk around in other people's skin. They want the extended life for purely selfish reasons and do not care about the people they "take" to further this existence. I know from personal experience that they will kill someone to have a fresh body to inhabit. The fresher, the better, for many reasons."

In many ways Svan could respect this. If you changed the word "Nuit" to "Dhani" and took out the body swapping parts, you would have something very similar to what Svan might say. Luckily for Kuv, Svan was also incredibly gullible to anyone who claimed to be a "good guy". The snake had protested against being unfairly discriminated far to often to a have any right to do so to others. Of course the hypnosis was certainly helping. The serpents face slowly calmed as Kuv continued, and the snake felt a brief pang of guilt when he heard that this man's daughter had been killed by a Nuit. Regardless of how much he had tried to change Svan was hardly any different from the other Dhani. This Nuit wasn't just feeling guilty because he thought he was making someone else suffer. He felt guilty because he knew personally just how painful it was to see a Nuit in the body of someone you love. And here Svan was getting amusement out of twisting the knife in an open wound, and making a man feel sorry for a crime he didn't even commit.

No, Svan told himself. I'm doing this to keep my secret safe. I'm doing this to survive. Even as he thought it, he wasn't sure he believed it. Still, his face never faltered, and he kept up his little charade so that this Nuit would never know what horrible beast was beneath the nearly sobbing man. As the man concluded, Svan had decided that this man was indeed innocent. The Dhani's face remained in a mixture of guilt and sorrow. "I-I'm sorry to hear th-" Svan was cut off by the man's sudden anger, and the snake took a cautious step back.

"As for those bastards telling you an exaggerated version of events just to get you on their side...Well...their debt just continues to grow...And I mean to collect!"

Oh great job Svan, you nearly damn one man to death with your lies, and then you turn right back around and condemn the others. Mom would be proud. It unsettled Svan to know that she just might be. The snake fidgeted in place for a moment before speaking. "Well- I mean, how do we know they were trying to exaggerate the story? Maybe they just didn't know or something. Like maybe they saw you do something else that would incriminate you? I- uh, remember them telling me you sabotaged the mast. Did you do that?" Svan was currently wishing for a few more arms because he wasn't quite sure if his could slap himself hard enough with the two he had. NO SVAN! Of course he didn't sabotage the mast, YOU did.

Realizing he had likely done nothing to assuage Kuv's wrath Svan stepped out of his way and said, "Well if you are going to get them I won' stop you, but I'm afraid I can't help. I just- I need some time alone to think about this." While Svan had no intention of following this man in his human form, there was nothing stopping him from trailing behind in his snake one. He would be able to smell Kuv's rotting flesh for miles, and since the sailor's were likely near the boat, Svan could like use the water to stay hidden.

"I'm sorry!" the stated quickly as he bowed and ran off into the distance.

[Kuvarakh]

"Sabotage the mast?" Kuvarakh railed with disgust. "Did they say that?" he didn't wait for an answer. Sarcasm added a harsh, sing-song nature to his voice, "Well, why not? I mean, I'm guilty of every other petching thing they can think of, why not be guilty of that as well! And here, I thought their disdain for my complete lack of anything related to sailing skills was their reason for scowling at me the whole way from Sylira. How nice it is to know that they have NOW decided that I'm such a master, that I know how to sabotage their sails!"

Kuvarakh stomped off in a rage, Lyseer moving quickly out of his way while saying something about 'not stopping you' and 'wanting to be alone', both of which were fine with Kuvarakh. He didn't suspect for a moment that the young man was involved in any way and had no desire to drag him into it. This was between him and those crewmen. He was halfway to the village when he realized a more dramatic entry might be worthwhile.

It was becoming full night now. His appearance in the village would go largely unnoticed in the darkness. The last thing he wanted was to have to announce himself. This would give the crewmen way too much time to get their reaction under control. He wanted to appear like some avenging spirit of doom and damnation and watch those crewmen quail and soil their pants with fear and guilt.

Besides, common superstition would not be to his benefit if he appeared at night. There was long held to be some misconception that said that evil could not endure the sun. Yes, a morning appearance would be far better. But he was not about to spend the whole night in the water. He would find some hidden nook and await the sunrise. Then he would walk into the water, make his way to where the village sat, and come stalking up from the waves, his arm raised in dramatic accusing fashion, moaning his verdict like the voice of Dira. Yes...He could just picture it. This would be great!

He had no real trouble finding a driftwood logjam close to the water that was only a few hundred yards from the village. He sat down, out of sight of anyone on the path and waited for the early gray of predawn, rehearsing his speech.