26th of Roarkian, 173 CoE

The impossible has happened â€" he has returned - and once again I feel sucked
into a whirlpool of emotions I refuse to acknowledge having. But he has
returned… Somehow I kept hoping, against the sanity of such a wish, that this
day shall come and yet, now I find it so hard to believe. But it is him and my
priceless heirloom peaking from under the collar of his robes refutes all
doubt. Miracles don’t happen - there’s only the force of Will and
unfavourable, fickle whims and sulks of the Three…

“Yes, miracles don’t happen” I reassured myself heading for the Guild
Tower deep in my thoughts. As if to ridicule and undermine my judgment, a
Merian whelp curtseyed to me when I was passing the Megalith of Doom. Nonsense!
I halted in my tracks and scrutinized the young one with a glare able to rip a
soul. Hmph. I found nothing I could stick a bloody looking needle into on her
person so I took off murmuring under my breath, only half-listening to one of
my Seditionist’s words of explanation. Another poor jest of the Fates!
Sending a Merian into the Nihilists Guild is like sending a Viscanti into the
Celestines. Naturally, with the difference that Merian make fine steaks and
pies, and arriving at the Celestine’s door is pure embarrassment and an
eye-twitch evoking memory for the Viscanti involved. Seriously, are you this
bored, Three?

12th of Estar, 174 CoE

…
The Merian has, naturally, been subjected to the Ritual and is now a Viscanti.
Little will that help her anyhow, there’s not enough Taint in the Basin to
fix a Merian brain so she is bound to flee.

I may have to speak with… hmm… lets rephrase that - I may have to try to
convey to Lord Gorgulu that we’d have a use of some of the True Taint He is
hogging. We would have far more use of capable Merian slaves than of Merian
cuisine, as surprisingly fine and tender as it is.
…

4th of Urlachmar, 174 CoE
…
The ex Merian, Sthai, has been with us almost two months. Her behaviour and
manners are flawless â€" which somehow irks me even further. She has passed her
Urth Trials (oh, and I have tested her thoroughly. Thoroughly indeed) and she
has joined the ranks of the Penitents of the Fold. Damnation.

As adamantly patient and unbiased as I am towards our Urth, both on the outside
and on the inside, I cannot spark either in my mind towards the lesser races.

She is bound to trip.

And he? He returned simply because he gave up finding he had sought to find on
his pilgrimage. Miracles happen not. He hasn’t forgiven.

27th of Dioni, 174 CoE

Ashtorath incinerate the fools! Why did we take the Black Hand and not the
Fang? I can’t be bothered to go shouting reason down everyone’s ear.
Everyone and their fiend should know a mere Black Hand cannot take on the
Aquila. And, least of all, cannot take on the Aquila and the Stormscape
together…
…
Penitent Sthai’s been a lot of help during the aetherspace manoeuvres even if
her duties revolved around tending to me at the Empathic Grid and making the
flight more entertaining only. One needs that when all that is visible out of
the window are dull and endless, argent streams of aetherspace.
…

2nd of Tzarin, 174 CoE

It has been a tiring year so far. The meetings are starting to get to me. Well,
mentally at least, as an undead body needs no rest or relaxation â€" tiredness
is but a fake state of mind for the Liches. Not all of the Fold can embrace
this state without the Black Crypt thus I constantly need provisions delivered
to the office â€" the meetings drag on for endless hours.
..
I had the Penitent Sthai in my office today. She has passed her Penitents Trial
with flying colours, astounding even me with her elaborate answers and
refreshing ideas. Some of them positively wicked, others unattainable in
current circumstances â€" but all of them speaking of her conviction and zeal.
With temperance of experience she might become of use.
…

21st of Tzarin, 174 CoE

An occurrence worthy of a lengthy mention has taken place today. Sthai has
asked for a private audience which I granted her. I noticed that for a while
now we have been spending quite a lot of time together â€" be it hunting or
debating religious tenets. The Fold is small indeed but so is my time sparse.
…
It appears what troubled her were Viscanti males trying to convince her that
she must marry to advance and must beauty up to attract more attention. I
don’t remember laughing so heartily for a while now. The more that she was
quite surprised when I assured her that is not a ‘requirement’. Were I
Countess, Minister and Mystagogue because of a male? What a ridiculous notion
really. What do those parents teach the nowadays Viscanti whelps!
…
We somehow arrived at the memories of her past. To my surprise… she turned
out not to be a random Portal comer. In fact, she was born in New Celest to a
proper Merian family and her parents are well renowned Paladins whose names she
cannot recall anymore.
Hmm… what exactly did she say.. ah, ‘They did not approve of my study
habits’ â€" that was it. So I asked what were those ‘habits’ naturally
and she revealed that she forced to become a Celestine and probably would have
remained one were it not for a book she managed to dig out in their library.
This book turned out to be a merian-bound tome devoted that.. “spoke of Lady
Nifilhema. It was the most beautiful thing in the stacks, with fine quill-work,
elegant images within, and red amaranths at the end of each chapter…” â€"
ahh yes, one of those. Did not my Grandmother put together one of these?
/ask Mother about Grandma’s books/
I recall they depicted layering of skin, veins and bones of each species, all
done in fine blood ink such as she described. But what happened further is even
more epic than one of our finest books in a Celestine Library.

They found her attempting to recreate some of the ritualistic markings of the
Lady, specifically the forearm wound with hooks to be attached on each side and
a ribbon drawn through them backwards and tightened to keep the wound open. As
she spoke of it, my arm twitched involuntarily in remembrance of my own such
marking. Without Archlich form it still twitches and bleeds often providing me
with a touch of torture and distraction at most inappropriate times usually.
Wondrous test that.

As can be expected, they were not pleased with her. They had burned the book
and torn the hooks from her arm. They beat her up badly, breaking her leg (I do
recall her curtsey was rather feeble when I first met her) but she managed to
escape into the sea and then went up north into the mountains. She doesn’t
recall how but she found herself in Magnagora with Aiakon d’Murani looming
over her and commenting she should be put out of her misery into death’s
embrace. She was crying as she was describing it and I was holding her in my
arms yet I could not fight back a twisted smirk at the irony of it all. She
arrives in Magnagora and she immediately encounters the one person who hates
her kind more than probably all of the Engine put together.

The Fold took her in, clothed her, fed her and she had sworn herself to the
Lady trialled by her own suffering and vowing to avenge it in Her name. Ahh
yes, redemption at the feet of the Lady for one such as she is more than
appropriate. The foolish Celestines have forged yet another tool of their own
undoing, how predicable.
…
The conversation somehow shifted to my own childhood next and since I had
business to attend to at the Presidio of the Damned I decided to take her with
me. A quick magical link with loyal Angkrag let us arrive there by dusk and as
we walked the Court of the Amaranth, marking our brows with the blood of the
Weeping Well ritualistically, I knew I am now somehow bound to this young one.
The cherry-blossom’s leaves whirling around us brought back a flood of
memories.

Jhagreer pouring a bucket of foul blood upon me, forever ruining my golden
hair, the Viscanti noblewomen curling their lips in distaste at my sight (after
all my Mother has ‘betrayed’ the Engine for Gaudiguch shortly before),
finding of a the near-dead child on Capricorn sphere and my banishment…
..

5th of Klangiary, 175 CoE

…
Something odd is happening to Sthai. Scales began to appear on her arm and they
fall off when she scratches. He says she could be re-shedding. There should be
no shedding! She peeled them all off herself… all of them…”Perhaps she is
shedding much like a snake. Curious, curious” he remarks. Damnation! It’s
not curious! Something gravely wrong is happening to my Handmaiden.
…

6th of Klangiary, 175 CoE

This has grown to be a major irritation. She is not feeling well and the peels
keep reappearing. Is she turning back into a Merian? She is worried too. I
should really take her to him, he’s the only Merian biology expert in
Magnagora.

7th of Klangiary, 175 CoE

Yesterday was… eventful. I could not bring myself to pen it down properly
earlier, I am still slightly shaken.

I took Sthai to him. By then the skin off her neck rubbed off and gills were
starting to peek through, she couldn’t breathe. Just as we arrived she began
to feel even worse, the gills were fluttering and her body convulsing. After a
quick diagnose he decided to operate right where we found him, on Earth.

What proceeded would be suitable for a book on surgery. I helped her to the
table and he… operated. Somehow I found myself having problems watching it as
I was holding her hand in my right one and my left on her forehead, quietly
chanting the healing Puella. I have grown dangerously fond of this girl and I
would not bear to lose such a Viscanti to the Merian shard again. That he was
annoyingly clinical, remarking the ‘wonders’ of what he saw and did to
himself had been of no help either.

"Oh yes. Yes indeed. Those movements are rather synonymous with the movement of
Merian gills when they are either submerged or choking. Tell me, with that cut,
does it make it a bit
easier to breathe?"

Get on with it! He cut out the gills and peeled some skin but that made no
difference. She started to leap in and out of consciousness, convulsing on the
table as the fins started to burst out of her skin. When conscious, she was
begging to be slain, forever to be put out of the disgrace to revert to her
hated state. When unconscious, she was writhing and wailing like one of the
undead.

Undead… that put the right idea into my mind. Having no other choice in face
of the obvious, sudden initiation of the reversion I decided to put my faith in
Nil and Urlach and to put her in the hands of the death. With extreme difficulty
I planted the seed into her from the Black Crypt and burnt her alive once he cut
off the fins….
…
In pain, in blood and in fire she has been redeemed and reverted, and arose
from the floor as a perfectly regular-looking Undead Viscanti. The tiredness
and fear taking its toll, I kissed him on the cheek, much to his surprise, and
whispered my thanks into his ear and we returned into the Guild Tower to
nurture her to new found form. A form for which she paid and which she
deserved.

21st of Kiani, 178 CoE

Today Sthai gave her first sermon, she made me proud. A throng of Magnagorans
attended and she faced them without fear in the Font of the Lady. She spoke
passionately and with conviction.

“An Engine, teeth and gears and steel... it is not altruism that guides us.
Do not mistake me. We fight as one, we grow as one. Apart, we are starving
wolves. Together, we are a pack. It is the bonds of teeth and blood that make
us. We are links in the chains, we are gears in the Engine!...”

Ah yes my dear Handmaiden, you have grown. You are no longer a Merian who
through a Ritual turned into a Viscanti. You are one of the true Viscanti,
alike one forged during the Taint Wars. You have paid your price in sweat and
blood.
…
He returned to be with me, in spite of what I have done, he still loves me…
Instead of returning in forty years he returned after four for he found,
miraculously, what he had been seeking - me…
...
I may have to revise my theory. Perhaps miracles do happen after all?