Stream of Unconsciousness (Hypnovamp Hyperfixation Powerhours)

1. Zedra isn't her birth name, it's completely made up. Her birth name was probably Zoraida, or similar, but she hasn't used it in ages and probably wouldn't respond to it at all.
2. Nicomedes is a tough bastard to kill permanently and his girlfriend regularly fuckin murders him in bed. He is incredibly into it.
3. Kablooey has a heart defect and has nearly died a couple times because she got stupid high and sent herself into cardiac arrest.
4. Naenia had a sister, and was buried with a necklace from a matched set. It was enough to trigger a small amount of memory, which allowed her to remain slightly sane when she came back.

 

Hey

hey

hey guys

friends

Ask me shit about Lia and Lexi. Meme me. Idk I just love these two dorks so much.

 

Favorite takeout orders?
Who kills the bugs?

 

Lexi's like a cat; he doesn't get people food.

Lia doesn't like getting the same thing more than once and is very adventurous. She will default to Thai curries if she can't be arsed, though.

Lia kills the bugs, not that they get that many. Lexi is very friendly to spiders. Lia is very not.

Oh hm I did this before and don't want to do repeats, so just those two + Caelia

-Unscented soap, mostly, and faintly of something sharp and a little sweet
-Kind of like an orgy in a rose garden. Strong florals over something base and animal. Faintly of blood. A little too bright, almost unreal
-Metal, leather, alcohol, fresh sweat

 

if they had a daemon, what would it be and why? any of your ocs

 

Other key players you'd have no way of guessing (also a way of collecting these characters and their deets):

Dalena, founder of the hunters, secret vampire, made by the Daianera: smoke, blood, leather, metal, dragon's blood
Lina Keriell, primary healer and head of the Keriell hunter family: sage, pine, cold- kind of the smell of a clear, cold day in the forest
Elling, founder of his line, maker of Dionne, made by the First: bay rum and Victorian cologne
Iva, founder of his line, made by the First, oldest living of the First's: old bone and blood, vegetal rot
Liborio, founder of his line, made by Iva: bone marrow, black cherries
Daianera, founder of her line, made by the First: soft, powdery florals, quenching oil, steel and blood
The First, first of the vampires: Never smells the same twice, mixing and contradictory.
Charilaos, founder of his line, made by the First, maker of Caelia: narcissus, walnut and poppy seed oil, old catgut

Feel free to ask shit about these guys + Caelia too.

Lia has an asp. Pretty, but very obviously dangerous.
Oh hm. Lexi probably has a great big ol' spider. Something bright. Maybe an orbweaver. I'd be more specific but then I'd have to look up pictures and I am nooot up for that right now. Unlike Lia he has something that people assume is dangerous but is actually harmless. (Unless, of course, you're prey.)

Though I imagine the soul fuckery that goes on with vampires means they don't have them after turning. I've actually only picked up daemon stuff via osmosis.

Laverna has an egret; pretty, pale, sea bird. Looks more delicate than it is.
Zedra has a tit because I think it's funny. Also because they're very adaptable.
Nico has something unmistakably predatory and very scary, though I haven't decided what.
Gale has a cougar. She does not appreciate jokes about this fact.
Naenia had a tokay gecko, because they're noisy and cute.

 

I mentioned some of this in chat but

there's psy, which is innate- even humans have very, very weak psy, but some people are born with stronger and are full-blown psychics. All psychics have an aura sense (they can 'feel' the relative power of psychics, mages, and supernatural creatures) but usually only have one other ability. Hunters split psychic ability into three categories: sensor types (telepaths, telempaths, psychometrics, pre/postcognitives and similar), biomanipulators (healers, mostly, but also some who can use their psy to temporarily strengthen themselves or block pain), and kinetics. That isn't the exhaustive list of psychic types, or even categories, but it's a good overview. Psychic abilities are inheritable, and usually within a category- Lia's a telempath but both her parents were telepaths; her family, the Ciura, are all sensors and predominantly telepaths, but like her they're known to sometimes throw telempaths or psychometrics.

When a vampire is made their psy is boosted and rewritten; they lose their innate ability (if they had one) in order to feed their vampiric psy. They retain an aura sense, but mostly they gain the ability to trance, which is unique to them. Triggered by eye contact (only briefly lasts after contact is broken) or a small amount of the vampire's blood (usually lasts a few hours at most), it puts the target into a pleasant, pliant state. A tranced human doesn't feel the pain from being fed on, most actually find it very pleasant, and they can be given Commands. For most vampires Commands can only be very simple, and not especially long-lasting. Older, stronger vampires can give slightly more complex or long-term Commands, but there remains a limit beyond the trance. The exception is the ability to make a human forget- usually what happened while under trance, but a skilled and powerful vampire can also excise memories of a period before or after trance, or can leave certain memories without having to delete the whole period. A Command also can't be directly harmful to the person tranced- a vampire can't ask someone to kill or injure themself, with the exception of Commands that facilitate feeding. So, a vampire can ask someone to expose their throat, but not to slit it. They can also Command them to do things that are indirectly harmful. A human with strong psy can sometimes either shake off trance or fight off the initial attempt; most hunters receive training to do so.

Magecraft is learned, and not actually entirely separate from psy; a stronger psychic easily makes a stronger mage, though a trained psychic may struggle with learning magic just because they're used to working with certain patterns- it's a lot like being a native speaker of a romance language learning a different romance language; a lot of things are the same and you feel you know the rules, but enough things are different that sometimes you trip up. Magecraft doesn't require strong psy, however, and a weak-psy human can become a strong mage if they put effort in. There's a lot of overlap between magic and psy, and they're often just different means of achieving the same result. Healing and certain types of kinetics are more common among mages because they can be specifically learned.

Most mages have fucked off to do their own thing and have their own enclaves. Unless a mage is looking for a student it's hard to find a teacher, so single-talent psychics are much more common. Magecraft is unaltered by vampirism, though with the exception of one line there are only a handful of mage vampires.

So what the fuck is Lexi's deal?

Psy and magecraft are kind of like AM/FM radio. They're different, but they mostly do the same thing and are accessed in similar-but-not-identical ways. Lexi's a bluetooth, or a wifi signal. He's operating on an entirely different frequency under a different ruleset. He reads as being weak psy mostly because his weird third thing is causing a degree of signal interference, but he can do things (almost) no other vampire can. He can't trance someone without them letting him in, but that only counts for the first time- once he's in he has a kind of blueprint of their mind, and no amount of shielding can keep him out the next time he goes to trance them. He also won't require eye contact or blood exchange for any subsequent trances- they just have to be near enough to sense. Frequently trancing someone slightly alters them to create a sort of back door, where he stops neatly sidestepping their defenses and just walks right in. He has the potential to be very, very scary with this. Fortunately, once he realized what he could do he started working to disentangle from his donors and leaving them unaltered as much as he can. The exception is Lia, because being able to trance her quickly might help to keep her alive. Lexi's trance also lasts much longer- until he chooses to let go, or the target gets too far from him- regardless of eye contact or blood, and he can give longterm Commands a normal vampire can't.

There have been a few people with this, but they mostly read as very weak-psy humans unless they either get turned into a vampire and are assumed to be weak (often ending up dead for it), or they get picked up by a mage.

The First actually has all three, they're just so incredibly powerful that the signal interference doesn't block their psy and they can trance normally. Most are either unaware of this or assume that their extra abilities are just because. Well. They're the First. There's not a whole lot that's standard about them.

 

A note about lines:

Being turned creates a sort of psychic resonance going up the chain- every vampire has some influence from their maker, and their maker's maker, and so on, every vampire has some influence from the First, and whoever the First turned that led to them. Most lines are founded by someone the First turned; being second generation means getting hit by a major psy boost because of that psychic resonance, and the First only turns people with already fairly strong psy after what happened to their firstmade. So second-gen vamps are all founders of their own lines, and their own psychic resonance rings down to all their descendants. That resonance also alters their abilities somewhat- getting tranced by one of Iva's line is harder to resist even for hunters who are trained to do so, but it doesn't block pain as completely. Daianera's trance is still analgesic, but it doesn't cloud the mind quite so much. Caelia's trance doesn't just kill pain, it drives up other sensations.

Sometimes though someone further down the line will create their own resonance, often because they had strong psy to begin with but also often because of some conflict with the one who turned them or their line founder. Their resonance overrides the original, and they form their own line. This is a 'true' founding, where there is a meaningful difference on the supernatural side of things. A line may also branch into a new one because a member has gone off to do their own thing, and their actions and behaviors break from the 'canon' of their line. Dionne was exiled from Elling's line and turned several people after the fact, but they weren't considered part of Elling's line even though Dionne wasn't strong enough to override the resonance. The distinction there is more political. Similarly, if a founder dies then the line is 'inherited' by whoever's strongest, and may split between several inheritors in a process that is both political and supernatural; once a vampire dies the resonance weakens, and the resonance of the new founders will come to prominence.

Dalena is an odd case, as she's considered the founder of her own line despite having never turned anyone. She's strong enough to have a greater resonance than Daianera, and has had something of an ideological split, but she's both the founder and only member of her own line. She formed the hunters, instead.

 

"What happened to the First's firstmade?"

They were comparatively weak wrt psy and the process of getting turned by the First kind of uh. Scrambled their brain like an egg. They immediately went on to turn twelve others, who were similarly pan-fried, and then the thirteen of them turned on each other and the First put down the survivors.

The First was very unhappy about the whole incident and it was several decades until they turned Iva.

 

Lines have 'canons' which aren't always strict rules so much as patterns for who gets brought in, but it's always notable when a new member of a line breaks canon.

• The First only turns people with strong enough psy to not get eggy-scramble-brain from being second generation. Other than that they turn people from all dispositions and walks of life. Being tranced by the First is overwhelming, they're too powerful to really be gentle with it. Most people will remember a trance unless the vampire specifically Commands them to forget, but being tranced by the First always results in memory loss.
• Iva's line... doesn't turn victims. Every one of them fought the turn in some manner, though that doesn't mean that all of them were unwilling- a willing turn just doesn't take it laying down. His line's trance doesn't completely block pain, though it does reduce it. Iva was turned to save him after a nearly successful attempt on his life for reasons neither he nor the First are willing to share.
• Liborio's line are all touched by death. Liborio himself has never turned a woman, but he will allow them into his line. He's just kind of hopelessly gay and all of his turns were in an attempt to preserve what he found beautiful. His is sometimes considered one of the warrior lines, but that's not entirely accurate; his mostly look for a strong will and desire to continue living despite otherwise hopeless situations. Liborio just turned a lot of handsome soldiers dying on hopeless battlefields in his early days. The line is goth as fuck, and their trance feels pretty good and kind of headrush-y, but has a harsh comedown. Basically mimics an adrenaline rush.
• Daianera's line are nicknamed Furies and hers is actually one of the warrior lines. Unlike Liborio, she is strict about the gender exclusivity of her line; twice someone in her line has turned a man and Daianera killed both the new turn and their maker. Nobody's attempted it with an enby yet. She recruits from women who fight, but not necessarily were trained to do so, and 'fighting' has become less literal over time; she went from turning women taking up family members' arms in defense of their home to suffragettes and protestors as much as shieldmaidens and soldiers. Her line's trance still kills pain, but doesn't cloud the mind like that of other lines; a tranced target is much less pliable unless Commanded.
• Dalena hasn't turned anyone; she instead ritually binds every hunter to her when they take their oath. She also Commands everyone she trances to forget the encounter, so no one knows what her trance feels like.
• Elling seeks near perfection. His is considered one of the artist lines, though he doesn't limit his idea of excellence to artistic endeavors; anyone who's just real fucking good at what they do might be considered. His line's trance is... sharper. It feels kind of like a 'creative' high; a combination of focus and abstraction where the physical world seems distant and muted but one's inner world seems more real and clear. They may have inspired the leannan sidhe myth, as many of the donors they keep are creative or driven types who seek the high of even a brief trance for inspiration- literally an exchange of life for it.
• Charilaos is one of the true artist lines; they turn artists exclusively. They aren't known for much else, but Charilaos himself is known for being a real piece of work. His treatment and accidental turning of Caelia is what boosted her vampiric psy and caused her to become founder of her own line, in addition to making her the rancid can of pickled fish assholes she is today. His line's trance is slightly euphoric, but someone tranced is much more pliable and they can stretch the limits of Commands farther than other lines.
  
• Caelia recruits mostly from ex-lovers, and everyone she's turned she was in some way interested in. Most of her line follow the same pattern, which makes the line an absolute oversexualized clusterfuck of relationship drama. There are two main groups of members: those who are still hopelessly in love (or 'in love,' there have not been a lot of healthy relationships involved) with their maker, and the ones who want nothing to do with their maker or, often, the rest of the line. Caelia has a thing for artists, so they make up a good number of her line, but the only canon is that they're in some way attractive. That doesn't necessarily mean physical beauty, though many of them are, but could include a general charisma instead, or an intense passion. Her line's trance kills pain but drives up other tactile stimulation.
• There's a mage line I haven't named the founder of yet. Turns exclusively mages, but many- almost all- aren't from the mage enclaves but instead trained by the vampires of the line and turned upon finishing their apprenticeship. One of the more reclusive lines, but not as isolated as mortal mages.

There are other lines and sub-lines, and a number of dead lines that have been 'inherited' by others and branched into new lines, but these are a combination of the most populous and relevant to Serene/Obscene.

Fun fact! Dionne was from Elling's line. She was turned because she was a serial killer but like. A really good one. She got herself exiled from the line and the line's territory, but one of the arguments for letting her live was that she was still working on the perfection of her craft. Her craft being murder, natch. Dionne (and a group of vamps she either adopted or turned herself) was the one who very nearly killed Lia, prompting Lexi to save her

Another fun fact! The unnamed sadist who introduced Lia to the concept of aftercare was also of Elling's line

Terminology: A line was discussed above; a sub-line is a line whose founder wasn't made by the First. Legacy is... a chain of makers that leads to a certain point? So, Lexi could be described as one of Charilaos's legacy, because he was made by Caelia who was made by Charilaos. It's a highly contextual term and usually comes up in conversations of responsibility. "Because Jako is of Caelia's legacy she needs to clean up his mess." There's at least one generational gap between Jako and Caelia; she didn't turn him, but she turned someone who did (or turned someone who turned someone who did, or...) Every vampire is one of the First's legacy, and the phrase is sometimes used to invoke comradery between vampires, especially vampires of different lines.

 

*puts this in my mouth and eats it*

 

Yes sweet validation

Seriously feel free to ask me shit about this 'verse and the people in it I am hyperfixating like a motherfuck

 

Listen i wish to trade weird Vampire ideas like you don't even know [hurgles]

Are there weird lines with freakier powers than the rest? No powers at all? Does the turning influence people's character?

 

Most of the difference between lines are their canons and trance. Iva's line tend to be stronger- there's a theory that the fight boosts their psy during the change, which is backed up by cases like Caelia's, where she was unremarkable psy-wise as a mortal and ended up with a strong enough resonance to form her own line and have a pretty strong trance. The trance itself follows line patterns, but individuals can have stronger/weaker trances- not everyone of her line has Caelia's ability for memory editing, for instance.

The mage line are considered pretty weird though.

Vampiric psy is universal, but I think the firstmade might have not had it. At least, not enough to actually use- it was fractured and unfocused, and they didn't have the presence of mind to direct those shards.

Being turned doesn't change personality too much, though a weaker member may pick up some resonance from stronger members of their lineage and especially from their founder. They do become predators though, and that changes their thinking to a degree. How much it changes someone depends on the individual and their control. Lexi didn't change much (though internally he struggles sometimes, especially being around Lia when she's hurt or scared) because he's used to keeping in control, examining every emotion and impulse before he does anything. Dionne didn't change at all because she was already an absolute monster who saw people as prey- the only difference is she started eating them.

 

Small bits of Serene/Obscene I've posted places. Most of these are unedited

Spoiler: Meet Lexi

He was surprisingly plain, for a vampire. Not unattractive; Liadan had never seen an outright unattractive vampire. Something about the change smoothed out their features, left even the weakest of them with a lethal grace she’d always been a little weak to. He was a Hollywood sort of plain, features a little sharp but face the sort that could fit into a crowd easily if you stopped paying attention. Rich brown hair kept short except for a few long locks, mostly on the left side of his head that made his hair look like a birdwing, and lighter brown eyes she couldn’t even begin to read. His face was a mask but his eyes shone with concern, and when she teased out a shard of her awareness and reached for him she found-

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

Spoiler: A Shade

"Please don’t touch my-” Too late, he heard the rustle of paper as the hunter lifted one of his notes off the coffee table. He turned his head to see which she had taken, and was distracted by her response. Her breathing had been labored from the pain and her healing lung, but it came short and heavy now as her heart went frantic and the air filled with the scent of fear despite the size of the room. He didn’t keep anything too identifiable on the papers he took out of the office, but someone sufficiently clever would be able to figure out some of the names and places mentioned.

The hunter, it seemed, was sufficiently clever. More than that; she looked from the paper to Lexi, pupils ringed with white. “You’re a shade.” Her voice shook more than she could control, but the accusation still got through. Vampires played an elaborate game with their unlife, and while that game itself had rules each line had their own as well. As lines grew their founders were unable to keep tabs on every vampire under them- thus, shades. They were, depending on the individual and the line, enforcers, secret police, spies, and wardens. No one was ever publicly announced as a shade, though in the less subtle lines the one who held the role was painfully obvious, and the role of ‘shade’ existed only as a myth. Many vampires didn’t believe in shades as shades, subtle and shadowy, and thought the lines who kept theirs secret simply didn’t have anything but vicious darwinism keeping their members in check. Even fewer hunters believed in shades as a concept at all.

This hunter, who had fearlessly snapped and growled and complained the whole time he held her life in his hands, did believe- and it terrified her.

And from one of the side stories (pre-Lexi, Lia has a one night stand with a sadist vamp who introduces her to aftercare):

Spoiler: one line but it's funny

An eager vampire could be hell on a wardrobe.

Spoiler: derailing sexytimes to explain a hunter suicide custom

This time, despite briefly lingering on her breasts and inside of her thighs, he moved with deliberate purpose as he searched for more knives. He briefly released her from the threat of his fangs as he moved even lower to check her boots, and finding nothing he slipped his fingers in the laces, working them loose as he looked back up at her. “Only one blade?”

Bastard actually seemed concerned. It was a long practice, one old enough that even vampires knew it; when a hunter was ready to die they hunted with only a single knife. It gave them the chance to take a vamp down with them, and the ability to go down fighting. “I’m not hunting tonight.” She wasn’t- she had come to the party to watch, marking out targets for future hunts, until she had gotten distracted by the monster before her. She had a terrible talent for identifying people who could hurt her like she needed, and she didn’t want to pass up the opportunity. Especially if it risked their next encounter happening when she was on a hunt.

Spoiler: Now we're getting to the good parts

She couldn’t argue with that, especially as he demonstrated she was right; he knew exactly how she needed to be hurt. He played her nerves like an instrument, expertly applying bruises, scratches, fangless bites across her body. It was minimally sexual except for the attention he gave to her breasts but Lia was squirming and wet, beautifully caught between twenty years of drilled-in survival instinct telling her to pull away from the pain and the way it left her feeling clear and real, the way it brought everything into sharp focus.

And then he dug his fingers into a healing bruise on her shoulder, a fall that had set off a poorly healed, much older injury and her vision flashed white, her ears rang, she felt scoured and empty, gorgeously hollow. She must have screamed because he stopped, rocked back to give her space as he looked down at her. “Too much?”

It took a second for her to remember how to speak, and she dropped her shielding to reach her power out first, felt the solidity of his own shields before he accepted the unspoken offer. “Too much,” she managed to breathe, “is never enough.”

He managed the sudden rush of emotion well considering she didn’t have the presence of mind for fine control, but when his eyes reopened after a long, slow blink they pinned her with a new, more intense hunger. “A telempath.” It was somewhere between a growl and a purr, the weight of it radiating up her spine. “Well, that makes things easier. And more interesting.”

Almost experimentally he traced the sharp edge of a nail along a scar across her ribs, one that the nerves had healed oversensitive instead of half numb. This time when she moaned he shuddered faintly; pain didn’t carry across, not as anything more than an abstract, but pleasure sure as fuck did.

Spoiler: pls aftercare, folx

“What.” It wasn’t even a question, barely a word, just a baffled sound as he leaned in to lick at the deeper scratches with a tenderness utterly unlike everything that came before. His head raised and he gave her a searching look, searingly gentle, drawing out another confused “what” as he pulled her against his chest.

“This is not the first time you’ve let someone take you apart like this.” The hand in her hair brought a different kind of pain, something sick and tight in her throat, a burning behind her eyes. “Has anyone bothered to put you back together, after?”

“I did.”

 

Where the fuck is Blusridge City?

On the coast in the Pacific Northwest, roughly in the same area as Port Orford, Oregon

Why the fuck is there a major city there?

Because I didn't want to deal with a Real Actual City.

Because fae.

'Fae' is a very, very blanket term for any creature that meets certain requirements. Namely: they do not exist fully in our world; they may not necessarily have a tie to nature but are tied to a specific area, region, or feature, which typically serves as a gateway to the other world they also reside in; they operate on their own moral code, which is internally consistent if alien to humans; they are intensely territorial. While not a requirement, often even a single fae is brain-breakingly powerful and many subgroups of fae are social, which can mean anywhere from a dozen powerhouses to literal hundreds to contend with if you disrupt their territory.

This world has a lot less issues with things like deforestation and habitat destruction, because a lot of would-be-vulnerable areas are claimed by the fae and people have learned better. Fae do not fuck around, and there's a reason the plural noun for fae is "raid."

So there are a lot of subtle changes to the geography of the world and how things are laid out, to accommodate for the fact that some places are just flat off limits to humans.

Wait, does that mean people know about supernatural shit?

Yeah. Well. Sort of. People definitely know about the fae, and things like "Dam project cancelled because mermaids" are a lot less absurd headlines than in ours. They're the only ones people absolutely, 100% know about and deal with on the regular.

Mages are known to have been a thing in antiquity, but with time they've grown more reclusive and the average human believes they've died out.

Psychics are a known phenomenon, but for the average person knowing a psychic is kind of like knowing someone who's double jointed. It's neat and kind of weird, but not a whole lot more. Most psychics outside of certain organizations (like the hunters) are either barely trained or not at all.

Vampires are... sort of known? People have the awareness that vampires Exist, but humans consider them kind of the way we consider weird deep sea fish. Like, you know they exist in the abstract, but don't think you'd ever interact with them. Most vampires don't operate openly, or do so very carefully, at least partially because of the hunters. There was, though, a particularly bloody period in history where vampires were much less circumspect, and with certain lines and certain members of other lines... it got messy, and not only did the First get involved but it led to the founding of the hunters. A lot of people list vampires as one of the potential dangers of cities, like muggers, and the police finding a drained corpse doesn't exactly surprise people even if most vampires clean up better than that, but your average person has no idea how many are out there or if they've ever met one.

 

More Serene/Obscene snippets I've posted elsewhere

Spoiler: trance

"My psy- you’ll have to let me in.” She nodded, and he took her gently by the chin to raise her eyes to his. His mind traced the connection of the blood and eyes, pressed against hers. She yielded at first, but as his mind gently encompassed hers instinct kicked in and she briefly pushed back. He’d never had anyone resist before, and was surprised at how easy it was to pull her down anyway; her attempt to fight felt like being very viciously kicked by an ant. Liadan’s eyes glazed as she sank with a soft, frail little sound. “It’s alright, it’s alright.” He reassured her, barely more than a whisper. “I won’t put you to sleep; I may need to ask you something. But I will tell you to rest.” He released her, both her chin and her mind, and she half-turned to lay on her side, eyes lidded but not quite entirely closed. Lia looked to him through long, dark lashes, then sharply away as she pulled her jacket around herself. Her heart hadn’t slowed at all, and she smelled very faintly of fear. Because of how easy it had been despite her resistance, perhaps?

Spoiler: Lia can't sleep alone

It was almost an hour after sunrise when Lexi woke. Even from the near-death of the daysleep there was a cautious part of him that had remained aware. He had, after all, brought a hunter into his home. Even more, he had made a deal under dubious pretenses, had forced her to make a trade without knowing the cost until it was too late. And he hadn’t taken her weapons. If he were Liadan he’d want to stab him.

Opening his eyes just a crack, enough to watch through his lashes without seeming to be, he did in fact find her standing in his doorway. She didn’t have a knife, and she wasn’t on the warpath. Instead she had stripped off her bloody clothes down to her underwear and, somewhat endearingly, her socks and was standing in the doorway staring. One hand came up for her to rest her face against, visibly conflicted, and she shuffled in place. She was caught in some kind of argument with herself, and Lexi was pretty sure she was losing. Not knowing she was observed, she had let her guard down. For the first time Lexi understood what others of his kind meant about mortals seeming so frail. He had seen Liadan fight, knew she was capable, could see the lean definition of her muscles, he knew that she was strong and fast and deadly. And yet… he could see the pale lines of old scars, pink lines from newer ones, the red marks from tonight’s injuries still not completely healed. She looked tired, looking back at him, far more tired than a long night and the rapid healing could account for.

Liadan came to a decision, sat down on the edge of his bed and swung her legs up. There was a moment of confused stillness, ended when she groaned and wiggled herself under the covers without getting back up; she’d messed up her order of operations. “Everything’s too damned soft.” She muttered entirely to herself and then, casually as anything, rolled right up against Lexi’s side.

He didn’t move. Nobody could do a corpse impression like a dead man. Liadan also remained in place, her heart the slowest he had heard it all night; she was falling asleep. She did fall asleep, curled up beside him.

There were implications. Something could be gleaned from this, some small part of the puzzle of Liadan. The pressure of the daylight hours weighed too heavy for Lexi to dissect the encounter; he had barely woken enough to observe. His eyes fell entirely closed once more, and the darkness claimed him.

It released him briefly a little before sundown; she had gotten up. That was all she did, simply climbed out of bed and left. Lexi rolled over. He could figure out what this all meant when the sun was down and he could think properly.