As I am between computers at the moment, I'm putting this up here so I can access it from multiple machines. Read it if you want, but it's really just my own silliness.
-Host-
Name: Adrian Lawley
Sex: Male
Age: 32
Build: tall and lanky
Hair: dyed brown, straightened, short ponytail (naturally curly and red)
Eyes: warm brown
Skin tone: pale and covered in freckles
Profession: struggling journalist
Religion: Catholic
Personality: pushy and overly curious. Talking about religion makes him uncomfortable, since he tries to pretend he doesn't really believe in his childhood Catholicism but will sneak in a prayer or two when he's worried. Lives to make his family proud of him, but without becoming a priest or marrying a nice Irish girl to raise a family. Is afraid of taking risks, but pushes himself to do them anyway. Has poor judgement of situations and character.
-God-
Name: Hanan
Influence: Assassination
Sex: Female
Age: Immortal
Build: small and well toned
Hair: brown so dark it's almost black shot with white
Eyes: hard gray, circled with kohl
Skin tone: warm brown, dusky
Profession: mercy
Appearance: wrapped in cloth from head to toe, only her eyes, wisps of hair, hands, and feet can be seen. The cloth may be an extension of her: while usually black, brown, and dark red, it may also be tan or on occassion white.
Personality: terse and susinct, she doesn't like to talk much. She prefers action to debate, service to freedom. She will serve Destruction without question, seeing herself as his tool. Should Harmodious go back to Creation, however... she may seek another lord to obey.
---
"Hanan... doesn't that mean 'mercy'?" Adrian asked out loud, not used to talking to the goddess in his head yet.
That is what I am. she said quietly, as always speaking in a language he didn't know but could somehow understand.
"But you're the goddess of assassination! How is that mercy?"
A soft whisper of thought brushed his mind, her disembodied version of a sigh. Destruction holds the world at his mercy, does he not? I am that kind touch.
He shook his head, wishing idly that if he repeated the action enough she would be dislodged from his brain. "You are death, not mercy."
I am death to who my lord wishes. I am pain to those who cross him. I am fear to those who plot his downfall. I am a check, a balance, a silent and faceless blade.
Impressed by her rare and sudden speech, Adrian mumbled under his breath. "You're willful murder."
The most honest kind. A smoky whorl brushed his mental cheek softly, with a hard attempt at giving comfort. And you, my dear, are my first assignment.
---
Hanan was named by her father, who hoped to find favor from whichever powerful man he sold his daughter to when she was old enough. Her mother agreed, hoping that the name would find Allah looking in mercy upon her child as well as her husband. Hanan simply hoped her future husband would let her go to the well as often as she did when she was young. She loved the water.
At twelve, two years before she would have been married, the young girl met a man at the well who stole her bride price. She was not a widow nor a heathen, and so she had no excuse not to be a virgin on her wedding night. After he hit her so hard her eye swelled shut for three days, Hanan crawled home to her mother's arms. Her father was furious, his mercy gone, and dragged her to the palace to be dealt with by the prince. Pretty even beaten by her attacker and her sire, one of the prince's advisors bought her for nearly half of what she would have made in her marriage bed, and handed her over to his eunchs to be healed and washed. When she was better, he handed her a knife and taught her how to kill.
It was wrong to smile at a man's face and twist a blade in his belly at the same time, Hanan knew from reading the Koran, but the prince's advisor had bought her life and she felt she owed it to him. He said she was pretty but never touched her, his tastes running in other directions. The servants were nice to her, and since she generally seduced the men she was sent to kill she got to revenge the outrage that had brought her here again and again. Allah would have thought it wrong, but she had learned that there were few mercies in this world and none of them were meant for her. She never took delight in death, growing as cold as the well stones instead of hot and angry like the desert sun. At twenty she was wrapped in rich cloth and sent away into the cold northern lands, a deadly present for a king.
She killed as she had always killed, pretending feeling until she was close enough to end the life her keeper asked of her. Perhaps she had grown too cold, too unconcerned with whether she lived or died. She had never miscalculated like this before, so perhaps it was because the pale men were really the inhuman devils the common people thought they were - either way the poison she fed the king did not kill him, and she was sentenced to die as a witch. To avoid war, her prince had claimed she was a servant of the devil, and so not acting under his orders. Stripped of her warm garments and tossed in a cell made of ice, she shivered through the days preceding her death. It was kind of them to let her freeze so: it made her welcome the fire that would char her bones.
Hanan knew that Allah had sent angels to those he held dear, to speak to them in their times of need and tell them not to worry. She did not expect one to come to her: she had broken the sixth law willfully and many times over. She deserved her firey fate in this world and the world after. What mercy there was to be had, from men and from God, would not be wasted on her. But the name her father had given her to tempt fate's kindness to his side twisted on her yet again. The creature that came to her had wings, but they were not the marks of an angel. He was surrounded by a dark, terrible glory, and while she knew as she shivered in his presence she knelt before a power it was not one of heaven. When he touched her hair the cold lanced through her, the biting pain stealing the breath from her throat. She could feel her heart shiver and stall, ceasing to pound without a struggle. A peaceful death she did not deserve.
"You have one of my children, little fleshling. Give her back to me."
Fire ate her, sharp white fire, and she opened her mouth to scream. Her back arched as her skin blackened and sloughed off, but no sound came. She was consumed by pain, her brain still alive and feeling, but the beast that wrapped her in this flame had already killed everything else. Her soft brown eyes opened wide as they boiled away, she watched a smile curve across black lips and then saw nothing at all. Had she been whole, she would have watched in horror as her killer reached a casual hand into the ashes of her bones and retrieved a jewel dusted with the powder. Blowing her remains off of the green and orange eye, he tossed the treasure in his pocket and went away. Destruction did not know how this useless thing had managed to get one of his precious gods embedded in its body, but the jewel had clearly done her no good. Just as it should be.
Still, no harm done. A little human mercy couldn't harm his minion trapped in a gem.
...hadn't the stone been gold?
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Copper Beeches: Perri Indiya's Tally of the Horde
A quick jotting down of what's up with me OOC and IC, as well as my vast array of pets.
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