FADE RIFT [INBOX]

[shri]

ＬＡＤＹ ＬＡＫＳＨＭＩ
( Lady Lakshmi, Bai Saheba, Rani Lakshmibai )

ＶＯＩＣＥ | ＡＣＴＩＯＮ | ＮＯＴＥＳ

Unavaliable To All:

• 30mins around dawn
  
  Only to Voice:
  
• Hour training morning and evening
  
• Any time she's gone riding.
  
• When she's in the field.
  
  Only to Book:
  
• When she's otherwise in a meeting, leave a message.
  
• Very late at night or early in the morning.
  
  Other:
  
• She usually takes her morning meals in the mess hall with everyone else.
  
• Her days are usually spent in Kirkwall seeing to either her personal business or Inquisition tasks.
  
• She has a bath twice a day, every day.
  

Comments

[notched]

[ Now we'll never be friends. ]

I may. Or I may merely go mad, already my eyes are rotting. It is the first signs of the blood-drunk.

[ She exhales tiredly. ]

The Hunter of Hunters is not here to stop me. Not all of us turn, but enough of us. Hunters and clerics, we're the worst of it. The finest beasts.

[shri]

[ NEVER!!! ]

You are what we would call a pureblood then. Someone who is born this way?

[notched]

No.

[ Softly, sadly. ]

It is from my life in Yharnam. They use a special blood to heal, that is why I went when I was young-- blood to heal my sister. Instead I stayed, and joined the Hunt. The beasts were fewer then, it wasn't so obvious-- that it was the blood.

[shri]

[ The next most important question. ]

Can you turn others with this... blood?

[ She thinks of one particular thing. The blackwater. But no, that was her blood, changed. No longer blood inside the phial, inside of her. ]

[notched]

No, mine isn't pure enough. What I have in vials is only enough to hurt myself.

[ She pauses. ]

But I am afraid what would happen-- if any of these mages had their hands upon it.

[shri]

[ There's a soft, long, breath.

Oh, yes. There is a problem here, isn't there? ]

Have you told our Commanders?

[notched]

Can I trust them?

[ Even if Lakshmi were to say yes, Anna is too reserved in this to simply believe her. But she does, at least, trust Lakshmi with this. ]

I will run out, sooner than later. There are only fourteen now.

[shri]

Trust has little to do with it. They need to be able to make plans if the worst should happen.

[ She breathes. Slowly. Trying to make sense of this in pieces. ]

But what about the blood in your body? Is it still... changed?

[notched]

Or they take my vials, thinking they know better than poor accursed Yharnam.

[ No real rebuke to the tone, it's a statement. She has heard enough history to know Thedas is no better, that the same ugliness runs through their veins. What was this continuing war, if not that. ]

I am human. I am not vileblood. I am not beast. I am not kin.

[ This is almost a prayer. Something she holds shivering to in the darkest uncertainties of the Hunt. ]

I am still human.

[shri]

[ That at least, is a statement she is ready to quiet. ] No, they will not think they can do better. They will just kill you. If you've not noticed, they've quite the different opinion about any kind of magic, any kind, stemming from blood.

[ She breathes on the thought. It's a lot. It's more than a lot. She doesn't not think Anna told her this simply to make idle conversation. Because she fancied revealing this sort of truth to someone who she had seen hunt monsters like that because she wanted idle chanter. ]

For how much longer will you remain so?

[notched]

[ There is always someone, who dreams too much about what powers can be obtained. But she'll take what's been said to her and contemplate upon it. ]

Until my mind breaks. The only reason it hasn't is because I am a coward. I ran away from what I saw. I went back to Yharnam and I killed... night after night, every beast. To remind myself I was not one of them.

[ Drenched herself in their stinking blood. Drank and drank and drank on blood-tinged air. ]

I can't go backwards. And I can't go forwards.

[shri]

[ Tap, tap, tap goes Lakshmi's nails on the desk on her end. A shuffling, scrapping of a quill against paper that fills up that long silence as she goes. ]

Alright. So what do we do about it? What warning signs do I look out for?

[notched]

[ She knows the signs. How many hunters has she watched go down this road... ]

Early on, our eyes occlude. The pupils collapse, and rot out. Many of us bandage it, carry on. The mind is next-- aggressive and irrational, losing track of friend and foe. Always on the Hunt.

[ Her aggression comes and goes. ]

We start to see beasts everywhere, in everyone. We forget who we are, the names of those we know and love. And then... it doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is blood.

[shri]

[ There is more scratching - because even if no one else might, she takes this very seriously.

In some ways - it is familiar. The Knights, their isolation. Being removed and only seeing the worse. She has seen what happens when they stop caring like they should. How they no longer want to be able to tell the difference, and how easily that disdain had been twisted.

But more readily than that, she has seen what happens to old soldiers. That begin to see a battlefield in everything. That spends so long fighting, they don't think to raise a hand to their children and wives where they never would have before, who scream in their sleep about the things they've seen and done.

Lakshmi is not different, to any of them. ]

Aggression. [ A pause, the quill stops. ] A battle-field sort of rage that will lash out suddenly? Or just a growing ire?

[notched]

Both, but the blood lust is more dangerous.

[ She should report that she was overcome with it for a time at Ghislain, had been snappish and violent when ordered to retreat. Her own memory of that, however, is hazy. She remembers the aftermath of the battle more clearly: cheerful and heady on blood. ]

[shri]

[ more writing, more silence whilst she does so. ]

Apart from the eyes, will anything else begin to manifest in your body?

[notched]

Not until it's too late.

[shri]

[ A hum. ]

So from the moment your eyes go, I must be on guard for more intimate changes?

[notched]

[ She hadn't thought of it that way, and something in that is painful. ]

Yes. It's quite--

[ More than an inconvenience, that doesn't even begin to cover it. ]

I'm sorry.

[shri]

[ And probably more reasonably than anyone would expect of her. ]

For what?

[notched]

For putting it on you. When I could resolve it myself. I don't... I don't want to die yet. I'm sorry.

[shri]

[ Lakshmi cuts that off with a soft murmur. ]

If I have ire for anyone in truth, it's those that don't acknowledge the hurt they could cause. Never be sorry for taking responsibility for yourself.

[ She wets her lip. Yet. That was difficult, and the drumming returns. ]

But that does leave a question. When the time comes. Would you prefer me to dispatch you?

cw: more overtly that suicide...

[notched]

Please. I don't want... Yharnam's wrongdoings to cause any harm here.

[ She exhales heavily. She doesn't really feel unburdened, at all. ]

If I've the mind to see it, I will be my own keeper. But every hunter I've seen has had no inkling-- when it had gone too far.

[shri]

So I will have to fight you towards the end then?

[notched]

Or you will be very precise and very quick.

[ There's almost a pleasant note in this, as though she has very precisely and very quickly killed plenty enough beasts herself. ]