Completed Well in Hand (Aislyn)

[Kuvarakh]

OOC - continues from here.

38th Day of Summer, 514

With the departure of Rey Ekans, or whatever his real Dhani name was, Kuvarakh considered the next step. He'd asked Phobius to stick around for a moment while he weighed his options, limited as they were. He truly did not believe his hands had the prehensile capability to even draw the required glyphs to make the transfer into the body Rey had provided him, let alone scribe them onto a difficult surface like flesh.

It appeared that either Rey had managed to obtain Kirby's body without giving away the fact that this had been the true aim of the whole adventure, or Phobius was not looking for any deeper plot in the first place. The young man just seemed glad that his "Boss" was not angry with him for accompanying the original party, uninvited, on their mission.

Kuvarakh had thought about chewing him out, just to maintain appearances. But guilt over the manipulation of the party's original goal, and the overriding puppy-dog look of hopeful approval from the Inartan teenager just drove the anger right out of the Nuit. 'How can I be mad at the kid for not following instructions that were only to keep him from being involved in a phony mission in the first place. How can I point the finger at him for being disobedient, when he could point the finger back at me for being a damned liar?'

It seemed prudent to leave well enough alone for now, so he just showed the kid his hands, pink and nearly rock hard, and told him to go get "Maya" for him again. He felt somewhat vindicated that he'd had the foresight to familiarize her with the glyphs he used for the body transfer ritual, such as it was. He was going to need her to do it FOR him this time.

[Aislyn Leavold]

38th of Summer, 514 AV

Well, it seemed Kuvarakh needed Aislyn’s services again.
Quite earlier than expected.
Much earlier than expected, if Aislyn was completely honest. She hadn’t seen him since she had helped him out with the charcoal kits, but even then, his hands had seemed functional. How fast could they have deteriorated?

Phobius had been quick with his explanation. Kuvarakh needed her right away. Needs help with his hands. There hadn’t been much more to it than that, but Aislyn had understood right away. In hindsight, the message probably could have meant anything, but why would he send for Aislyn if he simply needed something moved, or something fixed that he couldn’t do with his broken hands? She knew he had plenty of other people working for him, which meant this job was for her, and what skill did she have to help him other than the knowledge to transfer his body?

As she had searched the ever-changing streets for the building she had grown accustomed to finding, Aislyn’s mind was overrun by questions. Where had Kuvarakh gotten the body? How did Nuit transferrances even work? Did she just draw on the glyphs, then boom, new body? Or did it take chimes to work? Bells? Days? Really, other than the knowledge of her part in the procedure, Aislyn knew nothing of Nuit transformations. What if she did it wrong? Would Kuvarakh just… Die?
The thought sent a shiver down her spine. What if she accidentally killed him? What would she do then?

Flashing memories of the last time one of Aislyn’s “Accidents” had ended in a death flickered behind her eyes. She didn’t want that to happen again, especially when this time, there was no running away.
Shaking the morbid thoughts from her head, the woman assured herself everything would be fine. Anyways, she was there now, standing at the door, hand hovering over the handle. Could she really do this?

In truth, Aislyn was worried about the man. She knew she was worrying over nothing, but really, who else would employ a woman like her? He had given her the perfect opportunity to shine, and so be it if he needed her earlier than expected. Really, she shouldn’t have been worried. She had gone over the glyphs more times than really necessary, the wall by her small bed at home now covered in sketches of the designs, with the quality ranging from messy scribbles to pristine, fine-cut lines. Her most recent attempts were still hanging around in her notebook, ready to be copied onto flesh when needed.

With any luck, flesh wouldn’t be too much harder than paper to write on.

At one point, Aislyn had considered drawing the glyphs on herself to test her skills for the real thing, but quickly decided against it. If those simple little drawings could transfer a Nuit’s mind to another vessel, who knew what they could do to someone who was still alive?

Even without the flesh practice, Aislyn was almost certain she was ready. So, she answered her own question with a series of movements as she strode her way into Kuvarakh’s presence.

”Trouble with your hands?”

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh thought "Maya" was probably being deliberately understated with her question. He just smirked and rolled his eyes. "Well, that's where it starts, yes. It's a combination of several things, and they all lead to the only logical course of action..." He opened the door to the back room, for her to either look through, or walk through. But she would not need to enter the back room to see the body lying on the floor.

He continued, regardless of whether she hesitated to enter or not. "First IS, of course, my hands. I can hardly move them at all now. It's okay for alchemy, when I have someone to place chargers for me, as you have done for me before." he nodded an acknowledgement of her past assistance in this capacity.

"But it spells the eventual end for my existence, since I will be required to scribe the glyphs on a new body, in order to transfer into it." He gestured with a nod of his head in the direction of the body on the floor. "Bodies only last a couple of years, perhaps three at the most. And while I have only been in this one for a little over a year, these hands have become a significant obstacle to simple, everyday functions."

He considered using some hypnosis on her to quell the obvious anxiety she was feeling due to the corpse. He wondered how she would take to seeing him walking around in it, bells later, as he developed his assimilation to its individual parameters. He'd noticed that incongruity before; that a corpse was a fearsome thing to some people when it was simply lying there, unmoving, but let it become a moving, functional vessel for his existence and it was suddenly a reasonably normal feature.

"Now I can understand if you are thinking that there's no hurry. And, technically, you're right. If you can do the scribing for me, then there's a good year or two that this body will serve. But I AM getting tired of being unable to even tie my own shoes without Wanda's help..." there was a tell-tale feminine chuckle from the storeroom. "And, since this body is here now, it seems only...courteous...to its former owner, as well as his victims, to see to it that his death is a benefit to someone."

His look grew remorseful, and he shook his head slowly, "There's so much death...so much...Not everyone can see the Nuit need for the bodies of those that have passed on as anything but morbid." He looked up at Maya. "I suppose they think of me as some kind of vulture. For myself, I've never had anything against vultures. But it's not like I saw this guy dying and did nothing to save him."

He gave her a direct look, "I'd like to think you know that I would never kill an innocent man to take his body. Or sit and watch a man die that I could save. This one was brought to me. He's a murderer that attacked the wrong person. and now his death will do some good. But I need you to do the glyphing for me. Will you do it?"

[Aislyn Leavold]

And then came the bad part.
As Kuvarakh opened the door to the back room, Aislyn instantly knew that was where the body was being stored. Not because she could smell it, or even see it, no, she knew the carcass was there because the sense of death was intensely present in the room. That feeling of emptiness, the knowledge that something, someone had died there. It was definitely one of the strangest feelings Aislyn had ever felt.

As Kuvarakh continued explaining and Aislyn shifted her view on the doorway, the body quickly became visible. That was when Aislyn was hit with a sense of, surprisingly, not disgust, but curiosity. Where had Kuvarakh gotten the body? Was it the corpse of someone important? Someone innocent, or filled with guilt worthy of death? How had they died? Had Kuvarakh killed him? Had someone else? The questions went on.

For a few ticks, Aislyn stared mesmerized at the body, laying on the ground in the room across the floor from her. For those few ticks, she wondered at how this was the first dead body she had seen.
Except it wasn’t.

No. Not now. She couldn’t think of that.
Except it was all she could think about at that moment. Because the carcass looked just like him. The man Aislyn herself had impaled with an arrow to the heart.
Accidentally, she assured herself. Except there was a tiny part of her brain that swore the man lying on the ground in the back of the Alch was the same one from years before, despite the obvious impossibilities that came with that fact. The corpses certainly did bear a certain likeness, but the deaths were five- no, six- years apart. Plus, one of them was a man Aislyn barely knew, while the other was… Would be, Kuvarakh.

Swallowing the memory, Aislyn prodded her way into the back room, focusing all her energy on listening to the man’s words as he continued to explain. At several points in the conversation, Aislyn contemplated interrupting him to inform him that she didn’t need reassuring; She already knew how Nuits worked, and she knew how far they would go for a body if their current one was deteriorating. Then again, Aislyn wasn’t completely sure who Kuvarakh was reassuring. He himself definitely needed some, if not all, of the kind words he was giving to her.

Granted, he did teach her some new things. She hadn’t realized just how short lived Nuit bodies were. She had thought they lasted for five, ten years at least, but one? Three at best? No wonder the Nuit race had gotten such a reputation for being cold and callous; They had to be, in order to deal with that much death.

Even as Kuvarakh explained the story behind the body, Aislyn had a feeling he was leaving something out. He couldn’t have gotten the body by himself, could he? Killed it… Him? She pushed the questions down for a later date. For now, however, Kuvarakh was talking about vultures.
”Vultures do what they can to survive. Most every creature in this world does.” Her eyes turned downwards, focusing on a spot on the floor. ”I understand, you know. I know that he…” Taking a quick glance over towards the body, Aislyn changed her choice of words. ”It came from somewhere, but…” Inhaling slowly, Aislyn took a leap of faith, speaking three words she hadn’t said for quite a while, and hadn’t meant for quite some years. ”I trust you.”

She met his gaze as he continued on. From what he had described, the man laying in the room a few feet from them had not been an innocent man. Whether or not he had committed a crime worthy of death was still up in the air, but Aislyn knew Dira had taken him for a reason, whatever that reason may be.

That didn’t stop the questions, though. She started with a simple one, however. Pestering Kuvarakh now was not the best course of action, especially this close to the transfer. He needed assurance, and Aislyn needed answers, but first, she had to agree to what he was asking of her.
”I’ll do it.”

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh sagged in relief at her words. He looked at her with profound gratitude. "Thank you, Maya, thank you! I know I mentioned the possibility of needing you to do this for me when you first responded to my notice at The Sanity Center. But a "future possibility" is one thing, and a "present need" is quite another. And with...that...laying there..." he gestured at Kirby's corpse, rather than finishing the statement.

"Now, I have had another person do this for me before, and..." he winced at the memory, "...the degree of success was somewhat limited, but only in there being a significant increase in the amount of time it took me to fully insinuate myself into the body's...uhh...alignment?" He said the word as a question, not knowing if it really described the nature of the transference. Maya did not appear to be terribly concerned with the semantics of it.

He pulled out his own copy of the glyphs he'd given her a season ago, and began describing the anatomical positioning of each one. He added that he'd always had an instinctive sense of them needing to be scribed in a certain order, and made notes of this detail as well. "Now there's one last stage you might find somewhat repugnant. I have to drain the ichor from my body into his. This is also the way a living person can try to become a Nuit. They will die in the process, but if it takes, they will reanimate in their first Nuit body, which will be their own body, except it will no longer be...functionally living."

He did not mention what happened if the process DIDN'T "take". He expected that she was intuitive enough to guess. Besides, it was not as if he expected Maya to jump up and down, asking to be made into a Nuit, anyway. Young people rarely did. But he felt strangely compelled to extend what knowledge he could, regarding the ritual in which she was involving herself. "So after you complete the "artwork", I will lay atop the body and...well...basically regurgitate my ichor into this corpse. After that, I will be helpless for several bells, and barely functional for a couple days. Under the best conditions it can take ten or twenty days to fully assimilate a new body, but I expect it will take considerably longer this time, no offense." he shrugged.

He gave a sort of routine look-around, for any overlooked details. Finding none, he looked at Maya. "Well, I guess we may as well get started. As I noted, you will need to do the one on the forehead first of all." They spent several bells after that, carefully scribing the rest of glyphs. Kuvarakh repeatedly apologized to his savior for looking over her shoulder as she worked, but it was crucial that her work matched the instinctive images in his mind as closely as possible.

[Aislyn Leavold]

Surprisingly, Kuvarakh's words made Aislyn feel somehow... Guilty. As if the extreme gratitude he expressed wasn't really aimed at her, yet she took the credit. Technically, this was true. Kuvarakh hadn't employed Aislyn Leavold, hadn't asked her to decorate a living mansion, hadn't brought her here today and trusted her with his life, no. All these things were entrusted to Maya. Maya, the lighthearted, innocent girl who did as she was ordered to. Maya, with her long, blonde hair and pale, smooth skin. Maya, who had no last name, much like Kuvarakh himself, as far as she knew.
The idea brought a dark cloud of guilt down on Aislyn's head. Her entire persona... Her entire life, really, was built on lies. And Aislyn knew, deep down, that was the way she liked it.

Shaking the thoughts from her head and plastering on a smile, Aislyn drew out her artistic notebook at the same time Kuvarakh brought out his glyphs. As he described the position of each, Aislyn copied his words into her notebook. Every so often, she peppered him with questions, wanting to make sure everything was just right.
Things like the orientation of the glyphs and whether or not the direction they faced mattered, what would happen if she messed up, whether or not she would be able to remove the markings, or if that would be it. If the colour and material of the drawing tool mattered, how Aislyn would tell if the transfer worked. After a while, her questions trailed off. She got the feeling she was beginning to pester Kuvarakh, though he answered her questions smoothly, along with answering a few she hadn't asked.

Like what would happen if a still living person underwent the process.
It was an interesting concept, being turned into a Nuit. For a few scarce ticks, Aislyn considered whether or not she would allow herself to be transformed. If her life was in danger, or if there was no other choice. She asked no questions about this topic, however. The way the man left some things unanswered in his explanation seemed intentional, and Aislyn quickly understood what he meant with his trailing sentence. The process was not foolproof. It seemed quite easy to die in the process, and besides, she didn't want to intrude. The topic seemed quite... Sensitive. With many parts of it that Aislyn simply didn't need to know.

As she finished her notes, Aislyn found herself quickly moving into the most important part of the procedure. The actual glyphing.
She started with the first glyph she had been given, and the one she had practiced the most. The forehead. As she adjusted herself, charcoal held steadily in hand, Aislyn made the first mark.

It felt like bells had passed by the time Aislyn had finished the majority of the glyphs. The true amount of time that had passed, she didn't know. All she knew was that the forehead and chest glyphs had been drawn without issue. No sudden jolts of the hand, no missing strokes of the dark black lines as they drifted over skin, and certainly no movement from the canvas. At least, none so far. Now, Aislyn was working on the carcass's right hand, smoothly moving the charcoal Kuvarakh had provided her with over the palm, just like she had brushed over the parchment of her notebook a hundred times before.

The woman was heavily grateful for those late night sketching sessions now, as the real test was put into place. It was like taking a quiz one had studied for well, with the questions going by smoothly as brushstrokes on paper. Or, in a more relatable metaphor, brushstrokes on skin.
Kuvarakh constantly hovered behind her, watching her hand movements like a hawk. She didn't blame him; she probably would have watched very closely too, if it was her body in jeopardy.

With the amount of concentration she was putting into the glyphs, along with the constant focus at the back of her mind to keep up her illusion, Aislyn was quickly gaining a headache. She also realized after several ticks of headache induced-weariness that her face had been furrowed in a focused scowl as she had been working, her eyes squinted like she couldn’t see anything farther away than her hand. After several ticks of this, Aislyn stopped in her work and rubbed her eyes. Who knew something she loved so much could be so… Pressuring?

With a quick look outside at the lowering sun, Aislyn let out a yawn. By the position of the sun, she had been at the Alch for three bells now, yet somehow, she hadn't grown bored of her job. Just tired. Really, you would have thought anyone who had to stand around a dead body for three bells straight wouldn't dare grow tired enough to fall asleep with that mental image imprinted in their mind, but by now, Aislyn had become numb to the first startling sight of the carcass. The cold, pale skin didn't scare her anymore, nor did the nearly-closed eyes that looked like they could pop open at any moment. The body was dead, it's owner was gone. After three bells of staring at the thing, Aislyn had no more doubts about that.

Fifteen more chimes of drawing.
Aislyn stood back from her work again, giving out a small exhale of relief.
The glyphs were finished. To the best of her ability, Aislyn’s part of the job was done.

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh had felt rather conspicuous scrutinizing "Maya's" work. He was relying so completely on her artistic ability, that he didn't want to be responsible for anything that stole even a minor degree of her concentration. But at the same time, he was the only one with the instinctive knowledge of how the glyphs should be formed, ordered and located.

Worse yet, he was finding that NOT doing the work himself was disconnecting him from this instinct. There were times that some alarm went off in his head over a detail of Maya's work, but he could not place what it was. He would lean in, to see if something triggered a past memory of having done the work with his own hands, but he always came up with a blank.

Overall, the work looked entirely successful, and he could only hope that whatever was troubling him was of minor consequence. The other time that someone else had done this work, it was Wanda, his boss. She was a skilled glypher, but the glyphs of Nuit Transference were not in her repertoire. Glyphing was a very personal skill as well, relying on the scriber's own interpretations and impressions to create symbols that captured the aspects and capabilities intended to be infused into the overall glyph. Wanda was not a Nuit, and had no intuition toward the unique facets of their existence, other than the two years of Kuvarakh's employment with her.

As a result, her success had been limited, causing considerable delay in the amount of time it took for Kuvarakh to assimilate the target body effectively. He never did truly claim the body fully, but considering the maimed and semi-dismembered state of the body he'd BEEN in, the transfer was a huge success in his eyes. This situation was not precisely the same, but only in it's lack of the same immediacy. This time, he still had a year or two before the Nuit Rot would become an issue. But with his hands virtually petrified, He was not able to do the scribing work. So without Maya's effort, his current body would be the one in which he would slowly die.

But Maya was finished now, and Kuvarakh could not find any significant differences between the symbols she'd rendered and the memories of his own handiwork in the past. He sighed deeply, and gave a fatalistic shrug, as Maya stretched to get the kinks out. "Well, that looks very good, Maya. Again, I can not thank you enough, but this next step is rather disturbing if you'd like to take your leave. However, I feel as if I owe you the option of staying and watching if you are truly interested. I mean, regardless of the lack of immediate urgency, this is nothing short of a life-saving service you have performed."

He crouched down beside the scribe-covered corpse and looked up at her. "I will be draining fluids from my mouth into his. it will take some time just to fully accomplish that. Then, it takes several bells before I even start to register a twitch here and there, let alone stagger to my feet. It is fair to say I will be helpless during this transition. Now, I have Wanda to look after me, so you need not stick around. But again, i owe you a peek, if you choose. It's up to you."

[Aislyn Leavold]

Apparently, the “bad” part hadn’t been bad enough.
Aislyn had been well aware that Nuit transferences were not exactly pretty, per say, but she hadn’t imagined just how strange they truly were. Disturbing, even, as Kuvarakh had said.
But if it was really that bad, Aislyn had to see it for herself.

She had never been one to have a weak stomach, nor did she find sight alone very retch-worthy. That was one thing leading into her curiosity; Aislyn had the iron stomach to go along with it. And there was no way she was backing out now. Not with this opportunity available. Get to know a Nuit? Great. Get to help a Nuit transfer? Even better. But actually see the transfer in action? Fantastic.
Then again, her optimism might have been misguided.

Kuvarakh had stated it could- or rather, would most likely- take bells for him to gain control of the new body. That meant bells of sitting beside two motionless, unresponsive bodies as she waited for one of them to twitch to life. Not Aislyn’s idea of a nice night out, but curiosity once again prevailed. Besides, she had brought her notebook, and there was plenty to write about, or at very least draw.

”I’d like to stay, if you’d let me, though…” Pausing to take out her notebook again, Aislyn gestured to the object, ”I hope you don’t mind me distracting myself. Though I’m sure it will be interesting, there’s a limit to how long I can watch an unresponsive body.” She tried a smile at the joke, but it came out as more of a grimace. Perhaps staying wasn’t the best idea after all.

”Before you start, though... I have a question, if you wouldn’t mind answering. It’s been bugging me for a while, but… When you aren’t rushed, like with your bodies in the past… Ah, like this body you’re in right now… How do you choose?” Her question was poorly worded and vague, but she hoped he got the message. ”How do you choose what body you’ll be in next? And how does everyone know it’s you? I mean...” She paused to gesture towards him as he was presently.

”Where did you get this body? Who was… He?” For a second, Aislyn felt incredibly rude about her questions. What if the body was a sensitive topic? Something he didn’t want to talk about? She had gotten this far into the procedure, what if he asked her to leave because of her questions?
”I hope I’m not being rude, I just…” Gradually her sentence trailed off, leading her eyes downcast. ”Nuits are quite an expansive topic, and one I haven’t been familiar with up until this point. Now I have one in front of me, and it seems like just a good a time as any to ask.”

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh raised his eyebrows with an apprehensive grin. "I think you may as well take a nap for now. The first few bells will just be me draining this body into that one. The ichor at any rate. It's several bells after that which is spent seemingly unresponsive, while I assimilate the necessary functions and physical associations." He was tidying up the body as he spoke, giving it a sponge bath as he prepped himself mentally for the coming ordeal.

He'd been fortunate enough to find that most of his clothes would fit this new body reasonably well. After all the bother of alchemically modifying a bolt of cloth to be exceptionally odor-absorbent, he hated to think that the use of half of it, making a pair of suits from it, to fit his current body, would be wasted. The remainder of that bolt of fine wool was kept at The Tattered Thread, on hand for Voren Skyglow to use as the need came up.

"Maya's" next question did make him feel a little uncomfortable. Not everyone shared the viewpoint that there was no legitimate honor or dishonor to the body or family of the soul sped from dead flesh. "I don't know how you feel about it, and I don't want to come off as though I'm hesitant to discuss it, because too many people assume this hesitancy to be borne of guilt or shame. But the fact is, I DON'T choose. I simply take what is available."

He eyed her directly. "Now this is only choice of bodies already dead. Mizahar is perilous enough that there are usually options, sadly. The body I'm wearing right now..." he held up his stony pink hands, "...was a murder victim. I was a member of a sort of school of magic. One of the members was targeted by a powerful hypnotist and was led to believe she'd killed a bunch of people. Of course, HE was the one that did it. I had to investigate and clear up the confusion about who committed these terrible acts."

He sat back shaking his head. Then he looked out the window as if watching out for some vague danger. "We never did catch the guy. He's still out there. But at least my friend was cleared. And more than simply not being convicted. I was able to restore her belief in herself as a good person. That was the most important thing." He weighed whether or not to divulge the actual answer to her original question. deciding that such bold questions deserved unedited answers. He doubted it was what she was expecting.

"I DIDN'T choose this body. Wanda sought out my friend and they went to where these murder victim's bodies were still lying, and carted one back. I was in an "ichor-deprivation" coma at the time. It was Winter and they were mostly frozen. My body then had been ravaged by metal-bodied, stone-eating bugs and was literally partially shredded. I'd lost an arm and an eye, I had ribs showing and a large slab of flesh stripped from my back. I was really not in any condition to choose my next body, OR to REFUSE any one else' choice."

He sat down and looked lost in recollection for a few moments. "There was another time my body was a man who killed himself after accidentally killing his wife in self defense. She had attacked him with a knife after his negligence caused the death of their baby. in trying to keep her away, he knocked her into the river, where she drowned. Then in grief and guilt, he threw himself in after. I didn't know any of this...until her ghost came back and began tormenting me, thinking I was him."

He stood and stretched, only his hands remaining in a fixed position. "I...really don't want to go into details...Suffice to say it got worked out...The thing is, I feel as though a Nuit should NEVER CHOOSE his next body, because that hints at them having stalked a body they "want". I have encountered Nuits that did this..."

He said no more for a half chime. "Look I...uh...I don't mind that you asked this stuff, and maybe later I'll feel more like talking about it. But we're talking about a lot of LONG stories and I really need to get this underway. Don't feel bad about it. I've been forced to kill people that attacked me before, and then turned right around and worn their bodies because of the damage they did to mine."

He gestured to the chair he'd just vacated. "Have a seat, if you've got nothing better to do tonight. That's how long it will take."

[Aislyn Leavold]

Aislyn hadn’t realized Kuvarakh had been through so much. The fatherly figure who seemed so frail and wise, was able to, and had, killed by his own hand. Along with everything else he had described. Solved a murder, been attacked by metal bugs, haunted by a ghost… It was a wonder the man was still alive.
Though alive wasn’t the best word for it. Living, but not quite alive.

Aislyn spent several moments in silence, digesting what Kuvarakh had told her. The man had trailed off by now, after mentioning how other Nuits chose to find ‘their’ bodies. The idea of being stalked by someone who merely wished to inhabit her body sent chills through Aislyn’s mind. Would a spirit ever truly be at peace with his or her body still up and walking around? It seemed like a mighty reason to stick around in the afterlife, though Aislyn supposed she could never be sure. Dying was not very high up on her to-do list, so the thought would have to wait for another day.

After several more ticks, Kuvarakh began talking again, this time about Aislyn’s choice of timing with her questions. She felt a sudden sense of guilt over her curiosity, despite the man’s explanation for his abrupt ending. Her eyes drew downwards again, refusing to meet his eyes for the entirety of his explanation. When he finished, she found her tongue.

”Oh... Ah, sorry about that, I just…” Her words died in her throat, Aislyn’s mind choosing to abandon her mid-sentence. She finally gave up on the conversation, taking the chair Kuvarakh had offered. As the man positioned himself, Aislyn adjusted her form, drawing out her notebook and selecting a thin piece of charcoal to go with it. Embarrassment from her questions clouded her mind, but she tried to focus on the scene in front of her.
That was her first mistake.

Kuvarakh had begun, and the action was every bit as disturbing as he had described. But no, unlike any normal sentient being, Aislyn didn’t avert her eyes, didn’t look away. The scene captivated her. Curiosity to how the Nuit transference really worked bubbled in her mind. How did a soul travel through a liquid? Did the soul travel at all? What happened if the ritual was interrupted halfway through?

Forcing down the questions, Aislyn drew her attention to the blank page of her notebook that lay in front of her. Inspiration sent her mind into a trance, her hands seemed to move on their own. At first, she sketched out just a simple stick drawing of the poses, though after several revisions to the template, the drawing soon took form.
It was a representation of the Nuit transference going on in front of her- Except the ichor wasn’t what was spilling from the mouth of the first body- it was the soul. Black wisps of charcoal lines falling from one shape to another. The bodies had no faces as of yet, nor did the hands or feet have any real definition. The artist had started with what she thought was most important- The transformation.

Aislyn had never drawn anything like what she had in front of her. She had always drawn either from her imagination or from still, inanimate objects. Not people. She had never had anyone to draw, so the few people sketched in her notebook were figments of her imagination. Even Maya and Thief, who were present in a few of the drawings, they were just ideas Aislyn had thought up and perfected. Much like her sketches.

Some time over a bell passed, and night was quickly setting in, along with exhaustion. The bodies had faces now, though they only vaguely resembled Kirby and Kuvarakh. Aislyn had drawn and redrawn the expressions, yet somehow, they never seemed just right. They never looked like the people in front of her. Something was always off.
That was another reason Aislyn never drew people. No one could tell her that the faces from her imagination didn’t look right, but if the faces were real people… It just added to the frustration.

A few chimes later, Aislyn stood up to stretch and check how far down the sun had set. It was past sundown now, and the woman knew she would have to sleep eventually. Not right now, though. That was what she kept telling herself. She didn’t need sleep. She could stay up until Kuvarakh regained consciousness. She could. She would. It was like a child convincing themselves not to sleep until their parents came home from a long night out. Fruitless, yet still an appealing task.

Inspecting the scene she had in front of her for what felt like the millionth time, Aislyn noticed something she hadn’t seen before. One of the bodies had shifted (though she couldn’t tell which), exposing a wound on the torso of “Kirby”. A puncture wound, almost. Had the man been stabbed? Was that how he died?
Curiosity peaked in Aislyn’s mind. Kuvarakh had been very vague with how he had gotten the body, with the exception of explaining how he hadn’t meant for it to come into his possession. The man had said the body was that of a murderer, one who attacked the wrong person, but that didn’t explain exactly how the man had died. She would have thought someone defending themselves would have left more cuts and bruises on the corpse, but now that Aislyn looked at it, the puncture was the only one she could find.
And there was two.

The strange marks fascinated her, but Aislyn pushed the thoughts aside for now. Fatigue was setting in, and her eyes were beginning to droop. She wanted to stay up until Kuvarakh… Fixed himself, but sleep seemed so inviting. She had been awake for a good sixteen bells straight since that morning, along with standing, staring at a dead body for at least two of them. That was enough to make anyone at least a little bit tired. Aislyn herself was exhausted.
So, the woman set her notebook aside, the drawing still face-up for the world to see, and let sleep overtake her, charcoal still in hand.