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Kasiope al-Fumar; Brahmin Ravnos
Topic Started: Oct 13 2014, 05:25 AM (628 Views)
Kasiope
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Name: Kasiope bint Hippomudada bin Ottah al-Fumar (Daughter of the Horsebreeder, Son of the Third Born, of the Family Fumar). Also known as, “The Burning Woman.” Has recently assumed the identity of a French-Sicilian Brujah by the name of Lethia Delacroix.

Gender: Female

Nature: Autist

Demeanor: Chameleon

Age at Embrace: 27

Date of Embrace: 406 CE

Years since Embrace: 824

Place of Birth: Alexandria, Egypt

Religion: Cult of the Sacred Mouth




Clan/Bloodline: Ravnos (Brahmin)

Disciplines: Chimerstry (5), Animalism (3), Potence (2), Auspex (1), Vicissitude (1)

Road: Mayaparisatya




Merits: Eat Food, Alternate Identity 2, Pretender to the Blood, Hidden Amaranth, Oracular Ability, Sanctifying Kiss
Flaws: Permanent Wound, Flesh Eater, Beast in the Mirror 2, Uncanny




Appearance: Kasiope wears sinewy thighs attached to boyish hips and taut arms to a lean torso, whereupon rest high breasts you could obscure completely in the palm of your hand. Her skin is of radiant olive, her hair thick, black and straight as a whip, bone structure fine. Her mouth is lush but serious, a slim nose giving the immediate impression that she is imperial. Her eyes are the color of jade in shadow. As a mortal, those eyes gave the impression of a psychic inlet, and strangers felt drawn to her, compelled to unburden at her feet in a way that they uniformly denied themselves. Later, her jaw, throat, and shoulder are burnt in a way that forever wrinkles and pales the flesh. Her entire body has been needled in mystical hieroglyphics, which migrate and speak of the mysteries—the mysteries of meaning and being, of destiny, of the Universe. It is at that time that her eyes darken further, and although they still harbor those whirlpools of empathy, it is no longer a body in which any stranger would feel safe swimming.

Soon, she plots to don the visage of a stranger, a Brujah befriended and murdered in France. Although they shared some traits—height, complexion, hair color—to adapt this visage will require the tutelage of a Tzimisce currently residing in the township of Estheim. Lethia's hair, though also black, was much thinner with curl. Her thighs were thick, breasts heavy. The face was not as pretty, nor as damaged, but appeared honest. Kasiope only wishes to keep her own eyes; somewhat superstitious as to what may happen if she lets them go.

Personality: Her defining quality is the urge to create and destroy, though her detractors may gesture to the body count she has left in her wake and question its creativity. Admittedly, she had a small collapse of her own when Rome fell, and lost her way for a century or three. But more than anything else, she wants to connect—with the vibrant tragedy that is mortality, with the sacred beasts that are vampire, and with the will of the cosmos as a whole. Sometimes she can wax poetic about a heart—the concrete organ, not the abstract notion—but that doesn't particularly qualify as “creative.” Kasiope would disagree, reassuring the corpse that enlightenment can be brutal, and sometimes we become the most present in times of loss. She chooses her victims carefully, but does not consider them to be victims. Aside from this paradox of savage tenderness, other important characteristics would be her keen eye, an enduring respect for the pagan sphere of elements and stars, and solemnity. She is able to shirk her solemnity when the situation calls for something else, responsive and malleable to what she perceives as needed. Because of her period of notoriety, however, she now holds all the world at arm's length. Although it would require a Cainite historian to recognize her six hundred years after the fact, the distinct burn and tattoos negate its impossibility, and if she were to be discovered—she has no doubt she'd be driven from one town to the next until murdered. In order to pursue her destiny—the enlightenment of all things living and dead—her delve into the soul, however deep, is always brief. In the moments that a falcon flies from her, or the dance of the constellations is particularly moving, she may feel a pang of loneliness. But this only fortifies her walls.

History:

Kasiope was an easy pregnancy. There were babies that came in times of strife and discord, and these bore mutinous children. But Kasiope had been, unlike perhaps every other of her siblings, conceived accidentally, in the moments between the spontaneous realization that we were alone and the sudden shrieks and footfalls of playful children approaching. Born sixth in a line of sisters, each more vain and petty than the last, I perhaps could have mothered her with less frustration had I known that I would become pregnant again in three years time with Weshptah, my only son. I made the mistake of assuming Kasiope an idiot, because she sat mute while her sisters snapped and bolted all around her. This misjudgment dissolved during a voracious thunderstorm, when one of our foals had escaped the pen and Hippomudada had gone out into the madness to wrangle her, having not touched his supper. Now the world outside our walls had grown black, gnarled with lightning, and the winds moaned in hunger. I kept my nervousness pinned up, stroking the infant Weshptah with an absent mind, and calling for the girls to retire. One by one they trundled by, all with naught to say but a complaint or a request, but when Kasiope passed, she alone peered up at me as if I was more than receptacle or distribution. She buried her fists in my skirt and peered up at me with those eyes like quiet forest. “Believe he'll come home,” she said, “and he'll come home.” I immediately regretted the tone with which I had always spoken to her. Hippomudada did return neigh dawn, soaked through with blood as well as rain, to tell me that the foal had been killed, but that he had the meat of a crocodile bound up in the wagon, cleaned and ready to be salted.

There was high feminine energy about the hearth at all times, and Kasiope seemed, even more than I, an administrator amid the fury. While her incorrigible sisters fretted over lost jewelry, stolen plaits, idle rumors of romances not even their own, only Kasiope could recall the duties of the day with some sense of urgency. I do not believe that this was a natural trait of hers, because she did not play domestic games, did not truly care for order as I did. Rather, she was a watcher, a student of the world, and knew that these chores were important to me. When there finally remained no needs to be met, she'd assume a dreamy countenance and sequester herself in the garden. This was her nature. I confess that by the time she was ten, she was being shown small acts of favoritism. Nothing the other children could hope to notice, but if we had time for leisure, I would take the family to the Royal Library, because I knew that it was her favorite place in the city. While her sisters all moaned like cows and begged to be taken shopping, Kasiope and I could take in a lecture or traverse the zoo. She understood intellectual curiosity. She understood dreaming, wanting more.

I had soaring hopes for her future marriage, as she grew evermore beautiful, paired with such desirous personality traits for a partner to have. I've never spoken directly of any dissatisfaction in my station—the wife of a horsebreeder, daughter of a charioteer—fortunate enough to live on the outskirts of the greatest city in the world, knowing that even in times of depression, people will need horses. I dared to wish, though, for something greater in my daughter's future. Dare I wish even for a vizier? For a chamber in the palace? I suppose, perhaps, she wouldn't have wanted for herself the things I wanted for her—the gold, the status, a servant or two of her own. But I didn't realize such things until it was too late, and, betrothed to the man of my dreams, she disappeared into the night. Ironically, in her girlhood, I seldom allowed Kasiope to travel out of my sight. There were occasional sojourns to the riverfront, and once I noticed a strange man there, bearing the enchanted tattoos of gods and demons. Perhaps it was only the shrewdness of a mother gone too far, but I believed him to be watching her, and felt an intuition steal down my spine. That this would be the devil to steal my daughter away. His countenance was bald, pinched and weathered as a vulture. I watched her meditating on the sun-bleached rocks, watched her snatching beetles from the air and releasing them again, and watched him watching her too. I called her back to me and we hurried home.

When Kasiope was eleven, the Royal Library was set ablaze in the night. Even from our plot, we could see the flickering haze cast against the sky. Of course, at the time, we did not know what was happening. We could not see which building was burning. But Kasiope sat by the window and wept. “I can hear them screaming,” she said. “The monkeys are trapped in their cages.”

-Hent bint Raia bin Pamiu al-Fumar, mother.

I met Kasiope when she was twelve, and I thirteen. My father, a metalsmith, relocated the entire family in search of heavier traffic for his business. He said that it would benefit all of us, supposedly. My mother would have more customers for her beading, my brother would attend a better school, and I would have a wider selection of suitors, of course. My name is Ta-Opet, and I have given my life in service to the goddess. I have no regrets.

I have only perhaps one regret.

Kasi and I were soul-sisters from the moment we met. I had never cared much for other people, who all seemed so desperate and shallow, always wanting something, but there was timelessness and eternal presence in Kasi. Other people—they looked at me, and they saw a sultry mouth, nubile figure. Women resented it, and men lusted. But Kasi would look at me and see me. She'd see the wellsprings of my own desperation that the rest of the world overlooked at its convenience. We were inseparable. Kasi used my home to escape from her tyrannical older sisters, who had all become nightmares of puberty, and I used her like a poem or a song. I hope we used each other mutually, and that neither were given an unfair portion of the other, but I don't know. “I wish I could run away sometimes,” Kasi whispered, and my hand slithered to hers and squeezed. In and out through the window, and sleep as blissful as twins in the womb. There were times, even, that she'd risk a beating to see me. (Her mother eventually got jealous, or suspicious, and started restricting our time.) She once disappeared for a week, during which I found it odd how passionately I missed her, and reappeared at my door later, wearing the rouge of a bruise in its final stage. Like a busted egg was under her cheek and smiling, she invited me to the riverfront under her father's chaperone.

“Oh, don't look up, here he comes,” I murmured, blushing and glaring at the ground. I was fifteen at the time, and men were constantly accosting me. This one had been staring at us since our arrival.

“What?” Kasi asked, looking exactly in the direction I had said to not. The bald old man was approaching, and I was loathe to hear whatever presentation he'd cobbled together for the two young girls. It was disgusting. He could be our grandfather.

“I've seen you here before,” the old man said from behind me. “My name is Nehemekhat.”

“We are accompanied by my father, if you'd like to speak to him,” Kasi replied. I suddenly felt like the younger one. She took my arm. “She's here with me.”

“You are the one with whom I wish to speak,” the old man went on. “You, what is your name?”

“Kasiope.” I looked at her, but she was looking at him. I looked at him too and realized: his myriad tattoos crept along his skin. But Kasi was not afraid. “Why are you watching us?”

“I'm watching you,” he corrected her. I tightened my arm around hers and pulled her away with me, toward her waiting father. “I'll wait,” he said, and I shuddered.

Suitors began as an amusement to us both, an oddity, an anecdote at which to smirk. Then they became an annoyance, and the swath of bachelors continued to thicken. It became less and less funny. I suppose a point came when I was tired of the pageantry, and didn't see a way out. What was I supposed to do, work? At what, and how to survive on it? And how could I explain the decision to my parents, who applied more pressure every day, who went on and on about me, receiving wine from this merchant or a ream of silk from that? Inviting strange men to dinner and trotting me out like a fat breeding mare? It was at this time of utmost panic, in my eighteenth year, that the old man from the riverbank saw me again, now in the town square. Nehemekhat. This time I was alone, my mother selling beading down the street.

“I've been watching you too,” he said. “It's hard not to see such pain.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You don't have a place in this world. Not the place you've been afforded. The bride. The prize. The breeding mare?”

I shot him a look. “What are you saying?” I snapped. How could he know?

“I can offer you a way out. A sacred sisterhood. A secret temple.” Against my better judgment, I allowed him to escort me to this place: a palatial churchyard which I had never crossed. “Welcome, my dear,” he said, bowing, “to the Cult of the Sacred Mouth.”

Kasi did not take the news well. At all.

“How can you?” she demanded. I could see the way she was breathing, and my own lungs felt too small. “How could you—”

“What would you rather, Kasi?” I said. “What would you rather me do?”

Her hands were in her hair and her eyes, thankfully, trained to the ground. I couldn't stand them on me. “It's not a real priesthood, Ta-Opet!” Rage and tears in her voice. “They're whores!”

“You didn't see,” I told her. “You don't know.” I stood and tried to be cold, immovable, but looked at her and failed. “Come with me.”

She barked with laughter. “No, I can't,” she said. Her hard voice trembled and she didn't look at me. “It would kill me. To see . . . to see . . . Love isn't something you share with the whole world.”

“But it is,” I said. I tried to take her hand, to lace our fingers as they had been so many times before, but she wrenched away. “They're sisters, just like us! They all live together, and share everything. You should see it. The wine flows, the laughter booms.” She was looking at me, just barely, as if trying to glimpse the sun without burning her eyes. I knew she was starting to crack open to me. “They meditate like we do; they understand the magical undertow that runs through sex.” She snapped shut and turned to retreat. “They're happy! Happier than some old matron, pumping out sons for a stranger! Happier than the product of a business deal! Trapped! I'm trapped, Kasi!” I shouted at her back.

I hoped, I don't know, that perhaps she would come and say goodbye, but she didn't. The road between our homes stayed silent and empty until I left with Nehemekhat. The next time I saw her would be my last.

-Ta-Opet bint Mahu bin Pepy-Nakht al-Rahotep, best friend, first love.

It takes long years to be accepted into the deeper folds. Some have waited half their lifetime. My initiation and apprenticeship were complete in three years, and that was swift. I had ascended in the ranks of the secret school, to the level of a high priest, and rarely abandoned my chambers for the vulgar assaults of daylight. I had become something of a recluse and scholar, only venturing above ground at night or on the occasion that I was prompted by the whisper of some spirit. For example, I was led to the Nile thrice in quest for a recruit, and not because the Cult of the Sacred Mouth need hang open and catch flies, but because I had been having dreams of a goddess on that beach, and knew that they were messages. A beautiful woman with face black as coal would approach me, both of us alone, a full moon blazing behind her. She'd bear a knot of hair in one hand and a sickle in the other. We would battle, and at the end of every battle, she would bless me with a strangely red kiss and say, “One who fears death is dead already.” These were the words of Zarathustra in her mouth. I knew that something both great and terrible awaited me on those shores.

In each voyage I took from the temple to the Nile, the sole fixture would be this young girl. At first, she was far too young to approach. I could only vaguely ascertain her gender. She was gathering beetles. Beetles are messengers, of course—emanations from the divine mouth of God, alerting the adept to pay attention. I noted this, but had to wait.

When I saw her again, some six or seven years later, she was accompanied by the miserable and beautiful Ta-Opet, the one who came to rejoice forever in those fleeting moments of inspiration—when we are breathed in to the mouth of God and are, for that breath, One. This time, the girl—Kasiope—strolled into the sun, and it sank to silhouette her head like a halo, as each angelic incarnation has been portrayed through history. It was too much to deny, though I should have known it was still too soon. She was too young, and there had been no third sign. I was eager and approached, chasing her away.

But then, as a fourth year passed, I awoke harassed in the night, called by the dream goddess again to return to the Nile. Her pursuit of me had been relentless and undeniable, though it was unlikely Kasiope would be on the shores, and so I did not even hope to find her. The Nile of the night is a place only for the suicidal to tread. But I have learned from the Sacred Mouth to trust my instinct, and that, should death harken, it would be cosmic will. I would be a liar if I did not confess that the primary aim of the Sacred Mouth priesthood is—although we do observe the planets, their effects on plants and minerals and so on, this is but a means—to live eternally.

She had grown immensely since last I saw her, and become a woman. In fact, as we neared one another—as if pulled together, our shadows advanced, and even in the dark, I knew it was her, had to wonder if she had known I would be here, too, if she had been hounded as well—I saw that she was the exact goddess from my dream, bearing in one hand a knot of black hair, a sickle in the other. Her face was streaked in cinder, symbol of the mourning of Isis. But her mouth was not red. As in the dream, she threw the hair into the sand and swung at me. I leapt back, but she continued to advance. I had taken her, she said. I had destroyed the only thing she'd ever loved. The sickle moved with savage grace, but it became evident she only wanted to scare me. If she had wanted to kill me, she could have. She said they were going to run away together—of course—but now, now, Kasiope found herself betrothed. With each swing, with each cry, she became more sloppy and weak. She had attracted the eye of an ardent official, a stranger, an acquaintance of her father, and he would spirit her away, into the palace, and her parents could not be more pleased. They were blinded by his gifts and could not see reason, could not hear plea. She was doomed, she cried, and as she swung the sickle again, I caught her wrist as easily as one could snatch in hand a broken-winged bird.

“Come with me,” I said.

She recoiled, eyes shimmering. “Never—never, you—”

“No, my child,” I said, wiping at her cheek. The soot smeared with tears. “The temple which has absorbed your friend is not the place I wish to take you. It is two temples of one name. The courtyard is sanctuary, a means of escape, but not for the level of growth of which you are capable. In you, I see the great potential of a true pupil. There is another temple—hidden, of course, beneath the first.”

I took her into the cavernous sanctum of the Sacred Mouth, and explained the study, the tests, the family of which she would be our sole sister. She came as all initiates must—with nothing on her back. For seven years, she lived as all faithful initiates did: closed away from the world, surrounded only by mystery plays of the cosmos, illustrative rituals of the development of consciousness. Fast, and meditation, and shamanic trance, unraveling scrolls that were thought lost, but which were only hidden. She bathed in the blood of the bull, drowned in the well of the snake, navigated the forked lair. Her hair was shorn, her body needled, papered in the mystical traditions, and she drank of the golden cup. I accepted her as my apprentice, but still had never seen her mouth red—still did not fully understand the dream.

-Nehemekhat, mentor.

It was at the disgrace of my clan that I traveled from the motherland in search of the Western mystery schools of which I had heard tell: cabals of ancient wisdom to rival that of our own yogis and rishis. Like so many of us claim, I felt drawn by forces of what I told myself was “the unknowable,” perhaps the magnetism of “God” itself—but what, in the clarity of death, I now see was merely my Beast's wanderlust. I have studied the ways of restraint, the path of the ascetic, and yet—I am so very weak. I have always loved the chase, the rapture of conquest, and women. I'd betray a brother for his drunken wife, brawl over the merest of prostitutes, follow enticing strangers through abandoned passageways. I prayed to overcome this disease of the flesh, and when I joined my jati as princely sacrifice, they warned that this impurity would become my liege, and my siege. Each inch I took was hard-won. This is the way of the Ravnos, though. This is the Path.

I had successfully withheld from these attacks of lust for over a century when I took my sojourn through the Roman Empire, where lay these remnants of underground philosophy now antagonized by the State. I employed all manner of deception to uncover such places, and found in North Africa a treasure trove of esoteric thought. Beneath the Sphinx, a brotherhood of alchemists. Within the Great Pyramid, a chamber of artifacts, Grail of Christ and loom of gold. And in Alexandria were whispers of a temple within a temple. What would, at first glance, be nothing but another divine tribute to the goddess of love, but through false walls and locks which doubled as puzzles one would find . . .

I was welcomed into the hidden bowels of the Cult by their priesthood, who recognized in me all that they sought: power, enlightenment, and most of all, immortality. The fools. They pierce the veil of illusion that is mortal existence. This is not enough. They seek consort with spirits—the very spirits who would ingest them. Peer into the abyss. Touch the famed River Styx. Perhaps once they had been teaching me their secrets for mine—but after I saw Kasiope, the terms changed. The Beast roared. I continued to sate them with lectures on the nature of maya, to fabricate and dispel ignis fatuus, to illustrate the chakras and how to clean and balance them, but my eyes were always on her. In truth, I delved into the mind of this student more than once, even fondled her possessions for a quick read. In the few days I spent among the Cult, I slid into and from her thoughts without so much as the stir of a drape. While her brothers sat with academic, distant interest, she alone held the very elements in her gaze. She alone wanted more—more secrets, more truth, in short: Oneness. She would fit perfectly into my infernal caste.

First, I took a few nights to prepare a test. There must always be trial. We cannot Embrace with abandon. I would need to see her threshold: for pain, for fire, for thirst. I organized all necessary “materials” in the deepest bowels of the temple: a dank amphitheater reserved for rites even they had forgotten. I admit, I was almost in a state of frenzy at this point, was poised to commit not one but three of the cardinal sins of my Path. Then I went to collect Kasiope from her chamber, which she kept, as is their custom, with her master, Nehemekhat.

I issued her an invitation which none of her ilk could refuse: a secret. I would reveal to her, and to her alone, my deepest: the gift itself. Not what, not why, but how. She seemed to know that there was more, more I was not telling her, and her warmth rescinded, her throat constricted as she moved to deny my advance—but then, glory of svadharma, Nehemekhat spoke. He demanded that he attend my private conference as well. At this, Kasiope relaxed and acquiesced. Though Nehemekhat, too, was dark with suspicion, I had to smile. It must truly have been svadharma, as destiny will always clear a path.

I led the apprentice and her master further into the tunnels of the school, down to that dank amphitheater lit only by our meager torches. I informed her that this ability was selective, but transmissible to the strong-willed and pure. That I saw such potential in her. Nehemekhat bristled, and I knew he waited only for the slightest misstep, but it was already too late. As I spoke, I absently conjured small trinkets of illusion, meant not only to fascinate and distract Nehemekhat, but to educate Kasiope. “You see, there is the first illusion, which only effects one sense.” I wove a bell into existence, prompting Kasiope to ring it. But her hand passed through. “And the second illusion, which can effect all the senses, but cannot move.” I touched the wall of the stairwell as we moved, transforming the rough stone into a vibrant but still landscape, a window into another world. “And apparition, the ability to create a moving illusion.” With that, the window melted off the wall, puddled at her feet, and vanished. “Next is an ability called permanency. It allows an illusion to exist without my supervision. And now,” I said, as we finally arrived at the amphitheater, “a test. A trial of worldly attachments.”

Rows of narrow stone steps flowed down to the shallow stone stage, where a thick aubergine mist floated in wait for us. I stepped down onto the stage, and with a swipe, unclouded the temple prostitute who so curiously twinkled through Kasiope's daydreams: Ta-Opet. She did not struggle. She did not move. She adopted only the mindless adoration of thrall to her countenance. “I know of your love for this woman. But on my path, there is no weight to the world. We must dissolve our shackles. Mortal love is a forgery, a misfiring of the one true ecstasy. In nirvana, you can possess nothing. All is let go.” I braced Ta-Opet's trusting face in my hands. “Do you agree with me, Kasiope? Can you let this woman—no, this idea of possession—go?”

If she had said no, would I have Embraced her? Probably. I was beyond my wits, the pomp little more than effect. But there was only a moment, a twist in her brow, and then she nodded. “Yes, I can,” she said, and I snapped Ta-Opet's neck. She collapsed, still smiling, at my feet. Then several things happened at once, some faster than others. Kasiope came running at me, but not to me. She ran to the fallen Ta-Opet, murmuring some words about illusion, just an illusion, which was an honest disappointment. She'd only allowed me to murder the whore because she hadn't believed it to be real. But then, she was already at my feet, so vulnerable, ready or not, and I snatched her up into my arms without much thought for jati or or svadharma or mayaparisatya; I bent her neck and sunk my teeth in with shamefully carnal relish. The mentor approached, but so slowly by comparison with the two of us. I flicked my wrist and sent a wave of blood surging around the room, a frothing, nightmarish moat, as I drained Kasiope.

“I know your ways, devil!” cried Nehemekhat, sweeping aside the vermilion vision. But I had already projected a crowd of identical phantoms to people the stage, all of them crushed into another Kasiope's neck, and Nehemekhat had no way of knowing which were the real pair. He batted through one couple, swung at another, as the final sweet notes of symphony flowed out from Kasiope and I dropped her, shuddering, cold.

I extended a hand toward Nehemekhat—and out of that hand unfurled a blue wisp, from the wisp emerging a knife, and from the knife blooming and tumbling roses. But the roses, like the knife, were illusion. The roses were warm, wet, and pouring out of Nehemekhat. I turned, stooped over the ashen Kasiope, and opened a wrist. When she lunged forth—wild-eyed as I'd never seen her—I crafted a golden goblet and put my arm around her. This goblet appeared to be brimming in rich, dark blood—but from the surface erupted emerald flame.

“The final layer of illusion which you will be granted is known as horrid reality,” I hissed. Perhaps in some small measure, out of shame at myself, resentment for her, I wished her to fail this test. “The fires you conjure will burn. The knives you conjure draw blood.” I offered her the goblet, and saw naught but animal thirst and terror dance together across her face. “Won't you have a drink?” I pushed the concoction against her mouth and saw the attempt, fear-bright eyes cringing with failure as she howled and thrashed from my hold. I had wanted to punish myself, but was too weak even for that, and so punished her. She found her mentor next, his open wound quite real, and while my bitterness ebbed, she drank. I suppose I began to feel better about the whole ordeal as I watched her gorge. When she finally raised her mouth, it'd turned an earthy shade of red which would never wipe away; not his blood but hers, forever weeping from the lips.

Of course, the lesson was not over. The lesson had only just begun.

We traveled together from that point forth—but could no longer practice alongside my Brahmin brotherhood. I took her East with promises of their transcendence, promise of the true Path, but this reckless Embrace had cost me my jati, branding us both Untouchable. From that moment, we moved together as hateful lovers do. All the velveteen textures I had observed inside her hardened to me. The chase: my true weakness. The pursuit of a retreat. Estranged from the people of my Path, I lost its way entirely and began the cycle of hedonism for which our Western counterpart was known. I stole for her—gold and jewels, silk robes, gowns, furs, anything. She turned her cheek. I called exotic birds and wild horses to her hand. She said I did not understand. Now that she was no longer mortal, I suppose that was true. My attempts to rummage inside her mind revealed only a flat colorless plane. I lied to her, too—that we would find another temple, that there were ways to reverse the edict, that there were fabled townships friendly to our kind. This struggle of unrequited frustration against her subtle hatred went on for decades. She stayed with me only because I could protect her, I could be her emissary, her tutor. Not only did she display a surprising lack of talent in the Ravnos disciplines, she could not change her skin. The migrating hieroglyphic tattoos and the scar marked her witch, or demon, and she was.

It was my idea to visit the wreckage and mayhem of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. For people such as us—or rather, people such as I had become—it was the perfect environment for looting and murder. As the Path does teach, after all, there is no permanent escape from the material. It is only a cyclical ascent and descent. And I had fallen hard. I had been blinded as well. Let Kasiope too close, become too comfortable with her quiet fury, too trusting of what was only dependency, not willing partnership. Ironic, in retrospect: I only wanted to get close to her, and somehow she had gotten inside me while remaining untouched.

While the palace of Romulus burned, while the peasants and soldiers frothed in riot, I called the armored horse of a barbarian to my side, hungry, intending to mount the mare and snatch a villager, when Kasiope said, “What you do is not so hard.” She raised a hand and the horse reared, lashing at me. I tipped back onto my heels. She raised the other hand and a wave of sand rolled, robbing me of my balance. “You stopped teaching me anything long ago.” I tried to sit up, but she pounced, straddling my lap; hair, eyes, and lips so close. The sudden scent of roses, wine, and blood welled in my nostrils. She somehow knew all my weaknesses. She had not been this close to me since the night of her Embrace. “I can find my own Path,” she told me. It was then that I felt the pleasure-pain of the Kiss sear into my neck. But she had never leaned—never beared her fangs—because she was only maya. Kasi, you bitch. You were behind me.

-Daksha Joshi, sire.

I am Bankim, just Bankim, the one who rescued the Burning Woman and fifth to join her Path in 483. New followers glommed to our caravan every week, kine and Cain alike but malcontents all. Adherents sought the dismemberment and recreation of vampire and human society. Our mistress of destruction eschewed the tiny place we had been allotted, passing amusements at best and charlatans at worst, untouchables skulking in the peripheral of your town. We became what destiny had always called us to be: holy monsters. We recruited a small army of ghouls, and never stayed in one village longer than a night. We moved through entire countries, so none would know our name, but all would feel our touch. We were the reason that Gypsies were feared as the thieves of children. We ambled into the square, conjuring fires that flared green to draw the curiosity of a crowd. We filled the skies with enchanting music and made beasts dance for the cheering fools.

We all played our part, whether it be luring an on-looker into a game of chance and robbing them without their batting of a lash, the graceful tightrope dance that could hypnotize, or the fortune-teller who existed not to provide information but to extract it. Best of all was the spectacular Burning Woman. She precipitated from the bonfire itself, and while the people shrunk and gasped at the tattoos crawling her flesh, it was already too late. The Burning Woman, with knowing smirk, would heave wells of flame from the Earth and make screeching stars fall from the sky. There was a vengeful catharsis in her movements as she did this, and though none of us knew her well, I think we saw into her most deeply while she was in the midst of this creative destruction.

At times, she confided amongst the inner-circle that she longed for the intimacy of a prolonged kill, to deeply expose the artifice of reality before freeing a mortal from it. But then she'd frown and say that this was not our Path. We were not meant to create—only to destroy. There were rumors that the Burning Woman had once been a mystic, but rejected from the jati into which she was Embraced. This was never confirmed nor denied. Although she knew us like her own children, none of us could claim knowledge of her prior to the moment we met her. We only knew her as the mirror of ourselves. Odd, when I think about it; never saw her hold a mirror. She did speak to us, but of ideas, not of herself.

Cainites would filter down to the festivities to investigate, and we would converge like lions upon each lone elephant. As our numbers grew, we began invading the strongholds of elders, glorifying in the carnage on both sides. Eventually the world of the dead knew our name, as letters of warning were forwarded, sketches drawn, word of mouth spread. We continued to maraud, but the crowds were smaller, and occasionally we were forced to protect the Burning Woman from retaliation, even driven from the township entirely, taking loss ourselves. Finally—and this was after over a century of criss-crossing the continent—we acknowledged that land was no longer safe. The Burning Woman was too inconspicuous, the caravan too large, our name now known. By this time, we had amassed shameful wealth in spite of the depression surrounding our tribe, and it could be argued that we had slid as deeply into decadence as the courtesan classes we fought. “For what good is gold?” The Burning Woman would say. “When you know it is just another piece of maya, this perpetuated by the Sacred Mouth?” The Burning Woman did not keep treasure like the rest of us did. Oh, she had a collection, all right, a vast collection, but it was of sentimental items. She said that they were not maya, because maya represents nothing, but this junk meant something real; to us, it just looked like broken dolls and water-stained old letters and lucky coins passed down from a dead man's dead father, which ought to make you question luck. I asked her to elaborate: what was the Sacred Mouth? “Nothing,” she replied.

Her plan was to abandon land altogether, and follow the Path out to sea. It was the only world left with no Burning Woman leaflet hung in its tavern, no windows shuttered fast at nightfall. We received a ship of considerable size—a donation from one of our loyal—and took to the seas from a Venician port. We lived this way for another century or more, it's hard to say how long, terrorizing merchants and amassing more materials. There were rough seas, but our crew of ghouls was more than capable, and luck played its hand a few times. The Burning Woman also possessed an uncanny knack for reading the night sky, and seemed to divine inclement weather with at least two day's notice. We'd dock and endure the storm, then set out again. Personally, I had spent the first few years of my unlife in the shadows, getting filthy looks for no reason other than my penchant for trickery, I just like to trick people, that's all, doesn't kill them, and coming to hate being me until I met Her. Then, you know, she says it's them who are the liars, to pretend that some dusty dogmatic establishment is natural, to look down at an honest people—well, to look down at a people who are honestly dishonest, which is more than the rest of them can say, with their patrician airs, like they aren't just as much Beast parasite as the rest of us. And I started to finally accept myself. Not to mention all the drinking and dancing. We were up to our necks in blood every night, and that's just the stuff of survival. If you want to talk really living, we were drowning in that stuff, too. Bare-breasted women and satin sheets and silver coins spinning on the table, all of us fat fucking sultans. I did enjoy the few hundred years I spent in service to the Burning Woman. She, though. She was only ever staring off, empty.

It had been an overcast week—the kind of sky the Burning Woman didn't like to sail under, but she paid attention less and less—and we was in passage cross the Aegean, toward Crete. Our coven lay boxed up and sliding, banging around in a sudden summer squall. Being a light sleeper, I emerged from my compartment—it must have been only early afternoon—and found busted floors and leaking walls. I draped a thick cloak over my face, braved the deck, found a handful of panicked sailors yelling. And waves, and lightning, and sea. Though clouds obscured any sun, I felt skin simmer and returned to cargo, they were yelling the ship was going to go, and so many of us sleeping, doomed. We'd be dragged to the bottom and crushed.

This was when I rummaged for the chest where the Burning Woman was curled and clasped inside: a heavy black box embossed with a flock of birds. Even as the ship tipped on its side and gravity pinned me between my queen and the wall, I crawled and hauled onto the vertical deck, heaved the Burning Woman into open sea just as the sun peeked through that canopy of rain and pierced my skin.

-Bankim Saini, follower.

We found that damned chest in our net while we were trawling for red mullet in the Adriatic. Thought it might have something valuable in it; so heavy, bound to be something at least old, and all old stuff is valuable, right? The latch had rusted shut, and was all kinds of jammed with algae and barnacles and whatnot. The crew was small that particular night, just me and my brother and my brother-in-law, but we were all pretty eager to crack that bitch open and kind of glad to not have to worry about too many prying eyes 'n outstretched hands. Ugolinus had a chisel with him, and started hacking away at all the crud, while Pero went on about how thrilled Savia would be. “No, she won't be, she can't be,” Ugolinus replied, bracing the latch in one hand and stabbing with the other. “Shit!” he cried, impaling the fat of his thumb. He tossed the chisel and marched away. “I can't get this damn thing to open!”

“I'll get it,” I said.

“Here.” Ugolinus came back with a hammer. “I found this on deck.”

The lock snapped open with a crunch. I wiggled it free, and had to trim the entire lid with the chisel and hammer, but finally, with a wet suck, the top fell back and a brackish grave shimmered just beneath the surface. However twisted, however caked in oil and dirt, what floated inside the chest was clearly a dead body. All of us retreated, swore oaths, made the cross on our chests, and advanced again. We couldn't just leave it alone. However dark, it was interesting. We carefully took it out onto the deck and drained it. Then kind of . . . laid it out to have a look.

“Is its skin moving?” Ugolinus asked, touching it. There did appear to be strange dark worms, or shadows, something in or on the skin, kind of drifting.

“Don't touch it,” I said. I didn't feel good about it. Who would? The scene was macabre. This poor dead thing, its legs and arms balled up like a little kid, head bowed, just dead. No one likes dead stuff.

“It's a woman,” Ugolinus said. He had put his hand into her hair. I was going to puke. “She's holding something.” He pried a locket from her fist and opened it. Being sealed up in her poor hands all those years, it was hardly corroded at all, but it still broke in half in his hand. “Huh. Got sand in it,” he said.

“Maybe we should leave it alone,” I said.

“Think that's worth any money?” Pero chimed in, like an asshole.

“Something in her mouth, too,” Ugolinus muttered.

“No,” I said. Kind of instinctively. But Ugolinus—who never listened to me, I should've told him to do it, then he'd've stopped—slid both his thumbs into her mouth and wrapped his knuckles around her jaw, as if he could loosen that as easily as he did the rusted lock.

Her eyes popped open. We all screamed and fell back. All of us, anyway, except Ugolinus. It all happened too fast, her mouth moved, her arms moved, Ugo screaming, and then she was in him. I mean in him. She—this thing—tore his throat out, ripped his chest open, dug around in his guts.

I looked at Pero. He was unconscious.

I looked back at the thing. She was looking at me.

-Jacobus Guidi, first sighting upon having risen from torpor.

I don't know why I trusted Kasi. Immediately, like an idiot, I just did. But that is the kind of woman Kasi is. That is how Kasi makes you feel. I know what you're thinking. She's covered in those markings, isn't she? And doesn't she have a big scar? But it's those eyes, you see. It's those eyes.

I hadn't been among the Brujah of France for too long when I met her. She was, of course, passing through. I had recently emigrated from the Kingdom of Sicily. I didn't have many friends, and she—she talks to you. She listens. We started going out together, I think in shared loneliness. She implied that she would be leaving soon without directly saying it, which makes me wonder if she was only conning me. It's very hard to tell, now. She said she had some sort of problem that wouldn't allow her to live in a proper village. She wouldn't elaborate. I mean, what, the face thing? There's powders for that. No, she said. Not the face thing.

So, I asked her to stay with me, like an idiot. I guess I talk a lot and people, well, they wouldn't listen unless I made them, but Kasi just would listen, and that was nice. I didn't have any family anymore, just had my clan, which was all right, and a couple friends. I honestly—didn't ask too much about her past, I guess. So I didn't know, you know, about everything.

And then one night I came home, shaking my head at how strange it had been, I'd seen a friend of mine and she'd told me she'd see me “after the trip,” and to “enjoy it.” Who was going on a trip, her? Then why would I enjoy her trip? I unlocked the door and entered, still smiling.

Kasi was standing by the window, was—you know—staring at me. Holding something. And I said, What are you holding? even though I knew what she was holding. It was my locket, an ornate family heirloom and the only thing I'd brought with me from Verona. The only reason I could not wear it was that I had developed an allergy to silver after my Embrace.

She was also wearing a dress of mine, and it wasn't that big of a deal because I told her she was welcome to borrow my clothes, she had so few and they were all bloodstained and didn't fit right, but for some reason, at this particular moment, it was off-putting. She looked at me, kind of bleak, and said, My locket is broken.

You can borrow mine, I said.

But it's not just my locket, Kasi said. It's everything.

Well, you can— I started to say, then I realized I didn't know what to say to that. Turned out I didn't need to say anything at all.

This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you, she whispered.

Kasi, don't—

She raised her hand, softly, as if to say hello, and then sheets of sparkles were falling all around us. It was so beautiful it threw me off-guard. I didn't know why I'd been so sure she was going to kill me, and a little smile trembled its way out of my mouth. She had crossed the room to me, through the shower of light. Don't be afraid, she said, and leaned into my neck. I guess I could have fought harder, but it was such a nice way to die. I'm only angry because now I have to wonder if she really meant any of it at all.

-Lethia Delacroix, Kasiope's new identity.

There is no one left to speak for me now. No one left who knows my name, who remembers me, who cares. I have Lethia's silver locket around my neck, her clothing in a small trunk at my hand, and a satchel of gold from an old account of mine in Venice. My face is caked in white powder and still, if you look closely, shadows crawl beneath. There is a coach waiting for me in the street. Well, a coach waiting for Lethia Delacroix, my first real friend since—in a long time. I did what I had to do. The way was laid clear for me. The path could not have been more obvious. I needed a name, an identity, and this stranger opens her life to me and says here, take it. We were even the same height. I sent an apparition of her to the havens of her few friends, announcing an indefinite visit to distant relatives. There's only one small problem: “the face thing,” as she called it.

I go down to the coach. Pay the driver a few shillings to take me to the docks.

While traveling through Normandy, having hitched a ride on a caravan distracted by mysteriously deep fog, I met a perfectly nice young Tzimisce heading toward a place called Estheim. I must have looked foreboding, swaddled as I was, but I only wish to make a new life for myself, on the true Path of Mayaparisatya—Untouchable or not. If I'm recognized as the Burning Woman, there will be no more Paths, not of any kind, not for me. I identified myself to him—as Lethia of clan Brujah, anyway—and explained that I was sure he understood, as a traveling Cainite, the necessity to stow away. Especially for me.

Then I unveiled for him. Trust must be shared, if you desire it. Some for him, and some for me. I had to let him see my true face. “So, you understand,” I said, gesturing. “Do you know the craft of Vicissitude?” I told him I was just as old as I probably looked, and I'm part of a family that never forgets a promise. If he would teach me his trade, I would be in his debt. I spat in my hand and extended it to him.

Of course, I couldn't stay. I never can. We were separated before reaching the coast, and I made my way as I haven't truly had to in seven hundred years: alone. I did what I could, between the cloak and the shadows and some occasional maya. But every night is long. Every town is empty. And there is also that one unsavory development since having risen from my torpor: this hunger for hearts, and livers, and spleens.

The coach comes to a stop at the dock. I have no ticket, but I don't doubt my ability to find passage within one of these ships. Soon enough, I'll be in Estheim. It's funny; how we start over. A little bit, and yet not at all. You can live eight hundred years and find yourself back where you started. I wrap my fingers around the silver locket, packed with the sand of Egypt, and a mysteriously deep fog creeps in.
Edited by Kasiope, Oct 26 2014, 05:55 PM.
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