A fascinating new world.

[Jade Harley]

Writing with the NPC Prime Kanaya Maryam with permission of Brother Devon!

Death has been very kind to Kanaya Maryam— or, rather, undeath has. What excellent companions are happiness and good fortune as she slips between the lands of the dreaming dead and the waking world!

This has been an employment of the unsophisticated human concept known as sarcasm, if you weren’t certain. Kanaya is actually rather downtrodden, but this setback only serves to fuel her ire at the cape-wearing bastard strutting about in his fancy-shmancy chateau in the Pale Moors.

Her latest attempt to breach the fortified walls of Count Dracula’s gloomy fortress had been all for naught. The other undead— the brainless, hopelessly stupid and complacent ones,— had been a very inattentive audience as she went about delivering the latest rousing speech she had painstakingly compiled for the occasion.

“My fellows in undeath,” she began, tone as somber as the grave as they shambled about her with rancid, maggoty, and pockmarked skin sagging— and occasionally squirming,— off of their limbs. “For too long we have—“

She actually was not even given the luxury of finishing her opening statement, for it was at this juncture that a clammy and disgustingly cold hand with hideously cracked brown fingernails and yellowed joints had seized her about the neck and in one swift, merry-go-round movement that cut her speech off short with a sandpaper-y hiss, snapped her neck.

Kanaya believes that Dracula is likely just making fun of her plight for the allegiance of his Secondary hordes now. It is no matter— she will eventually emerge victorious. He cannot hide from her trusty lipstick forever, even if the only glimpses she has caught of him are of the furling sweep of his cape.

She reforms in the Nexus without much aplomb, her red skirt impeccably unstained. If she had been rejuvenated as she originally had been, fresh from her very first death outside of the Omniverse, she might seem to be a little worse for wear— a gory hole torn through her midsection with jade-coloured liquid singed almost into shrapnel-dark edges all around, the bits of her spine torn asunder and copious amounts of blood slogging down her shirt. As it is, however, Kanaya’s neck is notably untwisted and there is a fresh sheen of black gloss painting her lips.

At the very least, she can safely say that Omni knows a thing or two about style.

The Nexus is as white as her rainbow drinker skin, which glows with an unnatural intensity not unlike the steady radiance of a light bulb. Her yellow eyes, almost cattish in the slim quality of the dark pupils within, flutter as lightly as a moth’s wings. Two slender fangs peek over the plump portion of her lips, the elegant curve of her asymmetrically-aligned horns mirroring the muscular curves of her torso and hips.

She is little more than seven sweeps old, and there is still some baby fat left that gathers persistently about her cheeks. She has also died roughly seven times, discounting the one time before her entrance into the Omniverse. This is not unusual— most of the children from her species must learn to fight, many of them perishing during their developmental sweeps as they begin to establish themselves according to their caste. Fortuitously, Kanaya was one of the few to arise again from such an untimely death.

The familiar light weight of the tube of lipstick between her claws reassures her that this sort of cross-dimensional allocation of her person has to have meaning. That her enemy started out just as she did, and that she will eventually surpass him with any luck. She will preside over the whole of the Moors and heal the damage wrought to the settlement of Darkshire, as a proper Sylph should.

After resurrecting in the Nexus with an odd, convolutedly-shaped construct in place of the Fountain of Infinity, the jade-blooded troll had set off at a steady pace for the dreary Moors gate, her flat-bottomed shoes sliding lightly with soft paps at every step. However, she barely gets about a minute out before something in her peripheral vision stalls her progress.

Movement— a mishmash of brown and orange and appalling white leather draws her attention, and Kanaya’s eyes alight upon yet another occupier of the Nexus moseying around in an easterly direction, about the size of a bright orange crayon sitting upon a far shelf. The vertically-aligned shape slowly recedes into the distance, and she knows that even at a brisk walking pace it will take her half an hour to catch up.

She pauses, hesitant, leaning more towards her previous destination with a troubled pucker manifesting between her brows. This other person, most likely a Prime, is headed towards Camelot. While Kanaya has never thought to investigate any of the other verses, so occupied with the sorrow-laden Moors as she is, she recognizes an opportunity to gain an easy ally when she sees it. If she seeks to associate with them, however, she will need to be quick in approaching them before the Kingdom takes note of her presence.

In truth, Kanaya Maryam has become something of a meddler. She prefers the term revolutionary, but the less formal title certainly fits. It is a grand improvement from “Fussy Fangs”, in any case. Whatever her titular designation, Kanaya is disrupting the balance of things that has held for so long in a verse. No matter how dangerous and worthy of displacement Count Dracula may be, the Kingdom might become suspicious of her engagements, and the Empire equally so. It would be best for her to exercise caution.

Smoothing down her long-sleeved shirt, the jade green Virgo symbol swooping elegantly across its front, Kanaya is momentarily disquieted by the slight dip her hand makes into the fabric over a particular place that is located a short space above her abdomen. It is strange, how the old wounds she received before arriving here have not been healed as any of the fresher ones have. The burnt out portion of her stomach feels strange with the pull of fabric tugging ceaselessly against it with each step she takes.

It takes her a while to reach her quarry potential acquaintance, and she is almost a little surprised when she does. His hair is long-ish and splays haphazardly over his shoulders, dark brown in colour, and his t-shirt clashes terribly with his white leather jacket. Kanaya barely refrains from cringing, but still curls her lip a little while the human’s back is still turned. He appears to be regarding the gate to Camelot, an almost studious attention in his bluish eyes.

Kanaya clears her throat softly so as not to startle this stranger into an unwanted quarrel, smiling in a way that largely conceals her fangs from view. “Hello, traveler.”

The fellow turns with a slight start, glancing pointedly down at the ground before up into her shining face, as if he had been expecting someone much shorter to be addressing him. Angling her head so that her horns tip in an acknowledging nod towards this stranger, Kanaya moves to stand beside him with a rustling of her skirts. She notes that he is a few inches taller than herself, excluding her horns from the equation.

With a slight and unassuming hum, she, too, looks towards the gate. Or, more unambiguously, the scouts that meander about it with glints of steel and gold playing about them in subtle rays of implied administration.

“You are considering a visit to Camelot, then?” she asks, canting her head to the side. The dark curl that usually falls across her forehead brushes over her eyes, and she blows it away with a short, exasperated huff before continuing to speak. “I wouldn’t go there, if I were you. It’s awfully uninteresting, at least after a while, especially when you consider the Pale Moors and all it has to offer by way of mystery and intrigue.”

He peers at her more closely, now. Either he is simply trying to figure her out or he is interested in what she has to say. Whichever way the pendulum strikes, it is a significant development that Kanaya latches onto in order to make her bid for the questing partner that she so dearly needs.

“Especially in the heretofore isolated, unexplored-by-living-eyes realm of Count Dracula.”

The bearded man stares at her some more, seemingly aghast, but she senses that he’s an explorer or scholar of some kind. Kanaya raises one precisely-shaped brow, her voice taking on a less airy tenor that sounds almost fraught with doubt. She really needs to convince this guy to join her side. She isn't sure she can handle another solo mission, especially if it ends just as sourly as this last one has.

“The verse is crawling with undead monsters, what more could you possibly need to hear? We will be liberating a fair portion of the land from nightly terrors and sorrow. A new Prime such as yourself could be a great source of aid to the poor citizens of Darkshire, as well as to all of the lowly undead who are being led astray.”

Apparently he needs to know a good deal more, if this guy’s expression is anything to go by. Kanaya’s other eyebrow ascends towards her hairline to be with its comrade, her jade-tinged eyes wide and beseeching.

“Well? Are you interested or are you not?”