RP:Kanna and Ernest's Day of Fun
Part of the You Must Have Been Human Arc
Part of the The God of Undeath Arc
This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.
Summary: Kanna and Ernest have a chance encounter on the streets of Vailkrin. Remembering their contract, the pair attempt to use Ernest’s necromancy to cure Kanna’s curse and make her human again. A malevolent entity interferes, however, yet the pair manages to will an altercation into the replanting of the curse again.
- Many thanks to Josleen for NPC-ing Alithyk Caluss!
Vailkrin City Road
Hemlock Way has broadened to become a wide city road carrying locals, travellers and merchants through its bustling thoroughfare. The general air is one of cautious calm, probably due to staunch city guard patrols being particularly present here, ensuring that visitors and locals alike can stroll the dimly-lit blackstone streets under the glow of street lamps and silvery moons with relative safety. To the north is a well-fitted shop, its sign suggesting supplies fit for necromancy and other dark magics. A short southern street leads to the entrance of Vailkrin's most stylish -and notorious- tavern, The Hanging Corpse.
Since regaining her memories, many things had changed for the undead bardess. Kanna had disappeared with the draconian only to emerge months later tight lipped but content about what had transpired in her absence. Settling in once again at the fortress of the dark fae, Kanna had taken to learning more about her altered druidic abilities, and practicing necromancy in order to see her benefactor get excited about her progress. At heart, though, Kanna was still a bard. Seated in front of one of the stores, her identity is concealed in part by a half mask to resemble a rabbit, painted a soft ivory with floral blossoms painted around the eyes. Her entertainment is a stark contrast to her pastel mask and equally unthreatening attire, however. While the undead woman plucks away at a guitar, a pair of fermin corpses dance in time with the music. Pale blue mushrooms speckled with white puffs protrude from the creatures’ eyes like macabre ornaments as they waltz to the song. Notably, Kanna’s lovely camelia clip rests on top of the mask instead of in her hair to circumvent a certain quirk as she sings a grim tale of lovers in death with her real voice. The horrifying show seems to be drawing just enough ire that people continue to walk past her instead of vacating the sidewalk entirely.
Ernest happened to catch a familiar singing voice as he ambled down the street, and conjured up a slight breeze to follow along with him so as to better carry the clinking sound of his boots down the street. The eddies this formed in the air caused tiny dust devils to erupt up and down the road, dead leaves whirling about as though disturbed by passing spirits. Just for the extra bit of drama, Ernest felt it necessary to alter his gait slightly so that every step landed on the pulse of the song, providing completely intentional percussion to her performance. The dark fog that rose off of his hat and longcoat swirled away like the leaves as he approached, leaving a dark vortex street in his wake, until he pulled to a complete stop in front of the woman, squinting at her. She had the clip on her--and it was almost full--but her voice wasn't... OH. "Clever girl," he muttered, and couldn't help but crack a grin at her workaround. Honestly felt like something he'd do himself. He'd wait until the performance was brought to a close before slowly applauding and walking closer. "Mask's a nice touch," he said, addressing the circumvention of his curse instead of the fact that the clip was almost ready to use.
Kanna allows the corpses to fall into the gutter, where the fungus continues its rapid growth until the only recognizable remnants are bits of ashy fur peeking out between the blooms. She looks up at him, her violet lips curling into a bright smile as she recognizes the source of the percussion. “Ernest!” Internally, the woman thanked the stars that her previous encounters with the fellow undead were not lost to another curse. “Isn’t it? This sweet little vampiress out in Cenril made it for me.” Her smile falters a little as she follows his gaze to the cursed object. “Ah, so... How do I know if this is ready? I know I’ve contributed and caused a lot of ire, but its shape has never changed, and I realized far too late that I did not know how to find you to ask.” She admits sheepishly, her guilt contributing a drop to the clip, which gives a faint glow in recognition of it. “Ah, but I saw your name in the Necromancer Guild’s ledger too! What subset are you studying?” Her attention seems to bounce between the clip and small talk as easily as mages are drawn to spellbooks.
Ernest counted on his fingers as he addressed both questions as succinctly as possible. "I 'spect we could top it off today, an'... yes." He snapped his fingers and one of the shadowy vortexes materialized itself into a dark, skeletal-looking hand which drifted over closer and waved idly before dissipating into nothingness. "Ain't much," this was punctuated by a shrug, "but Joan seems ta think I got what it takes fer the Scare At Us contest. Are you in that?" The what. Ernest gestured towards the north, where the necromancy shop loomed ominously in the background in the particular sort of way that literally every building in Vailkrin liked to think it had mastered. "An' d'you wanna work on filling th' last few drops while we talk? Shouldn't be hard."
Kanna pouts her lips slightly as she seems to mull the offer over. “Sure, why not!” The self-proclaimed bardic necrobotanist rises to her feet, giving the ghostly skeletal hand a wag of her own fingers as she wraps the strap of the guitar around her shoulder so it rests against her back. Kanna being much shorter than the mummy has to take two steps to match his one, which makes for a comical sight to those watching. “It really is impressive! Conjuring shapes with dark magic takes a lot of concentration to make more than just a vague blob from what I’ve read, and that little hand even had all the joints attached to it. I haven’t heard of that contest, no, but I did sign up for the Winter fighting tournament again! I figure being a little more durable will give me an advantage this time around. Plus, that Blue Demon is just so handsome, isn’t he?” A wide, devilish grin threatens to split her face as she awaits his reaction.
Ernest maintained his grin--fewer competitors at the scaring competition would mean a higher chance of winning--*right* up until Kanna mentioned the Blue Demon. The absolutely visceral amount of instinctive hatred that flowed into the clip during that brief moment where he was about to start ranting was likely enough for both parties to notice, and without missing a beat Ernest winked at her and smashed the doors open to the magic shop. "Oh, you just HAD to bring him up, didn't you?!" he shouted, immediately making a complete scene of himself as soon as he entered the building. "That two-bit assassin ain't worth a hat full o' rat droppings, an' you can QUOTE me!" He wheeled around wildly to punctuate this remark, and his outstretched arm caused an entire display of enchanted hats to go crashing loudly to the floor. "If I have to hear ONE more," now walking backward, he bumped into a shelf and scattered what was meticulously organized accessories into a heap on the floor, "ONE more title he got by being an ungentlemanly HACK," he swayed on his feet unsteadily now and took a swig from his flask, as if to accentuate the complete fool of himself he was making, "I'll--I'll--" another violent gesture, this time with the flask in hand, spilled water all over the poor clerk who was working the front desk, "I'll do something VERY UNPLEASANT."
Kanna can barely contain her giggling as he inconveniences the unfortunate shopkeeper, though she does feel a twang of guilt. Poor little vampire, she thinks right as she gets into character. “I really just don’t know how else to BREAK it to you!” The undead woman opens her arms in an exasperated fashion, knocking a display of earrings onto the floor, some of which fall directly into the enchanted hats and pop back out as enchanted earrings. The word ‘break’ is accentuated with her shifting the clip onto her hair, which serves to turn her voice into a chorus of broken glass scraping against a floor of rusted metals. “He is just too great of an adversary, and YOU--” Kanna makes a show of knocking a beautiful coat rack over with her hip as she leans in to jab at his mummified torso, “--need to accept that!” When he mentions something very unpleasant, she makes a mock gasp and takes a step back towards the door. “You wouldn’t DARE! Why, that would make me just angry enough to play an equally unpleasant song!”
Ernest flicked Kanna's mask right in the nose with a bony finger--not hard, but enough to make a sort of "pok" sound. "Too 'great an adversary'?!" he shouted, mimicking the dreadful cadence her clip gave her as best he could. "Woman, I'M," he thumped his chest and puffed it out exaggeratedly, "th' greatest adversary on th' whole continent!" When she threatened to sing, he laughed haughtily. "You singin' again? Why, that'd be more'n unpleasant enough fer th' both of us! Ain't that right!" He whirled around again and gestured to the shopkeeper in a thoroughly disgusting attempt to get him to join in his ridiculing her singing skills, and then squinted. "Wait just a cotton-pickin' minute, where in tarnation is Steadmen?! Honey!" he roared, whirling around and knocking another display over, "what kinda lousy varmint-ridden establishment is this that you've dragged me to?! I cain't drink anythin' in here!" With that, he stormed towards the door, having not apologized for any of the public disturbance. Once outside, he ducked down behind the window, just out of sight, and listened through the wall.
Kanna scoffs audibly when her nose is flicked, and again at each mock insult hurled her way. The one about unpleasant singing does add a bit of ire, though it is soon played off. “Why! You’re the one that stormed in here like you doggone owned the place!” The woman even makes a show of undoing the strap of her guitar while she teases at his accent. “Don’t you walk away from me--” Quick, think of a pet name that’s not ‘Honey’, “Muffin!” With that, the guitar is swung vaguely in his direction, smashing straight into a display case of what appears to be expensive pipes. Once her fellow necromancer is outside, she spins around and eyes up the thoroughly terrorized vampire. “You’re cute. Look me up.” She flirts shamelessly, leaving a drawstring bag of gold pieces in his frozen hand to cover the broken glass, after all, she was not a complete monster! The bard sashays back outside, pretending not to see him as she turns the corner into one of the alleyways with a laugh. Once Ernest inevitably follows, the bardess turns her teasing to him, “I think this date is fun enough to make up for you not bringing me flowers. Did that do it?”
Ernest had to suppress a giggle as he listened to her shamelessly flirting with the clerk. The catastrophe they'd caused in there just by being loud and obnoxious had irritated not only the store owner but everyone else in there idly browsing, and leaving again in such a fashion had both confused and disappointed at least one person in there. Once he'd slipped away from the window to follow her into the alley, he grinned and tipped his hat to her. "Lemme take a look," he said, then leaned in close as if to examine the clip, tilting his head and holding a hand over it. "Y'know what, I think we might have jes' enough in there. Y'given any thought as t'what changes you'd make t'yer curse?" he asked, stepping back--right as the sensation of something cold would brush her ear. Should she reach up, she'd feel something icy that he'd tucked there, and holding it out to examine it would reveal a perfectly symmetrical blue-white rose made from ice. It was already sort of melting, the same way an ice cube does when you hold it, but it was solid enough for now.
Kanna gives an inquisitive hum as she feels something against her ear. Her undead state had severely impeded her ability to feel, but the pressure was enough to make her seek the gift. The bard gives a genuine laugh at the gift, holding it in both hands while it melted away. “This is adorable!” The question remains unanswered, though, and Kanna’s expression sobers, revealing the side she worked hard to disguise as bubbly and upbeat. “I would want to be human again so I can go… back to where I might have a home, but I do not know if my body could handle the conversion after eating raw meat for so long.” The woman raises a hand to remove the rabbit mask, revealing a diamond shaped indent on her cheek from where an arrow’s tip had torn away the flesh. “At the very least, I do not want to have to kill people to survive, and I do not want to lose my memories again because I tried to abstain. I dread the day where I am forced to eat another innocent as opposed to an unrepentant monster because I could not find something adequate in time.”
Ernest nodded and laced his fingers together, holding his index fingers extended in front of his lips as he listened. The requests weren't unreasonable, though they'd likely be difficult. Meat--especially sentient meat--was just a food, after all, and with this amount of power he felt confident that he could twist that condition just enough. "Very well!" He extended his arms, stretching, cracking his knuckles noisily, then flicked out his wrists before snapping his fingers. The dark fog that leeched off of his hat and longcoat billowed out of him and flowed down to the ground, surrounding their ankles before coagulating into an oily ring that surrounded them. The ring then further condensed itself, separating into fragments of pseudofluid which arranged themselves into the shape of runes, which then touched the flagstones of the road beneath their feet and caught fire, melting down into the rock before sputtering out--and then flaring with a much colder light as the magic circle surrounding them activated, isolating any magic they were about to cast from outside interference. Ernest brushed his longcoat away from himself like a pianist flipping his coattails over the piano bench and descended crosslegged to sit in the circle, gesturing with his fingertips for Kanna to sit with him. "Place the clip between us," he said, then held out his hands for hers, "an' give me your hands. This could be... uncomfortable, but yer gonna need ta hold still."
Kanna looks up at the mummified man with a spark of hope in her eyes at his declaration. Could this really be happening? An unfelt wind makes the bardess’ hair blow softly around her face as the fog begins to take form around them. “How beautiful.” She murmurs softly as she follows him to the ground, transfixed on the runic markings. Kanna reaches out and gently brushes a finger against the cold light of a rune. A soft hiss emanates from the stone as it seems to burn her fingertip, though she does not react to it. Drawing her hand back, she watches her hand as the skin blackens and reforms with fresh skin. Following Ernest’s instruction, Kanna kneels in front of him and sits back. Silvery curls fall around her face, the wind seeming to disappear the moment the flower is removed from her hair and placed between them. “Perhaps the one thing I will miss about this is that I feel no sensation on my skin to feel discomfort with.” An anxious half-smile is cracked by the ghoul as she places her hands in his. “I believe in you.”
Ernest nodded solemnly and locked his grip on her hands--trying not to squeeze too tightly, but this wasn't something he wanted to slip up on. It was going to take all his concentration just to force the energy to go where he wanted--but now it was time to make it happen. For drama's sake, he made a noise like clearing his throat, and -paused-... then spoke the command word he'd baked into the curse. "Susurrations!" The clip didn't -physically- explode, but the entire dome was suddenly flooded with a terrible ghastly blue-purple light that simultaneously illuminated everything and nothing. Every scream, every scoff, every sneer from the past several months that Kanna had collected in the clip flooded the space and bounced against the walls of the magic circle, which only served to compress and amplify their power. The storm of hatred and annoyance -began- unbearable, and over the next few seconds it only continued to increase in potency, whirling around and through them, the pitch and volume rapidly climbing in some cataclysmic exponential crescendo. And then, with a deep bellowing drone, Ernest vocalised without words his will for the collected energy, and bent the storm to his will. The undead's eyes flashed with a terrible light and his entire skeleton could be seen through his outfit as he channeled the energy through himself--and then into Kanna. Curse energy tore violently into curse energy, and the mummy had been understating it when he suggested that it could be uncomfortable. This woud feel like having her entire body burned away from the inside out while all her friends abandoned her while she had completely ruined a public speaking performance. It'd feel as though she was being completely erased and rewritten. Caluss's curse was thorough and had infested every part of her, and since Ernest was having to brute-force his way through it--even just to tweak it--she'd feel every second of the operation as though the mummy's target was her. But with every passing second, Ernest could feel himself making progress--disconnect this from that, redirect the magic from here to there…
Despite being unable to feel his grip, Kanna’s hands begin to tremble from a visceral fear she thought she had lost the night of Samhain. The light forces her to shut her eyes as she focuses on all the negative emotions stored within the small flower. Screams of her victims reverberate around them, shaking her down to her very bones. The most hatred by far had come from the criminals, the poachers, the predators she had chosen to serve as nutrition for her forced livelihood. Every insult hurled her way in their final moments, every desperate plea for forgiveness, every dying glimmer of pure disdain as the light had left their eyes bores into her mind’s eye. A pained cry escapes Kanna as she grips onto Ernest’s hands for dear life, quite literally. Very faintly beneath the chorus of agony, she can hear many small somethings cracking. Even in her pained state, she stiffens her hands in an attempt to not crush Ernest’s hands completely. Kanna lowers her head, screaming again as she feels the first sensations of pain felt in years tear away at her. Inside her, there is an aching throb in her chest, then another, then another. Tears of a viscous black substance flow freely from her eyes, the only thing that the cursed light cannot shine from. Despite the suffering of every heartbeat that Ernest works, she thinks of the reasons she wants, no, NEEDS to become human again. Kanna’s eyes open as she recognizes the rhythmic source of pressure in her chest. Her heart! It was beating!
The warmth and grace of life that flowed through Kanna’s veins at the command of her newly beating heart awakened a listless and ancient power. Even hidden in the chaos realm, Alithyk Caluss felt Ernest meddling with one of his toys. The runes on the flagstone alighted a dull gray then snuffed out and transmuted into sand. An oppressive darkness settled on Kanna and Ernest and pawed at every inch of their bodies. The shade was palpable, even moist. It forced its way up Kanna’s nostrils and down her throat, swelled in her lungs until they felt ready to burst. It sat there for a few minutes as the newly reborn Kanna was slowly, helplessly asphyxiated to death. Try what Ernest might, whatever tricks he could conjure on short notice would prove futile before the claim of a god over its property, and that was indeed what Kanna was, property in the service of Alithyk Caluss, whether she did it willingly or not. Everytime she fed from a corpse His will was served and His power grew. A sibilant voice whispered in Kanna’s and Ernest’s ears, “Give in, children of the unliving, and reap my many gifts.” There was but one hiccup in Caluss’s long-distance reclamation of his property, something lost in transit between realms and across many miles: his ghoul would no longer be quite as hungry, her need for flesh waning and thus her utility as a vector diminishing as well. No matter. He would fix that when the time came.
Ernest scrunched up his face as the black fog poured in from the ground. That wasn't his, so... heck. This must be -meddling-. He tried briefly to shift a portion of the curse energy into a purge attempt--no, not enough. Next, a direct override--no, it seemed that this whatever-it-was seemed very keen on her staying very dead, and very hungry. Very well. If that was how he was going to play, that was how Ernest would play. He redirected the energy one last time, focusing -all- of his power on one single condition of the curse--what kind of food she needed. She needed to eat something living? Fine! Plants were still living things when consumed, after all. If she had to stay dead, she'd have to stay dead, but Ernest was a -professional- and his client wanted to be able to avoid eating innocents. "Kanna!" he shouted, to be heard over the maelstrom of whirling energy, mortal against quasideity, and to be understood above that insidious whisper. "Resist! I just need--one--opening!" That single change he tried to force in the curse, the one he was now pouring all of his effort into, he started to construct a cage around. Using the collected power as a buffer--and he knew all it would do was buy him time, which was why he'd need Kanna's help--he attempted to place another condition into the curse. An incantation, a seal over his change. It was like doing laser eye surgery with an orbital strike cannon, but if she could shake Caluss loose even for a moment he was certain he'd be able to lock it in.
Kanna was so happy that she could cry, and she felt true tears brimming at her eyes in place of the undead rot. By all the gods and Ascendi above, she was in pain, but she could cry, she could feel… something cold. Her eyes open to the absence of light from the camelia, and Ernest focused harder than ever as darkness descends. Fire blooms in her lungs anew as something sinister forces its way inside. Desperately, the bardess yanks her hands, though Ernest’s grip remains firm. Instead, she lurches forward, trying to use their locked hands to force the intangible substance away from her face. Somehow, she is reminded of another occurrence when she believed death had come for her, when an abyss had opened beneath her, and a myriad of hands clawed away at her until nothing but bones were left, and a voice begging her to stay strong. ‘Come back to me, Kanna.’ She did not want to die. She did not want to be confined to a life of killing others, of living in the shadows, unable to face the people she loved. Suddenly, the woman’s head snaps up, and a guttural scream causes the darkness to quiver, her nails digging into Ernest’s skin as a wordless plea for help. The darkness shivers and adjusts just slightly, allowing Kanna to hold a sustained scream with whatever bits of bardic magic she could muster in hopes that it was just the right pitch to hold the creature at bay.
Ernest had his opening, and he took it with everything he had. Through that tiny quivering of the shadow, that brief lessening of its hold on her, the mummy forced every bit of curse energy into giving her this one thing. The condition warped, the shell around it sealed, and Ernest made one final shout in victory as the last of the energies were devoured by Caluss's darkness--and since there was no more energy with which to meddle, the black fog no longer seemed to feel a need to remain present and sank back into the dirt, leaving Ernest and Kanna alone in a circle of sand, almost entirely drained--but Ernest, at least, was grinning. Tiredly, but still smiling. "Weren't too much I could do when the varmint attacked," he said, slowly. "Yer still undead, an' yer health is still tied to how much y'eat. But." But?! "I did manage one li'l trick." He paused, again for dramatic purposes, rolling his shoulders. "Y'ain't limited ta living -people- anymore. Leaves, fresh fruit, plantstuff that ain't been processed oughta work jes' like munchin' on a schmuck. No more innocents, long as y'keep a steady intake o' salad. Best I could do."
Kanna slumps down onto the filthy Vailkrinese alleyway as she feels her chances of being human again being robbed from her. Blackened teardrops roll down the side of her face into the sand as she stares vacantly ahead for a moment while Ernest speaks. An uncomfortable silence passes after he speaks, enough so that it might unnerve even him. The ghoul slowly sits back up, sand and black liquid stuck to her face as her gaze refocuses on him. Without warning, the mummy would suddenly be pulled into a grateful embrace. Rotten tears continue to roll down her face as she realizes that she could not even feel anything more than the pressure caused by the gesture. Pulling away, Kanna smiles weakly. “Thank you, Ernest.” She reaches into the pockets of her dress and withdraws the item they had agreed upon as compensation for his necromantic services: a golden compass with a diamond cut into the shape of a heart on its lid. As she opens it, her smile turns bitter for a moment as the arrow points squarely at herself. Closing the compass, she holds it out for him. “Will you tell me when you find out what your arrow is pointing to?”
Ernest was surprised by the hug--mostly due to the fact that he wasn't sure she'd accept the small amount he'd been able to pull off after they'd been so close, the long pause hadn't helped--and sort of awkwardly patted her shoulder a couple of times before she pulled away. "Yer welcome." He accepted the compass gratefully and nodded. "Oh, I'm pretty sure I know what it's pointin' to. I'll let you know when I find 'im, fer sure." Slowly, carefully, he climbed to his feet, examining his hands. "Hm." He squinted, focusing on the little breaks she'd made in the bones of his fingers. He sent a variant of the spell used to animate his Helpin' Hands down into his own fingers, and watched them snap back into place with tiny sparks of green electricity. "That's better." Rubbing his hands against each other, he extended one to Kanna to shake, or help her up. "Be seein' you real soon, I imagine. We got ourselves a win here today, limited as it was, against a bein' that calls itself a -god-. I 'spect we're gonna be hearin' about it later."
Kanna graciously accepts his hand as she rises to her feet. Rather ungraciously, she wipes the muddy mixture off of her face with the sleeves of her dress. “It really was a win. Even if I am not human, this turn of events is still a good one.” Her mind’s eye suddenly places her back in the old cabin where she had accepted a rose from a gracious stranger with glowing green eyes. It is there she realizes that the entity’s voice was eerily similar. “I suspect I may have already heard about it, but I suppose that is yet to be seen. In the meantime...” The bardess looks at a discarded flyer for a series of fights to be hosted in Frostmaw. “I will need to get stronger if I wish to be of assistance to you in the future.” The pair take their leave of the alleyway, leaving the mildly traumatized shopkeeper next door to deal with the mess of sand and rot on his store’s grounds.