Chill of Lingering Truths
From Flight From Darkness
Contents |
Chill of Lingering Truths
Chill of Lingering Truths is either an individual worker or small crew chief in the Technical Corps, depending on whether you count her builder bug minions. She casts spells to restore small magitech components when she can, but mostly relies on her artifacts to be useful.
Appearance
Physically, she has a rather soft, high voice, veins darkly tinted with green, and blue nails that naturally come to a narrow point, the remnants of a broken spell. Her dark brown hair and modestly attractive features don't rate as much attention.
Personality
Chill's view on life has been shattered by lies more than once, and the Scarlet Empress being a demon's bride was just one more. She's mildly optimistic, as her own life eventually improved each time, and likes to listen to people talk, even if they're just complaining about work. She's just about incapable of effectively deceiving people; even when has the urge, she's just that bad at it.
She might seem fairly generous to others, even modestly friendly acquaintances often receive gifts of high quality paintings and simple tools. She does give them away to make people happier, but in truth, she just doesn't put much value on them.
History
Shattered Frozen Lies was a burden. When she was born, their tribe had recently lost most of their animals and all but two of their sleds, and she never recovered full use of her left foot after an early bout of frostbite. She was told otherwise, but it was the first of the shattered lies that earned a young girl her name.
When the Eastern man came, and offered a good deal for her services, she had thought he wanted a wife, perhaps a concubine whose features were less familiar. Later, she realized he had gotten a good deal of amusement playing to that belief. In truth, he was Exalted --Anathema, as the dragons would have it-- and had hunted human forms so often in that way that he found it boring.
Still, he couldn't think of her as a burden; he spent weeks teaching her to read and write, and more showing her memory exercises, and that made her love him a little. When he offered to fix her foot, and make her more useful, she agreed without much thought. She didn't expect 'fix' to mean 'replace it and everything attached to it with an artist's strange dream'. Or that being more useful meant testing his theory on aspected essence interactions.
Still, she felt so much more powerful, spiritually and physically, that she didn't regret it. Or perhaps it was because it took so much effort to resist his lightest requests, and he'd asked her forgiveness with that sparkle in his eye... She did rename herself Chill of Lingering Truth. She didn't want to give destiny any more ideas.
Five years after he'd finished a compass that would point to his spirit, and developed a charm hiding himself from it, he gave her his final instructions. She was to seek out his next life, and maybe the next host of his Exaltation, and pass on his teaching. She was quite startled to awaken from enchanted sleep to see a swarm of people emptying her cache, with her being listed as 'library spirit, female, one', on their checklist.
Bits of Life Post Dream: A missed blow, intended to slay a wyld noble, broke the spell on Chill, returning her to a somewhat normal appearance and stripping away most of the abilities that came with the spell. The artifacts that were embedded in her wrists, however, were still there, so there was some expectation for her to work in maintenance and repair.
She hasn't really learned how to deal with lots of people after so long with one teacher, and then alone, particularly in formalized (calcified, her master's voice sneers in her mind's ear) situations, but talking with Prism, the (friendly?) if occasionally disjointed intellgence, and the child-like builder bugs she manages has eased her into basic functionality, and she's settled in to the Technical
Corps.
In the mean time, she spends a lot of time in the archives, studying geomantic theory and schematics. That's also where Dancing Prism has easy access to question her about manuals she memorized.
Even after four years, she hasn't really adapted to the sense of vulnerability that being human again gives her. She isn't lame any more, but even the smaller things set her heart to racing. She compensates, but knows perfectly well that it is resolve, rather than courage, that lets her continue.
She still prays, occasionally, to the gods of what she had been. Ivory Shadow Smith, of secret arsenals. Luxana, of recorded knowledge. Likely one or the other caused her to be taken in the first place. Others, left behind in Creation, she refrains from out of duty. Under the demons shackles, they might be forced to report any prayers she might send them. She does not say a great deal in the prayers, nor do it particularly well.
Her refuge and hobby is painting. The bugs can easily produce plaques of any color, and her brush inks to work with them. Between her skills, and the aid of tiny essence structures, she can usually manage exceptional work, and occasionally she finds herself unable to find any flaws. She doesn't sell them, acquaintances simply receive them as small gifts to 'improve the essence flow' of their quarters.
She spends some of her idle time with the Dreamers, where the language feels more like home. They treat her more as a (very) distant cousin than an outsider. Things might be warmer, if she were more social. It probably helps that she's as old as a grandmother, whatever her body might appear. Fortunately, she hasn't seen any of her nieces amongst the grandmothers. It would be... awkward.
