Pavara was dumbfounded. [i][color=0072bc]He's giving me orders... Again? Just can't stop, can he?[/color][/i]She opened her mouth to respond, but was stopped by a nearby shout and a sudden ringing in her ears. The crackling sound of high voltage burst into life over a screaming crowd, and a smoking corpse splattered across the cobblestone, the rough pavement scraping a short line of charred flesh and dark red ichor as the body slid to a stop in the center of the market. In a flash like lightning, her cutlass was drawn, and her pineal gland throbbed like an overtired eye on her forehead as she pulled blue mana from the paranoia of the scattering townsfolk and black mana from the fresh corpse, tasting the last memories of the slave on her mind's tongue.

Maybe she could get fresh human remains out of this. Maybe, just maybe, even a human heart, one of the three "holy grails" of horrorforging. 

Lute injected himself between Pavara and the excitement, ordering her to leave. [color=0072bc]"Self-righteous... GAH! You can't order me around!"[/color], she screamed, indignant. She shoved past him as he slung a hefty bolt of coursing electricity into the pandemonium, keeping her sword in front of her, a defensive posture she'd picked up while raiding geist-filled mausoleums for human remains. She continued to pull mana from the panic, utilizing Lute as a secondary tap, preparing to summon a beast for battle, her prized [color=003471]Baleful Strix[/color].

Her cutlass blade seemed to glow in the sunlight with contradictory white light, branding her mistakenly to many as some sort of white mage, while all the while she fed on their fear.

She spotted the source of the trouble, a cackling, cloaked woman in the center. And she saw the tattoo. A cold sweat formed on her forehead, and the hairs on her arms bristled uncomfortably against the bodysuit beneath her armor. She tried to focus on her summoning. [i][color=0072bc]Not this time... Not this time...[/color][/i]