Korivenna was of the opinion: that to be born was the unluckiest fate any creature could suffer. She drew this conclusion from personal experience, for hers had been a bad life.
Perhaps the next worst thing, however, was to come back to life.
Yessina was a static picture of beauty, face frozen in a stiff rendition of shock, skin cold as the night air and a heart that seemed to beat with all the stealth and careful timidity of a hatching spider. A dead body was the thing sprawled out on the rug before Korivenna, or at least a perfect imitation of one.
Haggard fingers sprinkled the antidote onto the girl’s tongue. Korivenna’s hands lit up with heat, and she hovered the appendage over the paralyzed girl’s stiff body, plucking at the chords of life which lay dormant, suppressed within the girl as one drug counteracted another.
“Huhhhhh!”
Yessina’s chest heaved and – like a dead puppet with a taught string in her chest – the girl arched her back, eyes coming to life at the apex of her rise before everything went slack again and she fell back onto the mat. “Ugugh! Guh!” Sputter coughs ran hoarse through the dried blood coating the girl’s throat. Stiff muscles and cold limbs prevented her from doing much more.
Korivenna continued her work, flying warm hands over the girl and prodding her body to come alive.
The process undoubtedly took a toll, and to tell by the hastily patched hole in her throat, as well as the tears welling in her silent eyes, the girl had come uncomfortably close to dying in truth.
Korivenna had never seen the girl cry before; the sight made the silence unbearable to the woman; she decided to disperse it with a story. Korivenna was out of practice with speaking, and entertainement was something she’d always despised, so she decided that a true story would have to do. She lowered her hand over the girl’s thighs now, stoking the muscles back to life as she spoke.
“You know, I was nearly twice your age when I found out I was an Unari. Infertility is the kind of defect it takes time to discover.” Yessina’s eyes widned, and the new information seemed to distract the girl from her tears as she slowly turned her head to face towards the source of the new information. Korivenna continued, “Oh, I was too old to garner any sympathy at that age. It wasn’t like it is with you younger sprouts. Hardly anyone showed up to my going away ceremony. My parents were too ashamed and my betrothed had all but disowned me at that point. So, it was just the elder – Potamin, he was called -- that watched as I walked off into the desert.”
Yessina was trying to say something. Undoubtedly it was something painfully treacly to tell by the word ‘sorry’ forming on her lips. Korivenna interrupted her before she got the chance.
“I was scared, you know. Most Unari know what they are before it happens, but, for me, it was just the most horrible of surprises. I’d already made so many commitments. I’d already fallen in love. Honestly, it’s funny to say now, but I didn’t even know how to die. The only reason I kept walking into the desert was because the sand was too hot to stand still in… I suppose that’s the reason they hold the ceremony at mid-day,” Korivenna observed absentmindedly. She was rambling, now, she realized, and her hands were trailing over the same places.
“Well… anyway, the goddess must have heard my prayers, because I discovered my affinity for fire that day; it was a powerful affinity, too,” she punctuated the point with a new burst of heat from her hands. “The apothecary at the time was getting old, and no useful prospects were forthcoming. Naturally, this afforded me a pardon to train under that old bag, and… I got to live.”
Yessina was able to sit up now, though she remained silent and Korivenna obliged the silent request for her to go on.
“Well… it hasn’t been a good life. I live like a jackal out here, starving on minimal rations unless the villlagers need a medicine. Oh, yes, then they get generous with the offerings.” The words held a bitter flavor on her tongue as she spat them. “But… it’s been a life.”
Yessina was fully mobile at this point, and had scooted over to the opposite side of the rug she’d been lying on, sitting cross legged and looking intently over at the apothecary.
“Oh, I suppose you’re curious now about that plan I concocted?”
Yessina’s face was plain, but her eager nods got the message across.
Korivenna was in a good enough mood to tell it. The first thing she did, however, was to stand up, leave the tent, and to walk the full perimiter of her tent. It was an extreme measure to protect against potential listeners in, but a warranted one. Korivenna wasn’t eager to have her plans ruined by something so juvenile as eavesdropping.
“Well, tell me, have you heard the story of gingernal? I suppose you probably have. Goodness knows that vagabond Sin trumpets it to any child that will listen every chance he gets.”
Yessina, hesitantly, nodded in the affirmative, as if knowing that – by that admission – she’d be admitting to sitting in on those stories when she should have been at work.
Korivenna, however, was in a good mood, and declined to scold the girl. “Well… then, go on. Tell me, do you remember how gingernal defeated the monster in the end?”
“Uhm… he tricked it?” Yessina said.
Koriveena shot a dissapointed look. “More specifically, he killed the monster by feigning sleep.”
“Feigning?” the girl cocked her head, not understanding the word.
“Idiot,” the woman mocked, quickly losing her good humor, "It means pretending. And that’s what you did just did for me.” Quickly shedding her bad humor, Korivenna went onto business. “You know what to say if anyone ever asks you what happened, don’t you?”
Yessina nodded. “Uhm… I’m going to say that the Sage attacked me.”
“Yes, wonderful!” Korivenna chirped. “To be honest, I didn’t expect things to go as well as they had. Feel free to include the little detail about how she stabbed you in the throat.”
Yessina barely registered the new information, however, folded leg shaking in a familiar tell of anticipation.
Korivenna was, by now, familiar enough with all the girl’s cues to know this was her way of keeping herself from speaking out of turn. “What is it?” Korivena sighed.
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“Uhm… It’s just. Is my sister going to be ok? You promised that she wouldn’t be hurt even if Nadia and the Sage were!” The girl looked meek
The perpetual scowl Korivenna’s face took grew more heated at this. “Is all you can do demand more of me?” Yessina looked away, at this, abashed. “Your sister was going to go along with that sage to turn you in for stealing that food. I save your miserable life and you still think to take more?”
Korivenna had a peculiarly calm way of chastising. It was hard to tell when she had dropped a point unless one paid attention to the way her voice pitched lower into dissapointment.
“It doesn’t matter,” she sighed. “Your sister is alive. Nothing will happen to her unless she proceeds to do something unthinkably stupid.”
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The wonderful thing about an Aura: it multiplied the capabilities of the body immensely.
If one was adept at twisting their aura into useful shapes, they could go beyond the body entirely, and develop capabilities that their body alone couldn’t have justified.
One manifestation of this ‘aura shaping’ was magic, that required an affinity and training to develop. Very few had the good luck to have an affinity strong enough to be worth training.
However, it is a lucky coincidence that every human soul had – inherent to it – a shape more complicated and much more refined than even the greatest magicians could muster to create.
This ‘shape of the soul’ was – quite disappointingly – given the pedestrian name of ‘skill’.
Everyone who lived long enough discovered theirs eventually. Most skills were the common sort: extra sensory perception, enhanced strength, iron body… the things you might see ten times in every village.
However, sometimes a person was born with a rare and unique skill. Whenever such a novel talent was discovered, it was usually a moment of celebration. Familiarity bred contempt, after all, and novelty was wont to draw unwarranted praise.
Kari, when she discovered her skill, had been an Unari. Naturally, she didn’t bother to announce her skill. Who could have possibly cared, after all?
That was fine, though. Her skill was something best kept secret anyway.
[Skill : Shroud of spirits.]
[Attention will slip away from the user when this skill is activated. The shroud also counteracts sensory abilities.]
Kari couldn’t read, and so her stat sheet was something a bit more literal. She could always feel it there, hanging like a shroud which she could pull over herself, and whenever she did so it ran over her like a cold sheet, shivers running up her back as the earth fell silent and the winds started howling like spirits. She was used to such shocks. Perhaps that was what allowed her to keep her calm as she peeked through a slit in the tent flaps, hearing with baited breath everything Korivenna had just revealed and struggling to process it all.
In fact, she was still struggling to understand even as she sprinted over the dark sands, running on instinct until she suddenly found herself in the village square, rounding the corner onto the mob. Kari skidded to a halt, calling the sheet of spirits over herself and just barely managing to hide in the firelight.
The village square had been fractured into fronts.
One one side, what seemed to be the entirety of the village had formed a battle line behind their representative.
Cas could feel the heat of so many bodies packed together. She could see their hatred.
Nemaris alone consisted the opposite front, staring down the entire mass.
The reprisentative spoke, a terse impatience in his voice. “We’ve surrounded the compound, and the Sage is nowhere to be seen. We suggest looking for the Unari.”
“Why?” Nemaris asked.
The plainness of the question seemed to cow the temper of the audience somewhat.
Stuttering, the reprisentative answered. “Because they will be easier to find. The sage is gone! Who knows where she’s escaped to!”
Nemaris scowled a bit, speaking louder, now not losing an inch of control in his stony voice. “Why should we care to find them?”
“Because they associated themselves with that demon! That murderer!” The man’s words carried on a shower of spittle, pulling his body into a forward lean that stopped with surprise at Nemaris' answer.
“So?”
“So!?” The representative asked, incredulous. “So we have to do something about this?”
“And what are we going to do, exactly?”
The representative grew truly stumped at this, his anger the only thing finding expression in words as he spoke: “We… we…”
“You’re planning to kill them, and you’re trying to pass off this wanton murder as justice,” Nemaris finished for him. “You’ve always been the stupid sort, Leto, but I never thought you’d forget such a basic law.”
“What law!?” The representative spat. “Those Unari should have been sent out to the desert, yet they stay and associated with a murderer; they must have helped her escape, too. I don’t see what’s wrong with giving them what they deserve.”
Nemaris maintained himself, breaking his composure to emphasize one word. “The law states that Unari are not to be touched or interacted with. That, in fact, is the reason they are driven out into the desert. As regards their crime of associating with that monster, I only have one thing to say… where did you get that food?”
Nemaris pointed at a random man in the crowd, his bag bulging with the characteristically odd angles that Cas’s food blocks produced.
The man looked away, ashamed.
“And you, where did you get such fine cloth for your dress?” He pointed again at the leader, and the almost bleached purity of his over-shawl.
The representative looked down at himself, eye twitching into silence.
“I think my point stands. We were all of us fooled into engaging with that monster.”
The representative, twitching in place, couldn’t help himself. “They’re just Unari,” he muttered.
Nemaris latched onto that. Normally, he would have been kind enough to let a defeated opponent get their last word in, but this lunacy was something he had to stamp out.
“Excuse me?” He stopped his own speech, lazing dismissive eyes over at the representative. “’They’re just Unari,’ you say? If that’s the case, then you should remember that poor Yessina was also just an Unari. I suppose that means the Sage isn’t guilty of anything too terrible? Perhaps we ought to welcome them back after such a forgivable mistake?”
Nemaris stepped forward and continued, increasing his volume until he was outright yelling in a berating tone.
“So, let me be clear. Those Unari are not the perpetrators, anymore than you or I were! Anyone who dares to touch them, I will charge with murder and I will personally execute anyone so charged!” He said this with a particular intensity, almost barking the words. The crowd fell silent, voices dying like crackling embers.
“Is that all?” he yelled, looking about for any one else who might challenge him.
No one stepped forward.
“Good! Now we can stop wasting time with this. Spread out and find that monster!”
The crowd, whether out of genuine excitement or perhaps relief at his waning anger, let out a united cheer and spread out, spreading out like a meticulous wave to search throughout the village and the surrounding desert.
Only Kari knew where to find her.