Rebirth (Alyva Terrix)

[Grace Darkson]

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The Mandragora normally did not care to save the lives of soldiers like Alyva. Most of them were left to the Army to care for, and nursed by conventional medicine to try and save them. Alyva, however, was special. They had found something in her that most soldiers did not have.​

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The Force​

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It had been instinctual, a natural response to trauma, shielding herself from the blast and saving her life.​

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But not her body.​

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The mangled form that had been an Arkanian lay on the table. Around her stood hooded figures, heads bowed, hands folded in front of them.​

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Above the woman's head, the witch known as Lady Psyona stepped into the circle, her hands resting on the woman's forehead. She began to sing, quietly at first, but as the others joined in, it grew in strength until the words echoed off the walls.​

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"Eleka nahmen nahmen ah tum ah tum eleka nahmen"​

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As the song grew, her limp body lifted off the floor, surrounded by the green glow of the Water of Life. Although she could not see, she could feel the soldier's body reshaping, reforming into something stronger.​

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And then, with the same slow pace, as she had risen, Alyva was lowered down to the table. She was whole again. But she was more.​

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She was stronger.​

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[member=Alyva Terrix]​

 

[Alyva Terrix]

There was nothing.

Something was missing that should not have left. Something that, as she drew breath, failed to accompany her labored effort that pulled new oxygen into her lungs. In her refreshed consciousness she could not associate what had once been reasonable and what was now reality. It wasn't until she stirred to move that everything that was missing became surreal. She felt no pain, no strain against her skin and muscles, as she lifted herself into a semi-seated position.

Carefully she fluttered her eyes open, glancing at first at the her body and then to the women around her. What had they done? Had they finished already? Her vision focused, her mind cleared, and she zeroed in on the condition of her body. Her skin was healed, her pain relieved, but it was not as she had anticipated. She was no more than she had been before, only whole as she had been in her youth. Before she had fought for the Confederacy. While she should have celebrated something that felt so right, it felt so very wrong.

The Rife Strands atop her head reacted to her thoughts, shifting and quaking with the confusion and frustration she felt upon examining her body. Closing her eyes, the Rife Strands relaxing and settling with the lack of sight, she drifted her thoughts upon the desire rather than the condition at hand. She was healed, she was cleansed, but she missed the pain; yearned for the suffering that had come with it. Opening her eyes slowly, glancing between the women around her she drew in a breath and focused her thoughts on what she desired most.

She craved power, craved a existence greater than her own and she would have it.

[member="Lady Psyona"]

 

[Grace Darkson]

As the woman sat up, the gorgon smiled. She knew this wouldn't be enough. Alyva craved power, much like her. Like her, the woman wanted more, needed more. This wasn't about healing, surviving, returning to the front. No, this was about becoming more than she was. There was something she admired there. The hunger for power. In a student, she would have fostered it with knowledge, with a wellspring of lore and information, and with training and saber drills. But the Arkanian woman was not a student. She was an experiment. Sorzus Syn once said that living alchemy was the realm of masters. This would see if she could do it.

"Leave us." The command was followed by the other witches filing out of the room, in the end leaving the Vahla alone with the woman sitting on the table. "You want more, don't you?" Her voice was level, undercut by a tense apprehension. "You crave power. You're desperate for more." Her eyes locked with the woman's. She was strong-willed, Psyona gave her that much. "I've given you back what you were. Now, I give you a choice. You can walk out that door. The Mandragora will train you, raise you to use your gifts to fight and kill, and make you a powerful warrior. Or," A wicked smile crossed her face. "You stay here and let me make you something more." The tone of her words shifted, becoming as somber as the grave. "Be warned, however. If you are not strong enough, it will kill you."

[member="Alyva Terrix"]

 

[Alyva Terrix]

It took moments for the young Arkanian to come to her grip on the situation. To regain the full spectrum of her senses. And it was at that same time, or close enough to, that she noticed that the rest of the witches, save one, had left the room.

The words that came from the woman that remained in the room with her should have given her chills. Should have terrified her into retreating and never looking back. The promise of power, the implication that she craved more than she could possibly comprehend, accompanied with veiled threats of a death she had already narrowly escaped once. If she hadn't died already and still drew breath in the body she had been born with, she hardly considered death to be an unbelievable price.

"There is nothing left for me as I am," she breathed as she stroked her hands along the skin she had almost forgotten was even possible for her. It was unfamiliar in the absence of the suit she had worn for so long. The notion tore her eyes away from the woman before her only briefly before they darted back up and refocused. There were no doubts in her mind. "Do as you wish, there is nothing I am no stranger to pain."

As she finished her surrendering invitation she slowly laid back against the cold slab she had previously laid against. She wasn't inclined to memorize the body she had regained, nor was she interested in accommodating for the flesh that had failed her. Alyva was no longer the Arkanian soldier she had trained herself to be, no longer the stable mind of an scientist, and her brush with powers beyond her own had fed her a drought of something more. Whatever the other woman could do, no matter how unnatural it might be, she was not interested in stopping her.

In a strange and masochistic way she wished the pain to return. Anything was better than the agonizing memory of a pain she could no longer feed from.

[member="Lady Psyona"]

 

[Grace Darkson]

"Very well." The Gorgon's voice was low as if there was something the woman wanted to hide there. She stepped forward as if studying the Arkanian. Slowly, her hand moved, the Vahla's eyes glazing over as she seemed to study the soldier. "I will make you powerful." The words seemed to spill from her tongue, and a cold hand like the touch of Death itself gripped down on Alyva's shoulder. Lips whispered something in an ancient language as if some incantation would grant the woman power. Perhaps it was simply part of how the Alchemy worked. Or maybe it was simply a focus, something to force Lady Psyona to focus on the mystical power there. Either way, the first step in her transformation began.

The Arkanian would feel her body begin to heat as if the blood in her veins was warming up. Each heartbeat spread of this feeling, every second would lead to a burning like acid across her body. This was a dangerous game, but the empowerment that her sisters had given this woman would keep her alive while her shaper prepared for the next part. She would leave her new project to deal with the pain, and simply walk away. There were other things she needed to prepare. The creature, now long dead, sat in a heap of chitin and purple guts. The Lylek would provide the parts she needed for this.

Assuming the Arkanian could pull through her blood being turned to poison.

[member="Alyva Terrix"]

 

[Alyva Terrix]

The words drowned into the ambiance of numbness to sound the arkanian was feeling. Her pain was gone, but nothing was left in it's place. It felt wrong, felt twisted and demented in every way the arkanian could possibly imagine. So, as the other woman touched her shoulder, the cold deathly feeling that washed over her from the touch on her body was a welcome change from the serene placidness of her now cleansed body.

The purity made her feel sick, and all she could think about was the word that had been used just moments ago amidst the rest of the drivel. Stronger.

On cue, as the warmth began to course through her body, the arkanian's body went rigid. Stiff in response to an alien feeling that until muscle memory kicked in. Her body was familiar with pain, her mind prepared to synchronize with it at every turn. And so as her heart began to pulse fiery, toxic solution through her body her limbs and torso fell into a semblance of calm until the fire became severely more unbearable than the burns she had endured for so long.

She grit her teeth, clenched her fists to the point of drawing blood and felt as if her entire body was going to break under her own resistance to the corruption flowing through her body. Pain. Everything she had been anticipating and so much more was now returned to the woman as she lay upon the slab. Only as her mind fumbled it's way into a semblance of sanity did she managed to glance over and, through blurring eyes, glimpse what was to come.

Unfortunately for her, all she could comprehend was a purple and brown mess.

[member="Lady Psyona"]

 

[Grace Darkson]

The Arkanian woman was tough. The Force granted her strength beyond most of her kind, but with what Lady Psyona had planned, she would need much more than that to keep conscious. Or to survive, for that matter.

Holding the chunk of the Lylek shell, she frowned. Not nearly enough. She needed more. Enough to cover the woman, and maybe even more. Slowly, the corpse of the thing began to float, the chitinous exoskeleton falling to pieces and slowly gathering around the base of [member="Alyva Terrix"]'s stone bed. The muscles and organs simply spilled out, left to spill out onto the floor. She'd clean that up later, and hope it didn't leave a massive purple stain. But time was of the essence here, and she had to keep going. Raising her arms, she began to lift pieces of chitin off the ground and laying them next to Alyva.

"Skeletas kia gelezis, mesinis kia akmuo. Eile sis mesinis je'as leidimas, ir sis mesinis je'as dnefia. Skeletas kia gelezis, mesinis kia akmuo. Eile sis mesinis je'as leidimas, ir sis mesinis je'as dnefia!" She chanted, and the Lylek's skin began to reform, moving slowly to the prone woman, and wrapping themselves around her, digging into her skin like tight-fitting clothes, and sealing her into new armor. Not too much left to do now. Just some of the more... experimental parts.

 

[Alyva Terrix]

Burning was all that the Arkanian could feel. Uncontrollable, unbearable and enough to force even the sanest mind over the edge of oblivion. And yet, even as she felt she could grind her teeth to dust, she continued to grip on to what remained of her mental faculties. If the beginning of her transformation was all she could handle, than she didn't deserve this gift; and she wasn't about to give up on becoming whatever it was that this woman was going to make her in to.

Then, as she reeled in her senses, the other woman began to speak. While she didn't understand a single word of it, her now blurred vision made clear enough note that something had been placed beside her. Even then it was an unfortunately late revelation that, her brutal adaptation to her new blood slowly concluding, brought with it another pain across the entirety of her body. Her skin, if she were to still call it that, began to be covered and replaced by a chitinous material.

Jolting violently with each fiery explosion in her nerves and muscles that came with the conversion, the Arkanian felt her consciousness wavering. Somehow, some way, she had managed this far.

But sometimes one was demanded for more.

[member="Lady Psyona"]

 

[Grace Darkson]

The easy part was over. Fortifying her body, changing her blood chemestry, fusing the lylek's armor to the woman's skin, was all simple alchemy. Granted, she had very little practice with the biological half of this art, but still. It was the kind of thing she had done to womp rats and smaller creatures more times than most people would find appealing. But what she was about to do was much more difficult. Something much more demanding. Something that may well fail.

But she'd be damned if she didn't try.

"Isauga tnozena kais zalvas, kia tnozi virsuz tave visuom! Pradzia virsuz!" Another chant, a new one, as the final armored plates clamped into place. The Arkanian would feel a pain in her shoulderblades, as if some creature was attempting to burrow out. Psyona continued, her voice never wavering as the woman on the table changed.

She'd killed her empathetic side before. Such was the price of power.

[member="Alyva Terrix"]

 

[Alyva Terrix]

She wished she could say that the worst had subsided. To even speak the words that she had survived and endured the worst of what the process had even begun to offer. But as she considered the notion to speak, parting her lips the slightest bit, she found she could do nothing but let out a pained groan before gritting her teeth once again. She felt the final pieces of plate fall into place, making themselves as one with the contour of her flesh, and welcomed the reprieve that lasted a fraction of a second.

She had endured, but it was far from over.

What came next was unexpected. Eyes shot towards the woman standing over her, chanting away as if she were absent from the awareness of what she was creating. Then it happened in one single nigh unbearable moment as the digging from inside her body pinned at her shoulder blades began to feel more like an eruption. She couldn't see what was happening, couldn't do more than lay there suspended as the pain and alteration continued it's onslaught of her body. She briefly questioned herself as to why she would endure something as ungodly as this.

An inquiry that was quickly met with a response all too unkind.

She had brought this on herself, demanded power and forfeited her right to take it back. This, whatever she was becoming, was her new reality. A choice that slowly became more tolerable as her mind gave up it's will to fight the less appealing aspects of it all.

She may as well have died; and this was her rebirth.

[member="Lady Psyona"]

 

[Grace Darkson]

In a spray of blood, the wings tore from Alyva's back, bare frames twitching and flexing in the dim light. That wasn't right. They should have been fully formed. She should have true wings, not these spines of bone alchemized into hardened spines. Still, it would serve her purpose. The woman's lack of flight wouldn't detract from her might as a warrior. She had made her demon, even if the beast wasn't what she wanted. Smiling cruelty, she lowered her hands, gazing into the other woman's eyes.

"It is done." Her voice was tired, the strain of the task she had finished far more than what she could hide. The beginning ritual had been easy, the others allowing her to use their strength, channeling it to do most of the work. But the rest had been on her. And it was exhausting. "Rise, Alyva Terrix. Rise, and welcome to the Mandragora."

[member="Alyva Terrix"]