Winter's Fist

[Hurik]

10th of Winter, 517 AV

When she ripped the bolts free, the soul darts ripped some of Hurik's essence free along with them. He gasped again, having acclimatized to the pinions in his chest, when the terrible rending sensation made him buckle in the air. His hair was unbloodied however, and her decision drove him with enough purpose that he spared himself only that gasping breath before righting himself.

They called me Bloodmane... It wasn't my blood though, that splashed and clung to my own ruddy locks. I must've... I must've killed s-so many...

Hurik's feet lowered back down to the floor, and he straightened his back, raised his head, and met Madeira's eyes. Nothing there. No sympathy. A kind of wary caution. That made sense to Hurik. She'd finally understood what he really was, as he had, during all those months he'd spent somewhere else.

"Nobody is going to die today." He said it, and it became his vocation. He would see it through or so help him, he would break himself trying. No more time for thought or regret or any of the other dozens of useless torrents of emotion twisting in him, each a different tendril of his being unwinding slowly.

Hurik closed the distance between them, and raised his own hands to caress Madeira's face. He could count the number of times he'd attempted possession on the fingers of one hand. His attempts had not yielded any fruit, and moreso, Hurik had never had such need or purpose for the act. This felt different immediately, and he could feel that she was both inured with soulmist, and willing to accept him into herself. Hurik couldn't say how he knew, but he was certain she'd done this before. Something about her posture, the way she seemed to unconsciously brace her body, he could feel the tension even in the sinews of her face. Wait, he could feel her face?

Hurik tried to look down and found he couldn't, as he no longer had a head, or eyes to do the looking. Still, despite his dematerialization to an extent, he still retained what he could only describe as an awareness. His amulet still hung in the air from nothing, glowing brightly at the centre of his curling mists, and the forms of arms and hands still vaguely remained, his hands held gently against Madeira's face.

Hurik's awareness of his mists being drawn into Madeira abruptly occurred, and he felt as though he were being pressed through a thick membrane, and as the pressure of his mists increased, so too did the membrane's tension. Unsure to what degree Hurik could control the process of his possession, he tried to reduce the intensity of his incursion, and nearly lost the sense of the possession then and there, feeling his essence returning at an alarming rate. If Hurik still had his face manifested, it would've contorted into a grimace as he strained himself, attempting to both restrain pressure while letting a little flow through, enough to maintain the momentum of the transfer. All of this effort and struggle seemed to last a century, but internally, Hurik's counting revealed that the whole process took about two ticks. With the last of his essence following Hurik into the open vessel that was Madeira, he completed his first possession.

"I hope that wasn't too rough on you. As long as you are okay with this, Madeira, I'll complete this task and then leave you immediately. I don't expect you to just let me leave but... I'll accept whatever fate you grant me," a voice, not Hurik's own, said. More than that, it was Madeira's voice, her lips, breath, vocal chords, and her entire body which seemed to come into his awareness a second time. He urgently thrust away the mountain of questions and embarrassing thoughts and the overwhelming sense of oddness that it was to be clad in flesh, blood, bone, and sinew again.

He could already feel his memories, thoughts, and emotions bleeding into hers. He made a concerted effort to not think about the things he didn't want her to know, but didn't know how well it succeeded. Additionally, he noted that from the inside, Madeira's feelings were a lot less clear cut, than he'd initially concluded from an outside perspective. Hurik didn't have much time to ponder that insight, as he felt the sensations of oddness dulling. In their place, he felt a tugging sensation in him when he turned and saw Jomi.

The darker ghost, unwillingly summoned and pierced by a soul dart, hadn't deserved to be saddled with Hurik in his present state. In hindsight it was unfortunately much clearer what this ghost's intentions had been. Not only had Hurik misunderstood them greatly, but he remembered all too keenly the sensation of those awful darts penetrating his own essence.

"Jomi," Hurik spoke with Madeira's voice, "I'm sorry about all this. You must truly have terrible luck to cross paths with me when you did. I'm starting to see more clearly but even still, that coldness reminds me of something I'd rather not remember and I..." Hurik shook Madeira's head, and then knelt down to yank the dart out of Jomi's foot.

"In life, I hurt people. I was extraordinarily skilled at it. I'm not sure if I can become adept at anything else, but I would rather try and fail, than let myself fall into those vapours again..." Hurik didn't meet Jomi's eyes as he said this, but even as he found a pocket in Madeira's coat and deposited the dart, Hurik clenched Madeira's other fist, and turned to exit the shop to go help this unfortunate man he'd buried. When he reached the door, Hurik half-turned to Jomi and said, "First one to dig him out gets to wear his body." It was a morbid joke by anybody's standards, but Hurik could sense vaguely that he'd always had a macabre sense of humour.

Chuckling faintly, the sound distinctly alien when being produced by Madeira's voice, Hurik lurched out of the Jeweller's. He wondered whether he was attempting to excavate an innocent victim of his own crime, or if he was actually trying to dig up the rest of himself, buried deep in the recesses of his mind. Time was short, in any event, and the icy wind biting. Madeira's own hands clenched against that chill, her pale skin akin to Winter's Fist.

Nobody is going to die today...

[Jomi]

Jomi was less than five meters away before he felt that familiar tingle of evocation, like ants crawling over his soul.

“Oh sh-“

In the time it takes to blink the Kelvic ghost was transported back to Matilda’s Jewels and unceremoniously bolted to the floor.

A scream of agony tore itself from Jomi’s form along with a chunk of his soulmist. The Kelvic Ghosts remaining animalistic instincts lite like a flair, prompting his mists to churn and struggle to tear itself away from the silver dart. As the initial stabbing pain passed into a subtle ache Jomi focused his mists and pulled them towards his core, sculpting them into his preferred shape on a young dark haired man he remembered from his youth. Although his edges trembled with lingering shock and pain he crouched down and wrapped his spectral fists around the souldart. The ghost set his focus on his palms, drawing the lingering energy from his mists and focused them on those two points to create enough force to push up against the pull of gravity. But no matter how he hard he pulled Jomi couldn’t generate more than a pathetic wiggle from the projectile. Just as he was getting ready to cuss out the gods a familiar voice called out his name.

“Jomi,” Madeira spoke with words that weren’t her own as her possessed eyes filled with something akin to pity. “I’m sorry about all this. You must truly have terrible luck to cross paths with me when you did.”

Jomi made a show of looking at the tiny bracer that flashed menacingly from under Madeira’s sleeve and then to the bolt embedded in his foot. He turned his body to the mountain of snow beyond the front windows before his head slowly drifted back to look Hurik-Madeira in the eye.

“What could’ve possible given you that idea.” Jomi deadpanned through clenched teeth.

Madeira’s body knelt down and pulled the dart free, releasing a torrent of hissed curses from the ghost.

"In life, I hurt people. I was extraordinarily skilled at it. I'm not sure if I can become adept at anything else, but I would rather try and fail, than let myself fall into those vapours again..."

"Great. Next time you feel like giving into your murder mists how 'bout you give me a heads up first? Give me some time to blink to the other side of the continent or such." Jomi shot at the ginger ghost as he straightened from his crouched position. “Spiritists hunt murderous ghosts for sport, come visit the Craven manor sometime and I’ll show you where they keep the poor basterds they catch.”

Jomi watched with hard eyes as Hurik walked Madeira’s body to the door only to turn to give his own morbid quip.

“The first one to dig him out gets to wear his body.”

Jomi paused then, Hurik was poised at the door, ready to go out and selflessly help their victim. Jomi, however, was back to contemplating the merits of sticking around. Madeira no longer had his mist, he could leave if he so chose and their was nothing the spiritist could do about it. The thought was squashed however, by the reality of his predicament. Madeira had already proven she had no qualms about using violence to get him to do as she wanted, and if he left now he’d just be delaying the inevitable blowback for his actions.

Jomi dropped his head and his chest heaved in defeat.

“I’ll find the man and get his to dig himself out, you dig from the top, we’ll meet halfway.” Jomi muttered bitterly as he breezed past Hurik and out the front window into the pile of heavy, wet snow.

It didn't take long to find the grey man, his legs had buckled under the weight of the avalanche forcing him into a crouched position. However the way he had fallen with his head bent forward and legs beneath him had sheltered a small pocket of air around his head and chest allowing him a precious few chimes worth of breathable air. Jomi found no resistance as he forced his soul into the trapped man, rendered nearly unconscious from lack of oxygen.

Jomi's soul moulded easily into the mans muscles as his essence filled its new container. Starting in his chest and radiating outwards into his limbs as the exhausted mans body slowly began to stir. Jomi pushed his new body up as hard as he could from the crouched position, reaching his borrowed arms forward and began to dig the man out. Having no senses in his new body he couldn’t feel the exhaustion and strain from the overworked muscles or the stiff frozen digits that scrapped against the ice tearing the skin and turning the snow a soft pink. All he cared about was getting the grey man out alive, the condition of the body was of no concern to him.

[Madeira Dusk]

Hurik's possession was unpractised and fumbling. He would have had trouble controlling a layman, but a Spiritist was attuned to possession and comfortable with the trauma. Madeira pulled her astral body away and let the invading spirit wind its way through blood and bone unimpeded. Her fingers flexed, her eyes rolled back before righting themselves, her breath stuttered on her lips before continuing with the gentle tide. She relinquished her body piece by piece as the novice possessor learned how to wield it.

As he did, she memorized the flavour of his possession against the others she was familiar with. Emma's was gentle and uncertain, Jomi was ferocious, Renee was sly, and at first Madeira thought Hurik's was timid. But the word timid did not fit anywhere near the red bearded ghost. It took her a tick, as the last of him settled into her flesh, for her to realize he was being considerate. It was disarming to think the ghost cared about what kind of stress it was putting on its host.

She let Hurik speak with her mouth and tuck the souldart into her pocket, and she let Jomi rip into him with his characteristically slicing jabs. Hurik's remorse flowed through his words and from the mind so intimately alined with hers. It threatened to soften her heart, but her fury burned hotter than his grief. She had to remind herself that he was a murderer and a liar and somehow the servant she was responsible for was involved. She did not forgive him.

As they reached the door Jomi outlined a simple plan, his voice resigned and reluctant, before disappearing into the cold outside. As soon as he left, Hurik opened the door, blasting them with frigid air. The overhanging eves protected the very front of the shop from the avalanche, but a meter and a half bank of snow blocked their way. Over the top of the drift a servant girl and a concerned neighbour were digging for the trapped man in two different places. They didn’t know where he was buried.

Before Hurik could act further, Madeira brushed him aside like a cobweb. At once she was in control of her body, while at the same time anchoring Huriks soul inside her so that could not leave. In the middle of the most uncomfortably deep contact between the two souls, this was the Spiritist's version of a power play. With the added mental force she could find in her Kelvic bond she walled her mind against his. Through her connection with Allister she let the hurt of Hurik’s abandonment and betrayal bleed through, but she'd be damned if she was going to let the ghost see how much damage he had caused.

The snow was heavy and wet. There was no way she could climb on top of it. And if she did, she feared she would crush the man underneath it. So Madeira skirted around it, coming up behind the frantic servant girl.

"I'll help!" Madeira shouted at her, miming digging with her hands. The girl nodded once, her nose red and bitten with cold and eyes brimming with tears. Message clear, Madeira circled the drift but didn't dig right away. Her palms were passing over the snow like a dowser. She could sense the ghosts. She could probably sense them from a mile away if she put her mind to it. But never had she tried pinpointing their location from so close. Jomi was feet away from her, but to save the man's life she would have one chance to figure out exactly where.

After a tick, she pressed her hand to the most likely spot. Jomi’s presence was most strongly felt here, and she hoped her intuition was right.

Bare-handed she began to dig. Her arms were instantly stiff with cold, and her legs shivered as her skirt was soon soaked through. She pulled Hurik forward then, and lead the ghost into as graceful a possession as she could manage. Hurik could not feel the pain in her fingers and the way the cold sliced through her resolve. She was waning but Hurik could push her beyond her limits, which is exactly what they needed to save the man. She pulled back her soul and let Hurik puppet her body, and she focused on weathering the pain.

[Hurik]

10th of Winter, 517 AV

On the outside of the building, Hurik took stock of the situation, seeing the two people desperately digging for his victim. Hurik made to say something, but then a lurch in his body shook his control of it, and he felt a sensation not unlike an avalanche come over him as he was beaten out of Madeira's coordinated and motor faculties. And furthermore, before his essence could seep out of Madeira, it pressed up against an intangible barrier through which he could not penetrate. In a realization whose enormity struck Hurik, he realized that he was experiencing exactly how a possessed person would most likely feel when he took control of them.

Even knowing that Madeira had willingly invited him to possess her, Hurik savoured the sensation of utter powerlessness that came over him. He was still embodied in her limbs and the rest of her body, and yet it was Madeira's direction that moved them, with him forcefully set aside.

While Madeira was moving their eyes, arms, and utilizing her abilities as a Spiritist, Hurik was still processing the idea that an especially cunning Spiritist, could in theory, invite a hostile ghost to their body, and then beat them into submission, completely rendering a ghost the slave of their will. So taken was Hurik by these ideas, that he only realized that Madeira had relinquished control over her body and allowed him to continue controlling their body because he noticed they'd stopped moving.

Hurik lifted their fingers, seeing the blood on his hands, and swooned for a moment. The reaction, possibly much stronger by himself, was deadened by the possession, or perhaps muffled. Whatever the case, Hurik resumed the digging through the snow, trusting Madeira's ability to discern the man's location. Despite being numb to Madeira's pain however, Hurik could see the snow stained pink where he scraped away at it relentlessly, and he felt his own resolve crack at the sight.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Hurik whispered with Madeira's voice, even as by degrees he increased the frantic pace of their digging. "Madeira, I'm not going to... This is worse than anything I've ever-"

Hurik paused and considered what he'd been about to say.

"No, this isn't the worst thing I've done, not by a long shot. My actions still damn me. I guess what makes this hurt is that I thought I could somebody different. What a ridiculous idea!" With that last exclamation, he dug especially deep into the freezing snow, and then noticed the shape that Madeira's hands were in.

"Petch. You should've just killed me and had done with it. I'm sorry for not dying properly." Hurik fell silent then. He cupped Madeira's hands up to their face and breathed into them, smearing her face with blood, but mostly trying to warm the fingers as much as he could. Only allowing himself a sparing handful of ticks to complete the process, which he couldn't even properly assess, Hurik set to digging once more.

Hurik found himself questioning what exactly he was even digging for. There was indeed a person under the pile of snow that Hurik had loosened, but that didn't seem like what his hands were grasping for as he threw aside fistfuls of frigid pink-whiteness. Was it life itself? Was it his humanity? Or perhaps, could he be searching for some justification for why he had been allowed to live after a fashion and this man he'd wrongly condemned would die? Hurik found himself feeling the cold. Not through Madeira's body, but in the chill that permeated his essence, and the lack of warmth that he'd not felt since he first materialized. It didn't matter how resolutely he tried to commit to a purpose or cause because that all-consuming cold still stayed with him. That cold, paired with the stench of blood, was enough to force Hurik into a place where he couldn't find anything that seemed to mean anything at all, except-

Except a silhouette of a pale ethereal girl, cast in the bronzing high and lowlights of a late sunset in Autumn, kindly giving of herself to nourish and nurture a lost and confused soul.

Warmth. Soulmist. It all seemed to fall into place at that moment.

And so did the snow underneath Hurik's fingers. Fall, that is.

She will be my fire. Even if I get caught in the flames, it will be better to have been burned, than frozen away.

[Jomi]

One. Two. Three. Breath.

Under the pile of snow Jomi was quietly and methodically scraping away at the ice before him with blood stained fingers, spacing out the breaths to conserve what little oxygen remained. His host hadn't struggled, or made any attempts to usurp him since the possession. In fact Jomi could barely feel the other souls presence at all.

One. Two. Three. Blink.

The man wasn't dead, but he would be soon. His soul was as silent as the snow they were buried beneath and just as cold. But as Jomi continued his trudging pace questions poured unbidden from his mind. What would happen if the grey man were to survive? Jomi had been causing nothing but deliberate pain and suffering to the princely merchant since his arrival in the port that morning. And while he had never meant to have him killed he had never gone out of his way to tell the grey man that. If he were to be freed and taken to Ionu’s Mercy the doctors would ask what happened, and he'd surly point to his ghostly tormentor as the culprit. Jomi would be labelled as an attempted murderer, and then what? Would the Cravens come after him? Would Madeira take the blame and lose the privilege and resources that came with the Craven name? Resources Jomi desperately needed if he ever wanted to see his bonded again.

Jomi stilled his digging, a stabbing sense of dread passed through him as he came to the dark realization. There was no way this would end well for him. He wouldn't be able to find Edith as a pile of dust or without Madeira's help. If he wanted to see his bonded again an innocent man would have to die.

The Kelvic steeled himself as he pushed away the guilt and heartache, packing it away deep inside his mind and let a wave anger wash away the bitter taste they left. Edith was worth the lives of a thousand innocent men, he'd drag them all to the feet of Dira herself if thats what it took to see her smile one last time.

Jomi gently relaxed his arms and laid his borrowed head in the snow. The man was too weak to fight him, if he was even conscious, it would be a tragic accident with plausible deniability. The onlookers would find the man's stiff, cold body, and a ghost who couldn't dig him out in time. The was nothing anyone could do. A victim of fate and circumstance.

Jomi forced the air out of his hosts lungs with one last stuttering breath before they stilled. The rest of the rescue party had a few precious ticks left to save the man as his heartbeat began to beat slow and erratic.

[Madeira Dusk]

Madeira's hands were numb and raw. The fingers of her left hand cramped into claws as the scar tissue through her palm contracted in the cold. Had she been under her own force of will she would have slowed down, maybe even stopped as she found something to protect her. It was only Hurik that kept her going. She was free to shiver and cry as her nails cracked and bled, and her skin sprouted a hundred tiny lacerations, as long as Hurik was there to push her through it.

She listened to him, but didn't design to answer. He was right.

Finally a thin crust crumbled under her digging hands, and she felt cold flesh beneath her fingers. She spoke even as she relied on Hurik to pull the man out of his cocoon of ice.

"I've got him!" she shouted to the two people who still dug on the other side of the snowbank. "He's here! Help us!"

It took all three humans to pull him out. His fur coat was sodden and heavy, his lips blue and cold. He didn't move as they dragged him out by his wrists and the collar of his shirt and rolled him to his back. At once his servant was shaking him by the shoulders, her ear to his lips to feel for breath.

"Master!" She shrieked in her heavily accented voice. "Master!"

Madeira was knocked aside as the man knelt and started chest compressions. Soon the air was heavy with the weeping that eked out of the girl between breaths blown into her Master. Madeira just stood by and watched, her frantic energy spilling into the snow beneath her feet. She was not a doctor, she did not know what to do to save a broken body. But she was a Spiritist, and she knew what it looked like when the flesh was empty.

He was dead.

There was a static roaring in her head, like the sound of a gale the second before it hit. He was dead. He was dead. It was their fault. She fell to her knees under the weight of it. Murderer. They murdered that man. The ghosts were her responsibility. She was the one who was suppose to rein in what others couldn't even touch, and they killed him.

"Get out, Jomi." She whispered under the wailing of the servant girl. The ghost was there, lingering. What should she do? What should she do with her ghost? "Get out, and do not come back until you are called."

Her skirt was soaked, her shoulders tremmbling. Loose locks of hair whipped about in the wind. She ignored it all. Madeira breathed deep, and closed her eyes. She could feel Hurik trapped in her bones. Trapped with her. She could feel his grief just like he could feel her guilt. She breathed, and let the feeling wash over her.

"It's about time I knew who you are, Hurik. It's about time I know what you've done."

And with that, she ripped into his mind.

She tore through his memories, reaping what disjointed thoughts and feelings rose to the surface. Flashes of his life rose past her in bursts of colour and taste and smell, too fast to follow. Nothing was sacred, nothing was private, their souls were latched together and she was violating him in the most unforgivable way. Through the chaos she caught the coppery smell of blood and latched onto it. She followed that sense like a string through battle after battle, through scars and lacerated limbs, following it back to the first time.

His hands were rough but young, his cheeks smooth. A lock of red hair fell into his eyes. The grass was wet and red beneath his boots. Around him were the husks of the smashed and looted caravans of the convoy he was part of. And scattered through it, collecting flies and the first of the maggots, were the bodies. Throats slit, heads smashed, everyone he had travelled with was dead. The raiders had left bells ago, unaware the boy survived.

He was breathing hard. She watched with dawning familiarity as his mind clouded with a strange red noise.

Madeira latched onto this new sensation, this red noise. She burned through him, looking for it, and catching nothing but snippets. He called the red noise Charnel Vapours, and it drove him mad.

The boy Hurik caught up with the band of rouges, and became one of them. She watched him grow in flashes, moving up the ranks, and the way the death lingered about him.

As she tore through him, digging deeper, rooting up what he tried to hide from her and devouring what he couldn't. A flash of silken black caught her off guard, as his feelings softened around it. She followed that flash of colour and found a woman with raven hair in a halo on her pillow, sweat glistening on her bare breasts and shoulders in the muted light of the canvas tent. She was smiling up at Hurik with a love so pure and gentle that Madeira recoiled instinctively from the intimacy. The woman's whispered words chased Madeira to the surface, and the reaping shattered as the Spiritist pulled herself away from the ghost. Yet the words remained, seared onto her soul: I love you.

The Spiritist came gasping back to herself. Ice had glued her eyelashes shut. She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands until she could blink away the crystals. Nobody had taken notice of her in the chimes it took to dig through Hurik’s memories. The man was trying to pry the servant girl off the body, telling her she needed to find her Master's family and tell them. The Divine Legacy would take care of the body, he was saying. You need to leave it behind.

Nobody noticed when Madeira slipped away, getting stiffly to her feet and skirting around the avalanche to shoulder open Matilda's Jewels once again.

The bell above the door gave a cheery tingle and the titular Matilda dived under the counter with a squeal of fright. Madeira’s teeth were chattering and her hands were blue with cold. She had never felt so tired in her life. She shouldered the door closed, and the blustery wind was cut off.

From within her body she found the edges of Hurik’s soul, and ejected the ghost from her body. Her soul expanded to the edges of her being and forced the foreign spirit out.

"You have done horrible things, Hurik Bloodmane." She breathed into her fingers, willing her blood to pump through the stiff flesh. “That thing, whatever it is; charnel vapours, blood lust, red noise. It's made you insane."

She turned, looking up at him with pale eyes like the sea on fire. Her cheeks were bitten and red, her hair loose and her clothes damp and heavy. She looked like quite the drowned rat, but there was something in her look that was not to be laughed at.

"You're dangerous. I don't know how I never saw that before. But now a man is dead and it's on all three of us. So you have two options here. Two very simple options." She spoke matter of factly. “You heard Jomi: dangerous ghosts are hunted. That is what my family does, and they're good at it. You can take your chances with them, or-" she grabbed the hollow gold ring she was looking at before off the counter, and held it up to him. The amber, containing one tiny, fossilized perfect white flower, glittered evilly in the yellow light. "-you can take your chances with me. Be my servant, Hurik. Come when you're called, do as your told, and I can help you. You've have my soulmist, my protection, we can work to control this madness. I’ll help you find your wife just as I'm helping Jomi find his bonded. Belong to me, and I'll make it worth it."

There was something in Madeira's expression, behind the pain and the guilt, that was almost hungry. Hurik was dangerous and uncontrollable, but she wanted him. She wanted him just as she wanted Jomi. They just proved she couldn’t control them, but the potential of having another ghost, a potentially powerful ghost, under her control was intoxicating. It brought her one step closer to being the person Allister thought she was.

[Hurik]

10th of Winter, 517 AV

It will be better to have been burned, than frozen away...

Hurik watched helplessly, as Madeira reasserted control of their body, and the man was recovered from the tomb that Hurik had made for him. Hurik watched, as the others desperately tried to bring him back, his loved one weeping in a keening cry that seemed to reverberate in Hurik's mind. It tore at him, flaying his being with its unbound sorrow.

Distantly, Hurik heard Madeira's voice. Heard the banishment for what it was, and recognizing what was going to come next, his thoughts finally turned to what would become of himself. He had indeed, moments before, decided to accept Madeira's fire, and to let its flames engulf his being, to keep out that soul-breaking cold. Even so, when the fire finally turned its blazing heat upon him Hurik could only manage one solitary thought, before coherence abandoned him.

It burns.

Afterward, Hurik found himself trying to remember the experience, to describe it to himself. He lacked the words. How could one possibly explain what it felt like to be laid bare in one's most vulnerable moments, and to be judged, and then just as abruptly to be strung up on the gallows of one's worst failures, the sheerest darknesses of one's being, and to be condemned?

There was no exchange either. Hurik's awareness of Madeira, insofar as he even was aware, in that crackling, devouring, all-consuming heat was... Nothing. He had no way of knowing what she was paying the most attention to, or what secrets she might have rent from his mind that he himself could not bear to remember. That was terrifying to consider.

The burning, it had seemed interminable. His very essence had finally been offered up on a slab to be picked at and consumed in a hellish punishment that could only just hope to atone for the things that Hurik had done. He had felt fragments of himself stirring, welling up in the core of him like so much vomit preparing to be expelled in a violent purge. However, it had not truly been a cleansing. When at long last, Hurik's tattered and fraying soul sloughed off of Madeira's and mercifully, easily left her body to coalesce in Matilda's Jewels, he did not feel clean.

He was the exact same person he had always been.

Hurik wanted to cry, he wanted to scream, he wanted to waste away, he wanted to feel the tearing of flesh beneath his fingers as he ripped another human being apart. He did none of these things. Madeira spoke. Hurik listened.

So she had seen the Vapours. He was not surprised at that, and if he'd been the Spiritist it would have been one of the first things he would have looked into as well. The last part of her comment took him by surprise. Am I insane? I... I don't think I am. She wouldn't think I was insane, would she? She saw the petching Vapours, for shyke's sake! Where the petch did she think I went off to all those months ago? On a petching holiday?

He continued to listen to Madeira, quieting the anger inside, tamping it down. He had no right to be fiery, as he was in thrall to the fire. The flames that he could quite clearly see in Madeira's eyes as she raked her gaze across his form with all the sympathy an ember has when it ignites kindling. He did however realize at that point, in a distant sense, that since Madeira had ended the possession, he'd failed to reconstitute his usual form. The possession had been a willing one, and he'd not lost any more Soulmist after Madeira had removed her darts from his essence. Hurik listened to Madeira while he mechanically built up his Soulmist into his usual likeness, paying close attention as she laid out the options that she chose to grant him, in moving forward.

She would help him find his wife. Hurik's soul ached at that offer, and he stepped forward. A drop of blood fell from his face, hit the ground, splashed into Soulmist that rejoined to his own essence. Hurik did a double-take when he looked down, and then turned to a mirror that stood next to him on the counter. He was not the Bloodmane in this instance, and that blood that had fallen to the floor had been his own, seeping from a cut on his cheek. One of dozens. Long gashes smiled redly at him through the mirror's reflection, some on his arms, others on his face, and plenty on his bare chest and back, his hairy chest soaked with crimson. Hurik stared, entranced by another manifestation of himself from his past.

This Hurik was only a little younger than his usual incarnation, but it highlighted his excellent physique and revealed in addition to the fresh wounds his ghostly manifestation appeared to have suffered, countless scars and signs of old trauma and damage that astonished him. He leapt at the mirror, drinking in the sight of his body, wondering for perhaps the thousandth time what ill fate had befallen him, that had rendered his powerful limbs and hulking torso incapable of saving him. He discarded the thought, knowing that he would brood upon it further when he was alone. Now though, Hurik had a choice to make. A choice he had already made, in fact. Turning away from the mirror and back toward Madeira, he approached her reverently and knelt down before her.

Hurik met Madeira's eyes and stared back at her, his essence feeling as though it had been wrung through to drain him out. Wordless, for Hurik could not think of words to express how he felt, for Madeira, about himself, and what it was that had brought them together, he raised his hand and within his palm pooled freely offered Soulmist. Hurik felt the diminishment of his essence acutely, and he fought off the urge to sag down in front of his saviour. Anything was better than the bite of frost, the impassivity of ice, the suffocating darkness that was the grip of Winter's Fist.

As Hurik kneeled before his mistress, Madeira Craven, in Matilda's Jewels, with the blood of a dead man on his hands, the words came to him unbidden.

"The Charnel Vapours call me the Bloodmane,
Dealer of death and killer of all men.
Would that they'd drown me in my self-made rain,
Unworthy of wealth, and love of women.

Winter's fist took me into its cold grasp,
The cold in my soul made its mark tonight.
And at my feet falls, this man's final gasp,
Monster or man, or perhaps both is right.

Craven woman, harsh and cruel as the fire,
Scorch me raw, and purge me of my darkness.
Insane am I, e'en with my true desire,
Autumn sky, tame my ruin'd soul e'er restless.

The sum of my life has been pain and blood,
Gods above, please let my death serve some good."

Hurik had always loved a good bit of verse. Poetry was part of why she had fallen in love with him. His wife. Alone out there, somewhere. And him, unable to even remember her name, let alone protect her.

"Madeira, what did you see?" The question hung in the air, painfully quiet and also powerfully invoked in its slow pronunciation. The answers to half of Hurik's life seemed to be standing over him, and he could not help but ask.

[Jomi]

Jomi laid quietly inside the grey man as the surrounding crowed pulled him from the snow. He had felt the astral body pull away as the man died, leaving Jomi with nothing to manipulate or control in the rapidly cooling corpse. But even so he didn't leave the body. Instead passively watching as the servant girl tried futility to push air into her masters lungs.

He could hear the ice scrape as the body was pushed and dragged across the snow, he could hear the wailing of the servant girl. he could see the snow fall softly around them through the mans pale clouded eyes. But he couldn't feel anything. Not the weight of the woman clutching at his chest, the biting cold or the sting of torn flesh that slowly froze on his fingertips.

The guilt and subconscious need for punishment pushed the Kelvic to allow himself to feel nothing. That same nothing he so often covered with anger or distracted with impulsiveness. The emptiness of a pathetic quasi-existence where he would never again feel the touch of another human being, experience warmth, or what it felt like to cry. His mists swirled chaotically as the reality threatened to crush what little of Jomi’s humanity remained, the undeniable truth that no one would ever cry for him like this. The only person he had ever loved was lost somewhere and likely had no idea he was even looking for them, he had no family, no friends, no one to grieve for him if he were to ever allow himself to die properly.

"Get out, Jomi."

Jomi felt his soulmist contract violently, her icy words cut harder than any souldart ever could.

"Get out, and do not come back until you are called."

Without a sound or a word Jomi slipped out of the corpes and down through the snow, stone and soil. A deafening silence greeted him as the sounds of the grievers grew distant and muffled, falling further until he reached the Underground proper. He could see the fire from lamps flicker in rickety buildings, staving off the darkness from the perpetual night. Fully dematerialized he drifted over the houses and the wretches that occupied them as little more than a shadow, and resumed his eternal search for the bondmate he lost.

[Madeira Dusk]

In Matilda’s Jewels, illuminated by the yellow glow of the gaslamps and the blue light that trickled through the wall of snow in front of the window, Hurik was manifesting in red.

This Hurik was stripped to the waist, with shallow lacerations across his torso. His face was younger than she’d ever seen him wear, its features fierce and hard-bitten. She recognized this vision from his memories but this might have been after any of the dozens of battles he had fought. The ghost looked like an oil painting superimposed on reality, but if it was a portrait of a man in victory or defeat she couldn't say. He was staring at his own reflection, drinking in the sight of something he probably didn’t remember.

Then the powerfully built, bleeding man turned to her and slowly lowered himself to his knees.

Something electric shot up Madeira's spine to see the ghost submit himself to her in such a visual way. In that moment their relationship shifted perceptively. She stood taller than him for the first time, their eyes locked, and both knew exactly what it meant.

He belonged to her now.

It was different than the way Allister belonged to her, which was the same unshakable way that her heart belonged to her. With her other ghosts, Emma was bound to her out of necessity, Jomi was tied to her with convenience and nothing more. Hurik was the first to belong to her not out of need, but want. He was choosing her, and she him, and that made all the difference.

She held out the ring, opening it on a hinge, and let the ghost pool his energy into the hollow centre. Then she closed the ring and slipped it onto the third finger of her right hand. She liked the way it felt.

The words of his poem were raw and bleeding. They filled the room and spoke of a lost, hopeless kind of sadness. When he was done, he asked Madeira what she saw in his mind. She thought carefully before she spoke.

"I saw you. All of you. I saw that first caravan slaughter and every heinous thing you've done since. But in between it all I saw her… She was beautiful, Hurik. She loved you."

There was a pause. A long pause as Madeira thought about everything that just happened. Somewhere along the way there was a panic, souldarts,  a murder, a mind was raped and a promise servitude was made. She needed to sort it all out. She needed rest. She clenched her rough, damaged hands and felt the bite of gold on her finger.

Secret :

Poison Ring (gold/20kt amber) -42gm

[Madeira Dusk]

Grades Awarded!

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Hurik

Skills

• Materialization: 5xp
• Soulmist Projection: 4xp
• Possession: 3xp
• Observation: 2xp
• Persuasion: 1xp

Lores

• Lore of counting to calm oneself
• Soulmist: what fuels ghosts
• Lore of unfulfilled promise
• Soulmist Projection: creating ethereal stairs
• People: Jomi, a ghost
• Mantra: "Nobody's going to die today"
• Lore of a gentle possession
• Madeira: Hurik's new Mistress

Awards & Retribution


Notes
Notes here.

Jomi

Skills

• Materialization: 5xp
• Soulmist Projection: 4xp
• Possession: 2xp
• Observation: 1xp
• Logic: 1xp
• Subterfuge: 1xp

Lores

• Snow makes for easy tracking
• Ghosts: all have significant issues
• People: Whiskers, a ghost
• Whiskers: a warrior
• Hurik: is Whiskers
• Lore of Murder

Awards & Retribution


Notes
Notes here.

Madeira Craven

Skills

• Intimidation: 2xp
• Interrogation: 2xp
• Crossbow: 2xp
• Observation: 4xp
• Leadership: 3xp
• Spiritism: 3xp
• Endurance: 3xp
• Persuasion: 1xp
• Negotiation: 1xp

Lores

• Jomi: more malevolent than Hurik
• Hurik: back from the dead
• Lore of recognizing Hurik's possession
• Jomi: a murderer
• Hurik: a murderer
• Persuasion: an ultimatum
• Hurik: Madeira's servant

Awards & Retribution

Poison Ring (gold/20kt amber) -42gm

Notes
Notes here.