Sacrifices (Cayenne - Kell - Satu)

[Satu]

Like an animal pushed too hard and long, Satu had nothing left mentally with which to offer fight. The Konti knelt before Oni, docile and out of breath. The surrounding emotions still wrapped her warped Heart with Amusement, Anger, and Disgust, but too much had happened for them to punish her fragile mind further this day. Only Oni, out of all the people the Konti had met since escaping Opportunity, had offered a path of Strength for Satu to follow. The scaled girl lifted her chin higher, to better see the Myrian. Had she felt the beginnings of Acceptance? The HeartSense never lied, even as the emotion was fleeting. Satu wished to feel it more, and stronger! From out of the jungle, a tiger stepped. Its massiveness pulled Satu from her reverie, shock evident on her blood stained face. Never had she seen a tiger before! Scrambling backwards in terror, her hands sunk into the dark earth, and her heels dug in. It would eat her! Though to Satu’s surprise, the beast stopped beside Oni, and Satu stared at them both from her position on the ground. Other Myrians followed behind, to step like demons out of nightmares, people of blood and bones, and pointed teeth. But they followed Oni… They followed Oni, as she also wished to follow… the most powerful. The Konti’s heart beat faster, and her head twitched, while her mind tried desperately to right itself. Slowly, Satu pushed her exhausted body to stand. Not quite trusting that they would not kill her where she stood. It would not do to appear Weak, though to the Myrians, she most likely did. Slowly she straightened to her full height. For one of her kind, she was considered tall, but next to the jungle people, Satu was not. Here, she was frail and fragile, a pale, ethereal shadow next to Myrian darkness. Oni wanted to know her name, and Satu narrowed her blue eyes. It took a long thought to bring her mind back to her lost self… who was she really since meeting Drainira? A wayward creature, once of Mura? Finally, the Konti answered in a low tone, as if unsure of the correct answer. “Satu…” she said. And because Oni had an unnatural hold upon her already, Satu whispered that which she rarely offered to any non-Konti, a secret, “…the HeartSeer,” as if a Myrian would understand the significance of that title. One lean, blood stained hand lifted to gesture at Oni’s followers, “I see their Hearts… Just like the Jungle, I know what they feel...” Satu’s voice, soft in accented, lilting common paused before she continued again in the whisper, “I know what everyone feels… it can never be hidden or stopped!” The Konti’s voice started to rise as the madness threatened to surface. “I know what he feels…” and the hand dropped to point at the now dead Kell… “And… I know your Heart as well…” As Satu said this, her eyes lifted in acknowledgement of that which she saw within the dark skinned warrior.

[Cayenne]

All around her were the whispers. The whispers of the jungle, twisting Satu’s already fragile, well-worn, overwrought nerves mingled with those of the people around her. Some of whom were less quiet, and were deliberately loud in the silence of the clearing as Oni of the Jagged Blade looked down at her, as if they determined to see just how far they could unsettle her. Two others conversed behind her in a strange tongue that she hadn’t even hopes of following - it was like nothing she had ever heard before, just as seeing Myrians like this, people of the jungle that were dressed as such, prepared as such, living as such... not out of place in pale, complacent Mura. Here, there be monsters, and a number of them surrounded her now. Would they seize her like the men of Opportunity? There was no Lust that she could detect. Not from any of them, not even Oni. These people were all business, and they dealt in death. She knew the lightest of them outweighed her easily, and that now, exhausted as she was, an escape was the last thing on her mind.

“Satu,” Oni repeated after her, “the HeartSeer.” She knew of Konti gifts, they all did. They knew that the Konti had strange senses, and with that, Myrians treated them with caution. The healers amongst them were useful, and might have been permitted to stay, but the seers... the seers they distrusted. They were a secretive people that understood, because Myri understood, that knowledge was power. The less others knew of them and their way of life, the better off they were. “To Taloba. The HeartSeer has earned her passage,” she said it in Common, only to speak in the strange tongue that the others were conversing in as two of them grabbed Kell’s body, grabbing up his effects and belongings. His trapped mare, she could see now, was held by two of the mud-splattered people, pulled forward, and her dead rider was dumped on and secured to her back. There was a short conversation that she could not follow, but she understood the emotions that moved behind it. Some were distinctly displeased with what was going on. Some of them were hopeful. And more than anything, they hungered. For what, Satu couldn’t tell - violence, perhaps. Excitement. Something. Anything. Perhaps they hungered for her flesh - not with lust, but with an appetite. One could not miss those teeth, not up close.

“You say that you know my heart,” Oni seemed to tower over her, her eyes glinting as she moved easily to climb astride the massive tiger, grabbing the Konti and pulling her up in front of her, sideways, so that she could see over her passenger and the Konti was left with no other means of holding on but to lean against her and hope that Oni would hang onto her. Oni didn’t trust her to sit behind her. She would keep the white-skinned witch in front of her, where she could watch, where she could be dumped from the tiger’s back and pounced on in a heartbeat. Satu still felt that Amusement, but it was outlined and edged with razor-sharp Aggression. “Pray to your Gods that you never know what lurks in it.”

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Note: This was a great thread, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do. Just remember, HeartSeer, when you flirt with fire, you're bound to get burned. I hereby award the following: Satu: Experience Persuasion: 1 XP Leadership: 2 XP Rhetoric: 2 XP Land Navigation: 1 XP Observation: 2 XP Suvai: 3 XP Dual Wield - Suvai: 2 XP Lore: Greed Often Conquers Fear Sensing an Ambush Through Emotions First Impressions: Myrians Myrian Duels - To the Death! First Meeting: Oni of the Jagged Blade Betrayal The Need to Please Where to Find the Human Heart Appetites of the Flesh Eating the Human Heart Following her HeartSense Ledger: +175 Gold Mizas