--- <div class="content-box-sheet-left"> <div img src="Burning House.jpg" class="internal-embed" > </div> </div> She knelt beside the still form of [[Lyria Felfang|the woman she loved]], trembling fingers leaving long soot trails on the pale, cold flesh as she caressed it. Some dim corner of her mind processed the sounds of the villagers voices calling jeeringly over the sound of the flames, as well as logging the acrid smell of burning hair and human flesh from the pile of bodies that littered the space in front of the door. *"They have come again."* [[Aria Morningstar|Aria]] thought to herself *"Like they always come. No matter how hard I work to serve and help the people around me, they can't see past my origins.* Tears stung the edges of her eyes, hot and sharp, obscuring her vision for a brief moment. The fire raged around her as the building she and Lyria had called home for the last year succumbed to the villagers torches. The heat and smoke around her seemed very far away, almost as if the fire itself were happening to someone else. A detached piece of her mind whispered that while her demonic heritage might offer some protection from the inferno, what she was experiencing was something else altogether. She considered, for the briefest of moments, simply laying down beside Lyria's body and allowing the fire to consume them both. To finally be done, free from the pain, from the hate and rejection that she had endured her entire life. To rest. But Lyria's last words echoed again in her mind, replaying themselves against her will. ***"Aria, my love, I am sorry to leave you when you need me most. Promise me you will do what you must to go on, and keep me with you always..."*** Something very cold, and very hard formed in the center of her being where her heart had so recently been. She took this core of ice and into it she poured all of her anger, and her pain, her despair and the shattered hopes she for a future now forever beyond her reach. She gathered all of these pieces together and she wrapped them in a will stronger than adamantine. She forged herself anew in the crucible of her loss and wrapped her heart in an armor so strong and so thick that it might never again see the light of day. ***"So be it."*** Aria spoke softly, accepting the path now laid out in front of her. In another life, had Aria been a priest, or a [[Cleric]] perhaps, she might have been able to call upon the power of some god or another. She would have cried out to a merciful heaven, and begged for the intervention of a loving god to pull her loved one back from the beyond and restored to true life. But Aria was a [[Wizard]], and while she knew many of the esoteric mysteries of the world, and could wield arcane might beyond the comprehension of the ignorant fools who had brought her to this place, she had no way to restore what had been taken from her. In truth, even had she known the spells required to perform such an act of arcane mastery, she had neither the time nor the materials that such and undertaking could require. But that did not mean that she did not have pathways left to her, only that she would need to use... [[Animate Ghoul|other options.]] The decision made, Aria gently pressed the tips of her fingers against forehead of Lyria's corpse. Her mind reached out, feeling the empty vessel before her. Her mouth formed the necessary shapes and the litany of words spilled out. Aria pulled the energy she needed around her, wrapping herself in it like a familiar coat. Reaching inside herself, Aria severed a small sliver from her soul. With this piece of pure arcane energy, Aria opened a conduit to the most abundant nearby source for the power her spell would need, provided by the very inferno created to consume her. As the last words slipped from her mouth, a pulse of necrotic green energy gathered around them. she felt the spell race forth from her reaching out through the body before her and down into the vast unlimitable darkness of the utter abyss. Like a vast clawed hand her spell reached into the land beyond life, stretching forth until it latched at last upon the source of its quest. Kicking, screaming, and clawing it ripped the entity from the darkness and thrust it until the intended vessel. Chains and fetters of arcane power shackled the newly minted creature, binding into the Lyria's corpse. The body spasmed as the newly inhabiting will felt the chains forged by Aria's spell wrap around its very essence. Aria bit back a sob when she... no... ***It*** opened it's eyes. *"No..."* Aria thought, *"Her eyes were... they were...* She fumbled in her memory only for the information she sought to slip through her fingers, dancing a step ahead. *"Well... they sure as hell were not **Red**"* she thought to herself <div class="content-box-sheet-right"> <div img src="Lyria In Front of The House.jpg" align="center" class="internal-embed" name="profile" > </div> </div>