[h2][center]Blessed Blood of the North[/center][/h2] The rill flowed and sang, crystalline and melodious. Over its surface, the nisshinek twirled, dipping and rising in a dance that mirrored its ebb and flow. When the stream leapt up on a great slimy stone or a piece of driftwood lodged in the damp soil, the sprite swooped down in a powdery cascade and brushed its surface with a thin edge. When it sank in a groove in the riverbed or fell through a gap between stones, the child of frost soared among the fronds of young trees above, leaving a glittering veneer on the giant leaves and knocking down the odd cone or acorn. Its laughter echoed the splash of water on mossy banks in a tinkling of minute icicles. It was that laughter, as it rolled among the venerable living pillars of the roofless temple that was the wood, that called the shadow. The music of the stream was broken when a branch crashed into it, and the nisshi recoiled in horror when the clear water was polluted by the stringy dust of decayed wood. There was little time for it to recoup, however. Something came fast on its heels, dark and enormous and choking like the edge of a wildfire. A wehniek, it thought. Then it glanced back and met the shadow’s pulsing red eye, and knew that it was something far worse. The nisshi leapt away from the tainted rill and into the wood, searching for a hiding place behind the mossy trunks or in the tangle of serpentine roots. Everywhere it darted, the shadow hounded it. Ancient wood was of no protection; as soon as the thing inside the black cloud touched it, it fell apart into worm-ridden splinters and sludge. Birds fled with alarmed cries as trees toppled, gnawed by invisible teeth, and slammed into each other in a mutilation of leaves and boughs. The sprite slipped into the tall undergrowth, but grass and bushes withered away under the shadow’s breath. It jumped, twirled, cried out in wordless terror. There was nowhere to go. Nooses of smoke curled around it, and despite its struggling – how weak it felt in that caliginous grip! - the nisshinek felt itself pulled to the cloud’s heart. It felt the writhing of a flame somewhere nearby, but no heat, only the bitterness of ash. Then the fire swallowed it, and its crystals cracked in a final scream, for it burned! In the jaws of the cold blaze, the nisshi melted, and the contented thrum of the unhuman drowned out its cries. [hr] [i]”We meet again under the sixfold-cursed moon; what have you seen?” “I have savoured this land’s carefree souls; they are worthless, but delectable.” “I have sampled of its hungry shades; they are useful, but their taste is foul.” “I have found those whom we seek. Quiet now! They are close, be ready.”[/i] [hr] The forest by night was not something one ever fully became used to. Nights were made to be slept through, eyes and ears shut to their strange shadows, or at most whiled away by the fire, where the warm crackling light kept away the darkness and its illusions. Out in the woods, with nothing to relieve the sight besides the moon sometimes timidly peeking through the branches, there was simply too much for a fevered imagination to latch on to. That lichen-coated boulder by the dead tree might have been a bear spying anything that moved through squinted black eyes; that bush might have been hiding something that crouched, formless and terrible, waiting to pounce; that tangle of dry wood in the fallen leaves could have been a dead body that would now stand up, with a gaping mouth full of broken teeth and empty, hungry eyes… Kinte shook her head and vigorously rubbed her eyes, chasing away the terrors born of a fanciful mind inflamed by a lack of sleep. There was nothing out here but trees and owls! She had walked through that thicket more times than she knew to count, and not once had she seen a bear or a hungry spirit. She did not even know what the latter really looked like. Like a dead thing that walked, said those her did; but then, thank the spirits, she had never seen a dead childan, and there was nothing frightening about an animal’s body. So, it followed that there was nothing to be afraid of here, either! All these things made perfect sense in the light of day, but when everything around was black and she could not tell if that mound a few paces away was a stone or a plant, they sounded a mite less convincing even in her head. If a bear or a spirit had really been there, would it have cared for Kinte’s reasoning about how they should not? No, it would just have jumped on her and ripped her apart. It was impossible, it was unlikely, she could tell herself that all she wanted; it was not going to convince the world around her if things were otherwise. Enough of these waking excuses for nightmares! She angrily smacked the nearest tree with the flat of her hand, and blinked in surprise when it answered with a mournful groan of wounded wood. Then she felt like laughing. She was a woman of the tribe! What did she have to fear? That strange strength, the gift of the Spirit Father, coursed in her limbs. It was the bears and ghosts* that should be afraid of her, and if she met one now, she would… “Hey.” Something warm touched her shoulder, and before she knew it she had spun around, by some miracle having held back her fist before it struck Hattek’s wide-eyed face. “Seeing things again?” He smiled, and she let him lower her hand with a chortle. “You know I can’t help it.” There was a sound of something heavy trudging through the bushes, and she was ready to jump again. But it was only Laach, looking bemusedly at her expression as he hauled half a great elk’s jaw over his shoulder, heavy and toothed. After all, a bear could have been there even if she did not see it. Kinte nodded at him. “Did you bring any more surprises?” Hattek shook his head, smirking. “None. I hope you didn’t either.” “Issi is watching today. The way she sits staring at the fire, she won’t even notice I’m gone if I get back before the moon starts to set.” Something flashed between the trees in the corner of her eye. She did not hear any sound. It was nothing, just the darkness again. Nothing. Hattek had not seen it either. Instead, he laid a hand on her belly, listening through the skin. “And how long until they all notice this?” She covered his ahnd with hers. “Many moons still. Nobody’s even thinking about me now,” she chuckled, “There’s some others who are past hiding it already. Does your tribe know anything about that?” “I can guess a few,” he grinned. Who it was, however, was to remain unsaid, for at that moment Laach shuffled closer to them, fidgeting uneasily with his elkbone maul. “There’s something around here,” he muttered in his low grumbling voice, “Maybe nobody’s followed Kinte, but-” A splash of something dark and heavy struck the side of his face from the treeline, and a cold, colourless light blinked through the air. Laach dropped the elk-jaw and clutched his mouth as more pale sparks erupted around him. Kinte barely had time to jump before something searingly cold brushed against her ankles, and her legs gave way under her. She grasped at the air as she toppled on her back, and felt a dusty stirring like a waft of smoke run between her fingers, then that same icy burn. The moon was red as she stared up with clenched teeth. No, not the moon. A round, red eye was looking down at her, and in it she thought she saw detached curiosity together with a tired disgust, like someone examining a strange new insect. Someone collapsed with a thud and a grunt beside her – Hattek? Laach? - but she could not turn her head to look. Her feet, her wrists, her shoulders, everywhere that cold breath had touched, refused to answer her. Flies buzzed nearby, ahead of her. Flies at night. The red eye moved aside, and she could see the trees again, with the moon, still white, still without a pupil, up in the sky. A piece of the forest stepped forward, and the moon glanced down. A light in the hollow eye of a skull. Branches and trunks were bones blackened by the flame, tatters of rotting skin and flesh hanging from them like the last leaves of a southern tree before the winter. A hundred arms. Sharpened fingers. The dead lived, as tall as the sky. [color=778899]“This is a land of spirits,”[/color] the night spoke with the voice of a wood where every tree bent and fell with hoary age, [color=778899]“Only now will it know the touch of the [i]One God[/i]. You will be the first to bear the Blessed Blood.”[/color] The hundred arms stretched down to the earth, and waves of pain rolled through Kinte as something was torn from her hands and feet. The fifth finger, she understood before the urge to scream the pain away drowned out everything else. But now her mouth, too, was locked as if by frostbite, and only agonising moans forced their way out of her disobedient lips. The sounds around her head told her that she was not the only one. Darkness gathered before her eyes. A half-flayed, half-fleshless blackened face as tall as her whole body bent over her. She could see huge corpse-worms wriggling in the ruins of its right eye, and the glazed, foggy, faintly glowing barren orb of its left one. [color=778899]“Your child will be born under my sign.”[/color] Then a lance of agony burrowed into her head, and she saw no more. [hr] Kinte opened her eye and rolled it around, taking in the smells of the night as her glance ran and hopped about. Dark sky, sinking moon. Bodies among the trees, pale and – huge? No, they were just like her. Blood pulsing, healthy, powerful. Loose red hair tangled in the undergrowth, four-fingered hands splayed on the ground. Everyone was still asleep. She rose to her feet, marvelling at how much less imposing the woods were than she had thought before. That bush, had she really ever thought it was a bear? She could have squashed it under one foot now. Her eye fell on a trunk that stood before her, where a faintly glowing sign, as starkly white as her skin had been carved into the bark. Despite the size of the hand that had scratched it, it was only about as large as something she could have made. [center][hider=The Eye of the God looked at her from the wood] [img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/7d8de3d8-213c-4de9-828f-4a9369620640.png[/img] [i]Or was it just the body of an insect, dried down to its coremost lines? The jaws on their own faces, grinning and clenched shut? Whatever it was, she knew it was holy.[/i] [/hider][/center] As memory stirred, she raised a hand to her belly. Her child. What would there have been for it before? Shame, resentment, envy? Those same things that made it so that it should be born a pariah among its people, just because she had done what every living thing did? Now, it was blessed. Now, it had a destiny. Grass and leaves rustled behind her, and she turned around without fear. Hattek and Laach were groggily standing up, running their tongues on their lips, winking and smirking as she greeted them with a grin. Behind them were all the others, every bit as tall and strong. Five women, ten men. Brothers and sisters of the Blessed Blood, their Blood. There were groans among them, and some scratched their empty stomachs. “The moon is setting,” said Kinte, “Issi will come looking soon.” She smiled wide, and a forest of sharp white teeth answered. [hider=Summary] Somewhere up in the north, an Eschatli chases a nisshinek and eats it, before meeting up with two of its fellows, who have been tracking an unknown quarry. We then cut to Kinte, a childan woman who has snuck away from her tribe in the night. She meets with two menfolk, Hattek, whose child she is secretly carrying, and his friend Laach, but before they can do much more than exchange greetings the Eschatli ambush and incapacitate them. Iqelis briefly drops in (somewhere between when he left Kel-Phelena and his arrival at the Palace), and we see for the first time how he appears to mortals when he doesn’t want to fry their minds outright. He prophesizes a vague but promising future for Kinte’s child and takes four fingers and one eye from each of the childan, before plunging them into a sleep from which they awake transformed, their severed pieces grown into a small tribe of their new kind. To guide them, they have a divine symbol and a frightful appetite. A happy New Year and Chailiss Week to everyone! [/hider][hider=Vigor] Iqelis starts with 5 vigor. - 1 vigor is earned from participation in the current feature week. - 3 vigor are spent into transforming some childan into Issishkah, the Blessed Blood. Those are giants of tremendous size and might, matching or surpassing even childan women with Chailiss’ blessing. They have starkly pale-white skin, red hair, a single round eye and four fingers on every hand and foot. As they age, their skin turns a light ashen grey, and a circle of short recurve horns grows around the crown of their head. Issishkah have an affinity for certain hues of red mana, manifested in or awakened by blood; for the moment it means they have a propensity for sanguinary rites, but in time this may develop into magical practices. Some regurgitated shards of wehnieks involved in their creation have given them a cannibalistic taste for childan and other human-derived races, and perhaps some form of kinship with the ravenous spirits. -1 vigor spent to make Kinte the Issishkah a champion. He ends with 2 vigor. [/hider][hider=Spirit and Prestige] Kinte begins with 0 spirit. -1 spirit earned for appearing in the post. -1 spirit earned as the protagonist of the post. -1 spirit earned as the focus of a medium-sized post. She ends with 3 spirit. [hr] The Eschatli begin with 2 prestige. -1 prestige earned for playing a prominent role in the post. They end with 3 prestige. [/hider]