Private Like A Bolt Out The Blue// Fate Steps In To See Us Through

[Madrona A’Mia]

The most difficult and dangerous part of what she was attempting was arguably keeping it from her teachers. All the rest was a matter of time, a little heavy lifting, and a lot of trial and error. But it wasn't as if she didn't have ample spare time, with not one but two very busy Masters who went through bouts of being intensely focused on her training to not at all, and otherwise extremely occupied. So A'Mia dutifully set about filling the gaps in her knowledge through a little field work and more than a little DIY "can do attitude". One thing the Neti had never lacked was confidence.

Her project began with some classic grave robbing, which took much more time and disturbed far more graves than she expected when she first set out. It had been quite some time since she'd properly given the cycle of decomposition some thought and in truth, the first half a dozen unearthed souls were too far gone for anything but their bones to be useful.

So the first night of searching for crafting components was a bust and she returned to The Shaper's castle to scheme. After some days of research, some of which led her down a rabbit hole of the history of grave robbing throughout history and statistics on cremation versus burial versus other more niche practices like pyres, sky burial, or composting, A'Mia finally settled on a plan she knew would yield exactly the results she needed.

After a week long stint of volunteering at a soup kitchen in the slums of a nearby city and hearing about an orphanage which was beset by some stubborn sickness. A'Mia the. disguised herself as a near human and spent a long evening of rendering aid to the dozens of ill children so she could choose one from the bunch. Morbidly she had a little laugh to herself about collecting her fee for service, and after a week of toil, of long nights of planning, she put on a solemn face as she went to collect the roughly 16 year old whose herbal remedy had been dosed with a neuromuscular blocker rather than the sleep agent given to all the other children.

Secreting her key ingredient back into the castle required no significant guile, as the young woman had been petite in life and A'Mia could alter her form to conceal that she was carrying a small corpse. But the project thereafter took significantly more time and skill.

First, the Neti acolyte lay runes of suspended animation upon the body. Using what combination of magics, alchemy, and botany she had at her disposal in order to preserve this most key component to her experimentation. From then on, she worked for hours on end, and when her work took her elsewhere she always took pains to ensure the unfinished construct was stowed out of sight beneath her workbench. All told, she spent a fortnight deconstructing, studying, modifying, and piecing back together the girl from the orphanage whose name she hadn't bothered to remember.

It was a particularly dark and stormy night when A'Mia finally felt she was ready to put her finishing touches on what had come together as an alchemical doll. Her first visions of this project had been crude golems in comparison to the work she'd wrought and the Neti felt a rare bloom of pride in her craftsmanship thus far. The girl's original form had been preserved in such an uncanny way that now, laid out atop A'Mia's workbench and clad in a powder blue nightgown, she appeared asleep rather than inanimate.

The true final touch was the delicate placement of a force artifact she had found in and borrowed from The Shaper's collection. She was not entire certain of the object's full power, nor in her confidence and single-mindedness had she thought to ask her Master, but the miniature obelisk had been alchemically shaped from kind of dense blend of stone and metal. A'Mia had chosen it for its darkly powerful signature in the force and for the convenience that it was roughly as tall as the span of a humanoid hand. Roughly the length of a humanoid heart and with a base carved in such an intricate way that its details escaped the natural limits of one's eye.

The Weave rippled before A'Mia as she took her place at the work station like a conductor before an orchestra. Tendrils of her form snaked away from her hands, her body elongating and becoming unnaturally tall, like some kind of haunting humanoid tree. Whispers of the Old Tongue left her lips, not prayer but something structured similarly only far more analytical.

She commanded her creation to bend to her will, the neck of the blue gown opened to expose the pale skin of her breastbone. Just as the cloth parted so too did skin, as if unzipping beneath the tug of an invisible hand. Next the breastbone itself parted, white ribs opening delicately like a cage, guided internally by thousands of small vines which wound their way throughout the interior of the soon to be living doll, giving her structure and lending her the Neti's own incredible shapeshifting abilities assuming all went according to A'Mia's plan.

'Neath that skin and bone, nestled within the girl's chest cavity were organs frozen in time and her Creator laid the final piece of the grand puzzle. The chanting grew more fervent, the room sizzled as if with electricity and A'Mia's vine like hair began to drift upwards, whipping about her head as if affected by the storm outside. Delicately a few of her long finger tendrils made to tuck the obelisk between the girl's ribs, atop her stilled heart. Small spidering vines wove themselves about the object and through her connection to the Weave, A'Mia bound the powerful artifact to the girl's heart.

Her chanting rose to a tempo which matched the raging storm, her voice filling the chamber and echoing through the very fibers of her creation's being. She commanded the heart to beat once more and imbued the cold doll with some of her own life force. In so doing, and because of the nature of the obelisk-heart, A'Mia poured more energy into the sithspawn than she originally intended. The tall Neti staggered, nearly fumbling as so much of her vitality poured into the doll but she did not waver. Her eyes gleamed with fanatic curiosity and she barked out her last order in a tightly clipped tone, voice rough with pain but strengthened by steely resolve.

"RISE!"
Aramea Bel​

 

[Aramea Bel]

Such a wretched life. What worse tragedy was there in the galaxy than a childhood like this ones, and those like them? The luckiest of them found that their caretakers cared for them like mothers and fathers. A simple gown, plain save for the tattered frills which adorned the breast and sleeves. It scratched at the pale skin beneath, itched and lent them the urge to claw at their skin. Oh, but what joy it was to be gifted such a precious thing after fourteen wretched standard years. Years of barely enough to eat, hunger gnawing at their stomach. Years of cold nights beneath thin sheets and so full of holes. Then though, they'd known warmth, as they adorned themselves with the simple, itchy, ragged gown, and hung the cool metal bauble around their neck. All that they owned they wore. The gown, the gift of caretakers. The tarnished brass necklace that lay cooly between their breasts, the gift of long-dead parents.

But it was cold again, as the nurse went giving all the sick children a foul tasting remedy, and made them drink. They'd told the other children that they should drink it, just as they'd done night after night, if they wanted to get better, and they'd listened, despite their rumbling stomachs pleading for something more substantial. They were the oldest after all, and they knew the other children looked up to them. Night after night, the cold bit at them, coughs wracked their bodies, and the precious little warm broth had left them starving, but with every foul drink, they all got a little better, and they, the oldest, smiled as they watched those whom they considered their younger siblings slowly became better and played in the way that only children who did not know how awful their existence really was could.

Night came again, and the nurse made came around again with the foul tasting liquid, and they drank deep as always and laid down to rest. The tingle of their skin deeply set some strange feeling in their chest and their stomach felt as if it was eating itself from the inside out. The sensation suffocated them, and made them want to scream. But they could not, and then, they truly began to choke. No sound, as their lungs pleaded for air and they could not move their body against whatever had wrought such a terrible feeling upon them.

Such hunger. Such cold. Such biting cold, as their vision faded into the deepest, darkest black.

"RISE!"​

Their eyes flickered open. How strange, as the even the dim lights burned their eyes and made everything bleary. Instinct drove them to blink, a fluttering of pretty ebony lashes above ivory sclera and azure irises. And the light did not hurt as much.

The cold was there again, they realized, but pressed firmly and against their back. Solid, unwavering, even as their fingers began to twitch and they found they could move of their own desire. Stone. It was stone that pressed against them, not cold. The fingers that scratched across its surface could feel markings embedded deep into its surface.

There was then an urge to cry out, like a newborn babe, and so they opened their mouth. Instead of the wail of a child though a quiet, creaking croak escaped their throat, an sound alien even to their own ears. That would not do. They found they had the strength to rise, and so they pushed themselves so as to be sitting upright on the stone, and they looked upon their own form. The ragged gown itched their pallid skin, save where it had been opened and parted. Some distant thought ó̶̢̹̦̟̤̒̋̊͛f̷̥̜͋͗͊͒ ̵̟̝́̅͛̿̄̉t̴̰͎̳̺̄̏h̵͙̋̏̐ȩ̸͉̹̭̟̘̞̀͂́͠ī̷̠͓͙̬̫̹r̸̨̫̝̙͐̋͒ ̶̮̭̰̪̰̠̭̾ǫ̴̺͉̉͌̑͝ẁ̶̗̻̱͂͐̉̉n̷̤̉͒̌̒̀͝͝ told them they should have felt something then. Embarrassment at the loss of their modesty, but they felt nothing as they turned to look at the one who had bid them rise.

Again, their mouth opened, but the same creaking croak from before slipped from their mouth, and their death-blue lips closed. Something shifted within their throat, a visible writhing as the thin roots which wound their way through their muscles, their organs, that served as nerve and structure and was their being itself rearranged itself. Again they opened their mouth and with a sweet voice they uttered the first thing that came to mind. "Cold."

Madrona A’Mia