Closed [Borhnn & GoldWoerth] Long Nights and Broken Bones (Opalla)

[Vel]

1st Winter, 512 AV


Vel stared at the candle's dancing flame. In his life he had read a great many texts that claimed the human soul was akin to such a flame, and he used to think the visual was glorious and beautiful; however, after several hundred years of unlife, Vel has found the notion rather comical and lacking. Sure a candle's flame only last a few hours, maybe a few days if it was well made, and in that respect it accurately depicted how short and quick a human's life was snuffed out. Then again, the fire also represented passion, desire, and its light gave the notion of a bright intellect, which Vel could tell from experience that humans, while clever in their own right, were by no means exceptionally bright as a whole. The candle flame danced and consumed the wax, and Vel simply watched as the candle neared the end of its existance. He pondered the futility of human life, the constant struggle they went through every day to find food, shelter, companionship...all for what? A sudden unexpected ending that left nothing but sadness and despair rippling through the lives of those the mortal claimed to love? Vel chortled and snuffed out the flame by pinching it with forefinger and thumb.

So fragile.

The nuit stood and walked over to the simple mirror that graced his wall. His eyes traced the wrinkles and folds of skin this body possessed. It had been the body of an elder, some derelict who lived on the streets. The body had been weak, which is why Vel was able to overpower the drunkard and proceed with the process. After ward the nuit had regretted his choice, for the man's alcohol destroyed brain was in agony for days after the process, a sensation the Nuit clearly remembered as a headache, and one he had never once missed; however, with one thing and another, the remaining fragments of the old codger faded and with them the headache. Idily he wondered if the old man had a family...such a concept the nuit had long forgotten about. To him, family was nothing more than a word, a definition, and a long past memory. A family always came with a name, and according to the documents this man had folded up in his clothes, which Vel quickly incinerated after the change, as they were disgustingly filthy and just unexceptable for a decent society, was Gregor Illanvich. Such a name meant something to someone, where-ever they might be, but Vel did not like the way the named flowed, much too harsh and...barbaric. So, Vel, in a rather quirky fashion he has developed over the years, decided on the name Vellus for the body. He really was not sure where the his habbit of keeping the syllable Vel in each of his bodies' names came from, but it was something he had always done. Maybe his original name was Vel? Or perhaps he had read the name in a book long ago and adopted it as a moniker in place of his old name? Maybe it had been given to him but a loved one when he was still warm...after a few hundred years it no longer mattered. All he knew is that Vel was the name he called himself, the soul that inhabited this decaying corpse, and he named his bodies after his soul. It only seemed right, as his soul, just like the syllable Vel, existed in the body-in this case, Vellus.

Beneath the mirror on a peg in the wall, was a simple black cloak. He hefted the garment and twirled it above his head, letting it expertly land upon his shoulders. Held together by a simple, silver clasp in front, the Nuit tightened the cloak, and pulled the hood up over his wrinkled face. Dropping his head a bit, he gave himself the appearance of an elderly limp, though he had no such handicap. Living as an undead in a world of life was all about appearances, and even though a majority of the world would never pick up on the subtleties that could give away a human from an Inarta, or a Drykas from a Vantha, it did not mean that subconsciously people were unable to tell. The subconscious was a powerful thing, and Vel had to fool it for fear of being discovered as a nuit. It was by no means a widely accepted form of being, so the Nuit had to adapt and pretend. Never be fooled though, for Vel hated this life of acting and pretending to be one of the living. Forcing himself to eat or drink to fit in with society, forcing his chest to rise and fall to give some semblance of breathing, and going home late at night to pretend to sleep. That was the most irritating to Vel, having to go home and lock himself away so that the rest of the citizens in the port city believed him asleep. He would sit up at night and read, or write, thinking about problems and coming up with solutions. Without much of a formal lab, there weren't many tests he could run at his cottage, and the lack of productivity is what truly got to him. How was he supposed to make any headway on his project if he was trapped in this pseudo-life routine?! He felt a rage bubbling within him, and not wanting to stay locked in his room with nothing but his emotions and time, he pushed open his door and began his walk towards Bohrnn & GoldWoerth. The sun had just begun to rise over the horizon, and a cold wind bit through the streets. Not the Vellus really seemed to notice, but he pulled his cloak tighter anyway.

He worked for Bohrnn & GoldWoerth...or rather, he was a partner with them. They provided him with a place to work, and some resources, and he worked under them towards a similar goal, to make the world a better and more advanced place, one that allowed even a simple man to do great things without the use of magic...that was the theory anyway. Honestly, Vellus just wanted a place to work so he could develop a perfect body for a Nuit. A host that never decayed, a body that was stronger than flesh, that could weather all elements with ease...that is what he envisioned...and if Bohrnn & GoldWoerth wanted to stamp a label on it and profit off of it, then who was a lone Nuit to tell them no? It was a win-win situation, or at least for now. Things always changed, and Vellus expected something to arise sooner or later, but for now all he was focused on was the work.

It didn't take him long to arrive at the building, and without hesitation he took out his key, being a partner and not a regular employee gave him several benefits. He pushed into the quiet building and locked the door behind him, no one else would arrive for another few bells, and it would be nice to have the place to himself while he worked. With deliberate strides, he moved to the area of the workshop that had been quartered off for his personal workspace. The area was kept neat and organized, and on a table in the middle of the area was a skeleton...or rather what used to be a skeleton. The bones had been broken apart and strewn about the table. Close to the bones sat a journal and writing stick, inside the book was filled with measurements and calculations of weight and mass. The body he was working on was a replacement for a human body, and Vel wanted to make sure it was the same overall size and shape. He had a few theories that the body needed to be as close to human shape as possible for it to work. That theory came from a unique syndrom called 'phantom limb.' It was when a person had a limb amputated, but could still feel as though that limb was still there. They would report itching, twitching, and a feeling of 'pins and needles' in the missing limb. Vellus had some theories about the situation, and how it pertained to Nuits, though it would be difficult to test without a subject that wanted to get their arms cut off...which was suprisinly rare to find.

Vellus picked up the marking stick and the journal and started a new entry for the first of winter. He had work to do, after all, the bones weren't going to mesaure and weigh themselves

[Opalla]

The axis seemed to be bent, not by much but just enough so it wouldn't work. It had to be the secondary helical gear, must be. It had been two days always running down the same routine. Disassembling the configuration, figuring out what was off axis, reassembling it into the new configuration, running tests, failing. Failing again. But it had to be the damned gear, must be! Mustn't it? Opalla inspected her creation.

The configuration, although simple in concept, had nothing that would resemble such word in it's mechanical manifestation. What had started to be just a torc accumulation spring discharging rotary moment to a set of helical gear set that would make a pair of silk wings flap. Had become a complex 8 phase cycled process in which a battery of axis turned to give motion to a complex array of framed levers that ultimately aloud a 4 wings set to flip and lift off. But unfortunately after a single cycle Opalla would heard a clic and the 3 inches gadget would crash back onto her working desk. Something was still off! Dragonflies don't land like that... she thought to herself. But no matter what she did, how she would rearrange the gear configuration, after a full cycle one of the axis would bend and desynchronise the wings motion.

It was late, nearly too late. No! Definitely too late to be late anymore, it was already too soon to be up. Soon the sun would be up. There was no point going home now between the half hour she needed to get to the Worlds End Grotto and the hour she was expected to be at work she would only be able to sleep maybe 4 hours at best. She would sleep right here, she decided, and closed her eyes landing her head over her folded arms. In no time she was asleep.

She was home. It was spring, late spring she could tell by the blue butterflies flying across the grassy mountain steps of Sultros. All her childhood friends were there they were running on the grass and so was she. Her master was there as well, although not running. He was talking to some other great lord about some highly important business she would never know about. Gesturing wide and slow movements in the direction of the great lake before them. She stopped and looked down. Before she actually saw it, she already knew what she would see. This is no dream she thought it's a memory! And there it was, the dragonfly! Fluctuating weightlessly in mid air, flapping its wings faster than she could see. But she did see the expanding and retracting motion of the torso every second an expansion and retraction. "That's how you do it then! You're releasing accumulated tension avoiding lesions!" Tomph!

She wide open her eyes startled. The def sound of the door closing on the floor below had teared her out of her dreaming numbness. "I must have overslept! They're coming already!" She then noticed her gadget half assembled on her desktop. As soon as the bosses arrived she would be dragged onto B&G's projects through out the whole day, so if she wanted to try it out she would need to do it now.

She was going to need a counter and that meant an extra array of axis and gear sets and an escapement. She pulled the tiny pieces from the right most drawer and assembled them in matter of seconds. Now a sliding frame set, there were several dozens of those scattered across her desk from all the previous adaptations she had done on her gadget. Assemble the adaptations, readjust the axis incorporating the escapement counter, reposition the levers, fix everything in place, replace the torc spring for a full charged on. Test it!

As soon as Opalla pulled the pin that started the machine it flapped wings exactly like the dragonflies from her childhood in Sultros. The small gadget crossed the whole upper floor in spirals, flying over the desks and drawing tables taking turn almost instinctively thanks to the air driven helm she had incorporated not a day ago that allowed it to avoid any surface that could impinge with it. The dragonfly circled back and flew over her head in direction to the stairs. "No, no, no!" she whispered, "No one can see you!" She jumped onto her feet and flash sprinted down the stairs after it.

The damned thing decided to back to the elliptical spiralling trajectory and kept flying downwards towards the workshops bellow. The large room was dark, too dark for Opalla to keep track of the steps. She fell down with a huge swash. Thankfully it was the last step so she was glad to get herself back on her feet without much damage. Being half Isurian had it's perks and her eyes soon adapted to the dim light. But light shouldn't be dim down here! At this hour there shouldn't be any light at all here! Only now she recalled that someone had arrived a while ago, and there there was the source of the light. Across the great room escaping through the fringes of slightly opened door. "Oh no!" she gasped a lot louder than she would have wished to, her dragonfly had just crossed into the other side of the door casting it's shadows on the great eastern walls of the great division.

[Vel]

Vellus closed the journal with a snap, and set the book aside along with his writing utensil. He had finished the last of the measurments, and that meant he was yet another step closer to beginning development on his perfect body. The nuit sighed, an archaic reflex from a long since past life, as he looked over the bones strewn around the desk, and some on a shelf. They had served their purpose for now, and it was time to put them away. Slowly, and methodically, Vellus lifted each bone, and placed it in a large, coffin-shaped box that sat near the corner of his work area. There was no mistaking the casket for what it was, and it always drew strange looks from visitors in the lab, though most just shurgged it off as being part of an experiment. They were half right, it was indeed part of a larger picture, but most of them didn't know from whence it came, and Vellus would remain silent on such a subject. They didn't need to know, and he didn't need to tell. With trained and expert motions, Vellus laid each bone in the coffin like a child would lay a puzzle they knew only too well. Each bone fell into place, and slowly, the humanoid form of some long dead man laid in the box. Vellus closed the box and placed a hand on the lid, in a rather strange fashion that should Vellus had been seen by anyone, they would swear the man had an emotional attachment to the box.

Then he was struck with a sudden realization.

The skeleton that was now seperated from him by several inches of wood and lacquer was that of a human male...at it was the fact it was a male that made Vellus think...what about a female's skeleton? What measurements would that yeild? Surely it would be different, after all the basic anatomy was different, who is to say that the skeleton isn't different to accomodate said anatomy...His mind began to race, filled with theories, questions, and enigmas that the difference between male and female could provide to his research...but where to get a female skeleton? He could always go into the graveyard with a shovel...No...no. He banished the thought from his mind, that would be much to obvious and cause suspicion and possible anger from a great many people. Instead he would need to talk with the other inventors and brilliant minds about how to get ahold of a female skeleton...

A sudden movement in the air and tiny bit of noise behind him drew his attention, turning away from the box, Vellus saw nothing in the lab in the dancing candle light that illumated the area, but not seeing anything and nothing being there were two very seperate things; however, fear was not an emotion Vellus was tied to any longer. Fear was more than a frame of mind, it was physical: increased heart beat, labored breathing, sweating, shaking, and mental distress. Undeath robbed one of most of those functions, and without those, fear was nothing more than a word to describe a lesser species.

The Nuit moved to his desk, and peered back into the darkness, and if he had willed to think it, he would have sworn the darkness peered back. He was about to offer out a greeting in the shadowy shop when a little metal object landed on the desk before him with all the grace and poise of a dragonfly, and upon closer examination, Vellus was able to confirm that it was indeed a dragonfly, though one made of clockwork and metal and not organic tissue. Delicately and with a steady hand that can only be obtained through years of practice, and a rather nasty bought of rigor mortis. It left his reflexs a bit slower in this body, but it blessed him with a steady hand. Bringing the mechanical insect to his eye, Vellus examined the automata and it brought a smile to his face, though the expression did not appear warm, just...there. Kind of like the smile on a doll.

The machine was well built, at least in theory. It had to have been put together in a rush, but that wasn't to say it was bad, in fact it was rather impressive.

"How did you not crash little friend?" Vellus asked, as he examined the mechanical insect. It was impressive that the dragonfly landed on his desk and didn't crash, but how that was achieved is what interested him. He set down the automata, and walked over to a near-by shelf where there was a display of some kind protected by a dome of glass. He removed the dome and went back to the desk. With one hand, he wound up the dragon fly, and quickly placed the glass dome over it and watched as it hovered around, avoiding the sides of its glass prison. Still he was unable to determine how it avoided ramming into the glass and collapsing to the ground.

"Very interesting..."