Library of Rain

Rain stared at the small earring dangling from her hand. It had taken her hours to make this. Lucus and the Estoms had returned from the feast, Sunrise had fallen asleep, and the house had gone silent, but Rain had finally figured out the last steps. Probably. She wasn’t sure if the blood leaking from her eyes and nose was supposed to happen, but at least the item had been created. 

 

She wiped her face again with a rag before plopping back on the couch in her sitting room. The patterns she had painted on the wall were twisting and swirling in her dazed vision. It was beautiful. 

 

Rain examined the earring again as the world split into two before reconnecting. She might be better off sleeping right now instead of trying to force her rebelling senses to function. The earring looked different than it had before Rain fused an inskilled soul fragment to it. Before, it had been a hook with a piece of quarts held in a simple gold setting. Now, the oblong quarts had dark lines faintly running through them that formed familiar patterns. The setting had also changed, forming a claw that gripped the small stone. 

 

The whole thing looked super cool to Rain, but she wasn’t sure if she could wear it outside. The fact that her ears weren't pierced aside, the piece was pretty recognizable. It had been one of the pieces Rain had looted from Lord Isster's house before burning it down, and despite its changes, Rain couldn’t risk people seeing it. She would have to leave it in her library for now. 

 

Hooking the earring over her bottom lip, Rain giggled. She wasn’t sure why this was funny, but she couldn’t stop laughing. 

 

Setting the earring on the table next to the other pieces of jewelry she’d tried and failed to attach her soul to, Rain felt a bead of blood draw a line from her nose down her chin. 

 

Heh, heh, she had a stripe. 

 

She wiped up the blood, admiring its dark color. No matter what, she needed to get rid of all the blood before Sunrise woke up. That gave Rain pause. If she was going to make another item, shouldn’t she do it now when she was already bloody? Then she could hide the problem from Ise better.

 

Congratulating herself on her brilliant idea, Rain started gathering the items she would need. She had already thought about how she wanted this item to turn out and bought some things to try building it a few days ago. 

 

Rain wobbled through the twisting room towards a desk. With a few quick movements, she whipped the five different pieces of paper out. Each one was made differently from the fine paper of House Killper to smooth velum made from some kind of seal. Rain ignored both those options and picked one that she had bought on a whim: a piece of rough leather from some unnamed animal. In the dancing light of the dark room this piece felt right.

 

Too tired to return to the couch, Rain plopped down on the floor at the foot of the desk and looked at her scrap of leather. Laughing at the leather's funny shape, she closed her eyes and sunk into the void.

 

The soft heat of her soul was gone, replaced by raging heat and blistering cold. Rain wanted to pull her mind back, but she needed to do this before Ise woke up and scolded her. 

 

Ignoring the pain, Rain reached forward and grabbed her soul, her mind burning on contact. The worst part of the soul was where Rain broke off a piece to make the earring. The newly exposed soul bits burned like fire. Rain ignored the damaged parts and started feeling around for another area that was free of skill patterns. 

 

It took a while, but she found a small patch of cracked but unclaimed soul. Without so much as a second thought, she grabbed it and ripped it from her main soul. A fiery heat burst from the breaking soul and Rain held tight to her soul fragment. This was going so much faster now she knew what to do.

 

Feeling around as fiery heat racked her, Rain found the pattern that correlated to ‘Binding Promise.' The way the pattern felt attached to the surface of her soul rather than growing from it like all her other skills gave it away. 

 

Rain held her handful of soul-stuff in the heat of her burning soul to soften it up a bit - another trick she had found while making the earring. When the soul-stuff was nice and soft, she rammed it into the pattern for ‘Binding Promise’ As she did, the soft soul-stuff flowed over the skill and created a negative of it.

 

Perfect. Now, all she had to do was attach her soul-mould to the leather, and her work would be done. 

 

Opening her eyes, Rain kept a part of her focus on her soul-mold. Reaching for the scrap of leather, Rain had her attention stolen by the writhing patterns on the walls. They were moving even faster now.

 

“This won’t work if you try to attach the soul-mold as it is.” 

 

Rain giggled at the words; she had no idea why she’d spoken them, but they were funny.

 

“Change the mold.”

 

Once again her mouth moved without her trying.

 

There was no point in arguing with herself, so Rain grabbed the mold and started twisting the patterns, adding lines and creating layers to the imprint. She had no idea what she was doing, but everything reminded her of the swirling patterns of shimmer. And it was pretty. 

 

Rain continued weaving the pattern of the skill while blood dripped from her lips, eyes, and ears. She sowed patterns in the broken piece of her soul while blood seeped out of her armpits and stained her shirt, the skirt of her dress likewise darkening with blood. And while she sewed and bled and cackled to herself, two hearts beat, one from inside her chest, the other resting in a pocket over her chest. 

 

After a while, Rain decided that the mold felt right and sunk back into the void to grasp the soul mold that was now far more complex than any of her skills. The pattern wasn’t simply a two-dimensional pattern stamped on a chunk of soul-stuff; it was a three-dimensional sculpture carved out of soul-stuff, and it felt hungry.

 

Rain stared at the soul effigy in her mind. She needed to attach it to the leather, but the way she’d made the earring by just pushing the soul piece at the item felt wrong. Then Rain remembered her ‘Enter Dream’ skill. That skill worked by attaching a piece of her soul to someone when they ate a part of her.

 

Coating two fingers in the blood leaking from her mouth, Rain prepared to draw on the leather. She didn’t feel the need to draw anything in particular, so she drew a flower, nice and simple and pretty. As she did, her mind seemed to stop shaking. The room stopped swirling and Rain felt a connection to the leather form then snap. Like that, the soul sculpture was gone.

 

Before Rain’s eyes, the uneven leather scrap began to change, the edges smoothing out until the piece was a long rectangle. Then, the leather thinned, becoming supple and flexible. Lastly, like ink dropped into water, the parchment began to darken until its surface was as murky as the pits of Arkit.

 

“I’ve helped you as a mark of goodwill. When the time comes, you will have my hidden truths. I trust you will repay this debt and help me finish my work and spite those who killed me.”

 

The moment Rain stopped speaking, the energy in her body started to fade, the walls stopped dancing, and a crushing pain from the center of her being threatened to kill her. She tried to push thoughts through her sluggish mind.

 

Rain didn’t know why the voice… 

 

What was she doing…

 

Who…

 

The blood! She needed to clean it before Ise saw it! Rain reached for the rag she'd been cleaning herself with. Darkness engulfed her mind before her hand touched it.