#eeeeenteresting

The corpse - a young halfling woman spattered in blood - spasms, arching into the air, suspended by the spell's wrenching power. Its eyes flash open, glowing with that same green fire.

"Where lies your guilt?" the figure intones. His voice is like the tolling of a bell, sonorous and inexorable.

"The... Waning Moon..." The corpse's mouth twists around the words, whining them out one by one, tone as blank as its eyes.

"What's going on here?" Rakha comes to a halt a slight distance from this little display and looks it over with muted curiosity. The cold clean magic swirls around her and she hisses out a soft breath at the relief it brings.

(A/N: LOL, there's a [WIZARD] option here: "That spell - Speak With Dead, correct? Your technique is *impeccable*." I love that you have the option to play your wizard as an absolute fuckin' nerd if that is your desire. XD )

The man's hands fall to his sides and he stares at Rakha with deep black-on-black eyes. "You walk in the darkness, unafraid?" he says. "How curious." His voice has lost the resonant tone of his invocation; despite his words, he sounds almost bored.

At his side, the bird screeches, a sudden strident sound that makes Rakha's head hurt. The man tilts his head pensively.

"A fair point," he murmurs. "Perhaps this one could assist us." His inkblot eyes open slightly wider, looking Rakha over from head to foot. "The murdered lie silent. The raven asks - will you be their voice?"

Rakha looks at the corpse, still suspended in the web of the man's magic. Its jaw hangs open, slack, adding to the blankness of its dead expression.

It is not a fresh kill. She isn't sure how she knows it, but nevertheless it is obvious. Perhaps it was preserved by the shadow curse, or by this strange man's incantations, or by something else entirely - but nevertheless this is a body that has been dead a long time. Years. Perhaps decades.

Even the beast does not rouse in interest at it. It comes alive in the visceral thrill of blood and pain, but a body already dead provides no satisfaction for it. And Rakha herself does not know who the woman is, or why she might have died. She is much more curious about this stranger who spins complex and beautiful magic in a corner of the cursed darkness, and who (it seems) talks to his bird and receives answers.

"Why does the raven want to know?" she asks slowly.

"He thinks you strong enough for the task at hand." Those black eyes glitter in the flickering candlelight. "This woman tended a bar where she took her patrons, her friends, into her confidence - promised their secrets were safe with her. Yet she turned their words into knives and stabbed them in the back." His voice takes on a sudden much darker tone. "They died because of her. And to this day her victims lie unavenged."

Rakha waits for him to make a point. But he stops, seemingly waiting for her answer.

The man speaks of vengeance - which makes her think of Minthara, who has professed her own oath of vengeance on her enemies. It is a philosophy Rakha likes, as it matches her own much more poorly defined desire to destroy those who have hurt her, who have hurt Wyll and her other companions.

But what does she care either for this woman or the other dead that the man describes? Everyone involved is long since gone; there is no satisfaction to be got from any of it.

"She's dead," she says, puzzled. "How much more can she pay?"

"Death is not the end," the man says softly. "Merely another beginning." He gestures again at the corpse. "I seek a record of this one's crimes, written in her own hand. Through it, I can summon her spirit and force her to face trial for her crimes."

(A/N: There is a Durge option here. "Kill the dead. Kill the killed dead. KIill the killed dead again and again." Selecting it gets gleeful Durge-speak from the Narrator, who puts on this very unsettling purring, throaty voice whenever she's doing Durge lines, rambling about how great it is that He Who Was can resurrect people and kill them over and over. He Who Was doesn't like this much.

But this doesn't really feel like a Rakha interpretation of the situation? He Who Was isn't talking about a full resurrection, just a spirit summoning which isn't something the beast seems like it would be interested in. And Rakha doesn't really see the appeal in participating in a sham show trial for a pale weirdo in the middle of nowhere.

Luckily, we have a much better option available which plays on her natural curiosity and eagerness for any magic that isn't the curse.)

Rakha's eyes widen. For a moment she forgets anything else, including the strangeness of the situation, in trying to picture the sort of spell he describes. It is far beyond simple speech with the dead; she has never seen that done before today but she can instinctively conceptualize the strands of the Weave that would need to be plucked to make it happen. But a full summoning, a trial like he describes...

[SORCERER] "That's powerful magic," she says abruptly. "How do you do it? Can you show me?"

For a moment he flinches defensively. "Such spells are ancient secrets, and closely guarded." Then his head draws back, and a strange, unsettling smile tugs his lips, his expression relaxing. "But I could be convinced to share them... with an *ally*..." he says slowly. His eyes narrow with sudden shrewd amusement. "Your soul sparks with justice," he croons. "With fortitude. This is your chance to bring a murderer to justice. To avenge her victims. Will you take it?"

He has said the right words in the right order. Were Rakha paying closer attention, no doubt she would recognize the deliberate flattery, the attempt to play on a sense of justice and goodwill that she, frankly, does not have. But she is already focused on the critical point - that he will show her this magic that can call a soul back so fully into existence that it might stand trial for crimes a century past.

"I will," she rasps. "What must I do?"

"I understand why you ask," Shadowheart says, extremely carefully dancing around the question. "But memory loss is not as uncommon as you'd think. There may be... other causes."

An unhelpful answer. Rakha scowls. It must be the tadpole, anyway. That or maybe Lae'zel was right - a blow to the head.

She's irritated enough by this lack of help that she snaps out the rest of the truth, the only other thing she knows for certain beyond her name. Why bother hiding it, anyway? Her bloodlust is hardly subtle; if Shadowheart wishes to travel with her, she will have to get used to it.

Or if she does not, they will fight, and Rakha will kill her.

"I yearn to kill," she says flatly. "I only feel like myself when I'm killing."

Shadowheart blinks. There's a long silence. Then she speaks completely calmly; if anything she seems to feel this answers more about Rakha than it doesn't. "Interesting," she says.

Rakha stares at her. Interesting?

"You're hardly alone," Shadowheart goes on, looking her up and down pensively. "Bloodletting is quite popular of late. Though your twinge of conscience sets you apart from the brigands, monsters, and kill-happy fiends of the world."

She meets Rakha's cold stare without flinching. "Whatever you think may be compelling you... you may have greater ability to resist it than you realize. Everyone has unseemly thoughts. Being able to quieten them is what sets us apart from the beasts."

Rakha is so surprised by this response that for a moment her expression relaxes, and she finds herself chewing over Shadowheart's words with more thought than she expected to give them.

You're hardly alone. What does Shadowheart know of these things, of dreams bathed in blood? What compulsion does she struggle against? What "unseemly thoughts" does she seek to hide? Did she also wake on the nautiloid with nothing more than her name, and is simply better at disguising it than Rakha?

But even more curious than Shadowheart's perspective is the phrase: twinge of conscience. Is that what prompted Rakha to speak? What does it even mean? When the rage took her over she allowed it willingly, because it meant survival. What conscience was there in that?

More questions. Always more questions.

She grunts, shakes away the uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty, focuses on something nearer, something that is fact. "What's the story with that odd little artifact you have?" she asks, jerking her head to indicate the pouch at Shadowheart's side.

Any openness in Shadowheart's expression closes up immediately, and she answers in a clipped-off snap to rival Rakha's own. "There's no story," she says. "None that you're entitled to hear, anyway. Just forget you ever saw it."