Marisa Terthras

|BASICS|
Name: Marisa Terthras
Age: 43 at the time of her calling to the Order (looks more like someone in their mid-thirties).
Birthplace: Light State
Current Residence: Mount Valumai II
Rank: Master Bender, Order of the Elements mentor
Occupation: Order of the Elements mentor
Element: Dark
Pets: Miss Fussy Britches, a black cat.
Weapons: Bladed staves (sticks with sharp pointy things at the end of them) and two daggers.


|OPTIONAL|
Birthday: 21st of December 694 AO
Blood type: AB-

Hobbies:

Drinking: Marisa is not exactly an alcoholic yet she drinks as much, if not more than one. The only difference is that she never has an obsessive need to drink; she just enjoys being drunk far more than she enjoys being sober. She can rarely be found without a bottle, skin or flask of an alcoholic beverage close at hand. Her resistance to the effects of the beverages is above average but she certainly isn’t immune to being drunk. As a matter of fact she’s more often in some state of inebriation than not. Like any other person being inebriated has some effects on her, though with time and practise she’s managed to mitigate their severity somewhat. For instance being drunk considerably lowers her inhibition, it also loosens her tongue (spirits forbid she say something intelligent though, being drunk just increases the amount of random crap she churns out) and slows her thought process and reaction as well as making her quite a bit clumsier than when she’s sober, the reason for her drinking is simple, alcohol is poison, an she has memories she’s trying to kill.
Of course she’s not always either drunk or hungover. She has a few days in the year where she actually refuses to drink any alcohol. Days of mourning or remembrance during which she wants to be perfectly sober to do honour to whatever it is she is commemorating. Apart from those days she also occasionally decides to go weeks without touching a bottle, but she always eventually succumbs back to the temptation of drinking the memories into oblivion. Marisa may be cheerful when she’s drunk and sober, but when she’s suffering from a hungover she is moody, bitter, depressed and generally a mess, showing that other side of her personality, the one she doesn’t usually like to put on display.

Earth Kingdom Pro Wrestling: she’s a massive fan of the sport. More than the sport itself she loves the hysterically caricatured characters and narratives that take place on the stage. To her it’s the story with crazy, insane and ridiculously unbelievable characters that matters most.

Pranking: Mostly innocent little things, like coating someone’s glass in glue, or shaving beards and facial hair in the middle of the night. Taken as signs of great immaturity by most she sees these practical jokes as having a far greater purpose. There are no things more humbling than getting fooled by a stupid prank, and the way she sees it when you jam many of the world’s most proficient benders together in a single place a little bit of humbling certainly doesn’t go awry.

Messing with her student: Marisa is very proud of Enoch’s abilities as a bender, even if she’ll never be caught saying that to him while she still draws breath. However she is concerned for the boy’s mental health. She’s afraid he’s just a bit too grim and serious. Messing with his head, taking him out to drink, showing him that it is possible to control power intelligently and still be chilled out are all things she does to try to show him that it’s okay to not be clenched and brooding at all times.

Talking: Not much to say here really. She enjoys getting to know people, learning about them through what they choose to reveal and what they choose not to reveal. This sometimes involves arguments and discussions, but she enjoys those too. For a drunken slacker she’s surprisingly capable of deep and on-the-spot reflection.

Reading: Anything goes with her, but her preferred genre has to be cheap, crappy and bawdy fantasy novels. She finds them to be excellent sources of comedy. In general she can be found reading either perched up a tree or on a roof. For reasons unbeknownst to her she just can’t focus on a book when she’s on the ground. That and people are less likely to bother her when she’s several metres above them.

Climbing: Goes well with her love of reading off the ground. She’s been climbing since she was a little kid and she’s become pretty damn good at it. The skill served her well both in the streets and during her years as a thief.

Music: Who doesn’t enjoy music? It is one of the purest expressions of human emotions. That and she just can’t get enough of the hilariously bawdy tunes that are out there. She particularly enjoys singing them out loud and out of tune, despite being perfectly capable of singing them well enough. She is actually a decent violin and piano player, having been taught the basics and practised a lot on her own.

Dancing: During her time as a pirate she spent an unfathomable amount of time dancing with the crew, learning the basics of many styles of dancing. Capoeira remains her favourite to this day, sadly finding a partner to dance such a rare style with is complicated to say the least (a problem compounded by the fact that her foreseeable future is going to take place in isolation from most human contact).

Cooking: She’s even pretty decent at it. Just don’t ask her to make up a dish; her judgement when it comes to what goes well together is fairly horrifying. But as long as she sticks to the recipe she’ll do just fine.

Card games and prestidigitation: Marisa is a very good cheater and she is quite fond of swindling people out of their hard earned cash at card games. Her skill at sleight of hand is so advanced even the sharpest cheaters have trouble realising they’re being had, and have an even tougher time of proving it. She also uses her gifted hands to amuse others with cheap tricks.

Quirks:

-She has a habit of painting a single roughly horizontal line in red war paint over the bridge of her nose before going in battle. It’s a ritual of hers dating back to her time as a student to an ex-monk.

-Her average body temperature is surprisingly low, as if all the warmth had been sucked out of her body.

-She has a habit of talking to herself when she’s really deep in thoughts or asleep. Most of it is unintelligible muttering though.

-A nocturnal creature, Marisa wakes up in the evening rather than in the morning like normal people. She’s strongest at night, under the cover of darkness, and she generally prefers the quiet isolation and stillness of the night to the hustle and bustle of the day. Dinner is often her breakfast. However humans were never really meant to live at night, and her shifted sleeping cycle has exacerbated her occasional bursts of depression.

-Tuesdays is her favourite day and her least favourite day.

Family: Biologically none she knows of

Character Theme: Iron-Woodkid

|APPEARANCE|

Hair: Marisa’s hair is quite short, dipping just below her ears at the back and all the way to her upper lip at the front. It is jet black, and only recently a few of the strands have started to turn white. Fun fact, she cuts it herself, not trusting anyone to do it for her. She occasionally lets it grow long but always gets fed up at how much longer showers take with long hair.

Eyes: Almond shaped ice blue eyes that can switch between the lazy carelessness of a serial procrastinator and the icy burning intensity of a master of combat and dark bending in a split second. Marisa’s eyes manage to be both highly expressive and yet never reveal anything more than she wishes others to know, except when she actually starts to take things seriously, then they become quasi feral icy barriers.

Height: 5ft5

Clothes: Marisa’s combat armour is a mix of plate, cloth, fur and leather that provides some protection while still allowing for excellent flexibility and mobility.

It starts with simple green sleeveless cloth tunic under a short-sleeved chainmail one and plain black heavy cloth pants. On top of that is a thin charcoal cloth long tabard whose lower half splits into two rectangular cloth tails and hangs down to her knees. It is held closed at the waist by a thick brown leather belt with a fur trim. The belt holds a couple of leather pouches. The tabard has a single red cloth sleeve for the right arm, leaving its wearer’s left arm completely bare, save for the short chainmail sleeve. Marisa’s clothing is further reinforced by metal greaves on both her legs as well as on her right arm and shoulder and a gorget fastened around her neck. The gorget is attached to a fur mantle. The armour is intentionally jagged so as to always form natural shadows in the light. She wears a black leather half-glove on her left hand.

When not prepared for combat she much prefers to wear simple clothing, so long as it is comfortable. She prefers tunics and pants, but has been known to don more refined and feminine garments for special occasions. Because of how cold she constantly seems to feel she prefers warmer garments.

Skin: Her skin is pale and pretty average all things considered. Neither particularly soft nor particularly rough. She has a few scars that were deep enough to have left marks to this day, but nothing that’s visible or gruesome. Her cheekbones and nose are covered in a sparse smattering of faded freckles, the last remaining vestiges of the more impressive collection she had as a young child.

Body Type: Long and lean. Marisa’s body has been honed through years of activity and her muscles have developed from natural exercise and to suit her highly mobile style of combat, meaning that while her limbs are defined she doesn’t appear bulky or even particularly strong.

Image:



Shin-up Appearance:


|CHARACTERISTICS|

Personality: If people could say only one thing about Marisa the first thing most of them would say would be that she is one very laid back lady. Even when she’s concentrating or training or working she still has that nonchalant look about her. She never seems stressed out or in a hurry, many mistake it for laziness, and they’re not entirely wrong. She does the minimum amount of work required to complete a task, but unlike those who are truly lazy she will complete the task she is given, no matter what. But laid back isn’t all there is to her, far from it.

Playful and teasing she enjoys messing with people, but never in a cruel way. She just enjoys seeing people get flushed and embarrassed. She rarely means anything by it though. However if you’re planning on replying to her daringly obscene comments in kind you should beware, the woman has a competitive streak a mile wide and she will see the retorts as the start of a contest in absurdity and cheeky obscenity. It doesn’t help that she’s one of the most open people when it comes to sexuality. She makes no secret of her lack of preference between men and women, or of her long and rather storied sexual history. It’s one of the few things about her past she’s forthcoming about, except one relationship which she never speaks of or even alludes to, unsurprisingly that one relationship is the only one that ever truly mattered.

In general she is considered to be quite a charming person, if a little immature by others. Her habit of playing practical jokes on people is one of the things that have awarded her the latter adjective, but it is actually a product of great wisdom. Her pranks are a way to maintain an air of familiarity and homeliness, and a way to keep people humble. Pranking is something she picked up after, not before being chosen to join the Order. Similarly, and for the same reasons, she is never unwilling to turn herself into the butt of a joke if she thinks it’ll get a laugh out of others or defuse a tense situation.

Her humour is a big part of who she is and it colours much of what she does and how she does it. Mordant sarcastic wit is her domain, though admittedly the mordant is less of a constant than the sarcasm. In not only her pranks and jokes but also in her general personality a developed cheekiness can be found, which paired with her shamelessness makes some of her remarks and actions pretty unexpected. Most of her jokes are highly reliant on irony and self-deprecation, which says volumes about how she sees herself.

Despite all of her sweet charms and playful pranking she does have a serious side, a very strong one indeed. Her joking and goofing isn’t exactly a mask or a façade, it’s just one aspect of who she is and it’s the only one she allows most people to see. Behind the lazy confidence and childish jokes she is a mess of constant introspection, occasional depression, general self-loathing and doubt.

She possesses a long list of traits she thinks makes her less than prime teacher/role-model material. Truth be told she’s not so sure she fits in the Order. Her moral compass is what modern society would refer to as being ‘loose’. She started her life as a thief, and the ways of a thief have never quite left her. Her stance on killing and what justice is aren’t exactly what polite society considers to be morally upstanding. For her operating outside the law to claim your own personal revenge is a totally valid way of doing things, and killing in such situations is acceptable to her. An eye for an eye. Her inability to embody the parental aspect of teaching which she believes to be crucial is another of her failings that she finds hard to justify, even to herself. And while Marisa isn’t one to care for what others think of her she does care about how she directly influences others and about what she thinks of herself, and she is scared of how she will influence her pupils in the decades to come, this puts her in a constant personal conflict over her actions. She takes the very fact that she is so unsure of herself as a failing.

What she can’t seem to realise is that these things are a part of why she was chosen. The Avatar and the warriors of the elements are not figures of good, they are figures of balance, and her views and ways are part of said balance and it is a good thing for the Warriors and the Avatar to have contact with such a person during their youth, to realise that some do not think like the faceless masses and that there are alternative sets of moralities out there. Her nature is to be a free spirit, one that refuses to be bound by the laws of society and instead prefers to follow her own convictions, no matter what. This is a trait that is extremely important for powerful figures like the Avatar. On top of that despite her many flaws Marisa is a good person at her core. She never stole from those in needs and when she wasn’t in dire need. She is capable of exercising great mercy, even on those who have gravely wronged her and her revenge is usually far less cruel than whatever wrong prompted her to get revenge. Her actions may be questionable, but there are always reasons for what she does. She doesn’t see the world in black and white and she doesn’t see it in shades of grey either, she likes to think she tries to see the world in full colours. To her people are not good or bad and they’re not varying shades of good or bad, good and evil themselves are all labels drawn from one’s own perspective and experiences. You could say she doesn’t actually believe in good and evil but that wouldn’t be exactly true. To her the why is more important than the what and the how. The reson for a person’s actions are what justifies their deeds, not the action itself or the methods employed to achieve the act. Something that’s considered good can be wrong if done for the wrong reasons, and something that’s considered to be bad can be good if done for the right reasons. It’s a complicated belief to explain, and a harder one to live by, her constant introspection doesn’t help either, but she strives towards understanding more so than judging, and she always tries to keep an eye on the overall balance of things.

More than these moral failings though she’s not so sure how she feels about being made immortal. She has read many books in her life about the power of immortality, but many more about how immortality can quickly turn into a curse as you watch those you love pass away again and again. Her numerous doubts she keeps to herself though. Since she was a kid she’s preferred to work on her own and to solve her own problems. She’s not one for sharing when it comes to feelings, and when people start prodding too far she will push them away, usually humorously, or by flat out lying if the questions persist past her first approach. She never talks about her past with others, and when people pry too much she’ll just feed them some ridiculous story she makes up on the go. By her count there are at least seventeen different tales of her past circulating in the world, each more ridiculous than the last. When she boasts she blows events completely out of proportion to ridiculous degrees and always with a rather liberal spread of sarcasm on top, just to drive home the point that the story really has no roots in reality.

She has been prone to slip in and out of depression for years, a problem which is exacerbated by her offset sleeping pattern whereby she sleeps in the day and wakes up in the evenings. The feeling of loneliness and lack of human relationships that has been plaguing her for a long time doesn’t help either. Unlike her many other flaws this is something she’s not yet come to realise about herself, but she has felt the effects of it. She’s met many people in her life, but any relationship she’s had with another person was either no deeper than shallow single-night affairs or ended in disaster. She both consciously tries to get along and be around people, while at the same time subconsciously trying to stay away from them in fear she’ll either lose them, hurt them or fail them somehow.
Marisa’s laid back nature follows her even in battle, she rarely gives a fight her all, preferring to hold back and use the minimum effort possible to take down her opponent. However if she is pushed beyond a certain point she will drop the chilled out attitude. And that’s when whoever she’s fighting is in for some serious pain. The change is so sudden and so profound that many of those who have witnessed the transformation have wondered if the woman’s not schizophrenic. In a split second she goes from a laid back wise cracker to a silent, determined and savage opponent who uses every single weapon in her arsenal to take down her opposition with absolute mercilessness.

Personal Strengths:

Master dark bender: Probably one of the most accomplished dark benders in the world. She has never branched off into another element (other than that time when she messed with spirit bending, more on that later), instead preferring to completely and utterly devote herself to mastering every aspect of dark bending over multiple decades. Her command over the shadows is complete. She is capable of large-scale feats as well as pin-point accuracy at massive range, making her a fearsome opponent, even in daylight, and a downright lethal force to encounter in the darkness. As a master of her discipline she refuses to become complacent though, and is always looking for new techniques and skills to add to her repertoire. She has personally developed several techniques, her favourite being one that allows her to perform small bending feats with minimal physical movement (a real boon for completing chores). The most useful or her inventions is probably her ability to engulf incoming attacks in darkness and sling it back at her opponents, essentially using her opponents’ strength against them.

Master thief: A long time ago she found herself with little choice but to steal to survive. The skills she learned in that time have never left her and to this day she is an excellent sneak. Even her full combat gear is modified to make as little sound as possible when she moves, the joints of the plates are padded with cloth, meaning they don’t scrape together noisily when she moves. Even the chainmail is made to be more rigid than normal so that it doesn’t jingle.

Iron determination: Not stubbornness, determination. She is capable of taking hits that would turn grown men into crying lumps of anguish without breaking her stride. So long as she wants to do something nothing will keep her from it other than death. Problem is there aren’t a whole lot of things that garner enough of her interest to warrant so much effort.

Excellent combatant: Marisa had to teach herself much about combat before ever meeting someone willing to directly teach her. Before that she’d already learned much simply from observing others fight, and she developed her own combat technique, an eclectic smorgasbord of styles. Even after receiving more formal training she still elects to employ her own mixed style rather than stick to any specific form of combat. This patchwork combat style is very effective, as it does a wonderful job of confusing her opponents and makes her a dangerously unpredictable foe. Still she remains a sneaky thief at heart, and her preferred way of engaging an enemy is from the shadows, which is why she has taught herself to employ her bending to distract and disorient opponents.

Mental Conditioning: She trained under a highly spiritual man for some time. He taught her many things, but the lessons of his she has never forgotten were his rituals of preparation. They serve to calm the mind, focus the senses and prepare the body and they take some time to complete, for novices that is, and Marisa is no novice to their execution. Drawing a single line of red across her nose in battle may seem like little more than a meaningless piece of war paint, but it is quite a lot more important than that. It is like a catalyst, a focus point for her mind which helps her draw herself back to the countless hours of meditation and mental conditioning she undertook under the ex-monk’s tutelage, allowing her to channel the effects of those sessions in just a few seconds. Even when completely drunk, horribly hungover or profoundly sleep deprived that single red mark will allow her to shrug away the effects on her mind and body and to fight, think and act like a perfectly sober and hale individual. If she feels particularly inclined to do so there are also breathing exercises and meditation poses that can allow her to numb her body to pain, but those actually take time and forethought.

Personal Weaknesses:

Lack of brute strength: She prefers to let her bending do the fighting, and when that isn’t quite enough she’ll rely on her impressive speed and agility to finish the job, but she lacks raw physical power. That’s not to say her hits don’t hurt, it just means she’s not going to ever be able to punch anyone into red mist. She can use her bending for that purpose, but not her body.

Spirit phobia: a recent emotional and mental wound from dabbling in spirit bending has left her both physically and mentally incapable of using spirit bending ever again and of feeling or even communicating with spirits that aren’t firmly manifested within the physical realm. Being around spirits in general makes her uneasy and much edgier than usual, not out of a conscious choice or hate, but because of the still fresh wounds to her psyche. In turn any attacks or abilities that would act directly upon her spirit have no effect on her. In short she is a spiritual non-entity. These effects are quite irreversible, and likely to stay with her forever.

Hamartia:

Reliance on bending: Marisa is a skilled fighter in her own rights, fast, agile and flexible, but her bending is a part of her like her physical abilities can never be. She can often be found using her bending to complete menial tasks. Bending is an integral part of her life, like an extra limb, so intricately linked to who she is that she doesn’t know what she’d do without it. If a chi blocker was to take it from her, even temporarily, then she would barely even be able to function out of complete shock.


Personal Hero: None.

Dreams and Ambitions: As of very recently, to make sure the next generation knows what it’s doing.

Likes: Tuesdays, being drunk, playing cards, dancing, music, reading, the sea, ships.

Dislikes: Tuesdays, the sea, ships.

Brief History:

Her parents left her with only her name. She was found as new born on the steps of a dinghy orphanage located in the slums of a Light State city, wrapped in a blanket and with a scrap of paper that said she was to be named Marisa, and she was. That day the orphanage became her first house, but never truly her home.

Her first memory is of the long interrogation she went through after having managed to make her shadow move of its own accord when she was just three years old. The fact that she was a dark bender would not usually have been considered strange anywhere else, but in the Terthras slums which were filled with non-benders who had moved to the Light State in hope of making easy money and failed, it was unique. In the whole slums she was almost certainly the only bender. After all there is always work for a bender. The surprise of the orphanage’s staff was understandable, and they pressed her to tell them how she’d learned to use her abilities. They questioned her for a long time, not willing to accept her answer that she had been shown how to do it in her sleep. In the end they just dismissed her claim as being a product of her overactive imagination, and being unable to get any other answer out of her they let it go, fully expecting her progress to stop. She had not been lying though, and while she did have a vivid imagination the one she claimed had taught her what she knew wasn’t a product of her daydreaming.

Marisa was born with more than just a facility for dark bending; she was also born tethered to a spirit. The two of them could only meet in her dreams at first as their bond was still weak, and that is where they met for the first time. He was just as afraid of her as she was of him, but soon they discovered that they didn’t mean each other harm, and they began to communicate. He had no name and so she named him Attheon, the same name as the hero of a story that the staff at the orphanage often told their young wards. Attheon knew nothing of the world, his mind was as blank and innocent as that of a child, or rather so it seemed for a long time. One thing he did know though was the basics of dark bending and he passed on those basics to his human companion.

As months passed the staff’s expectations were not met as her abilities continued to grow under the tutelage of Attheon, and the bond between the human and the spirit deepened, both literally and figuratively. Marisa had no friends in the orphanage, the other kids were scared of her, and who could blame them? She was one of, if not the only bender to live in the slums, ever, and even if you included the city proper there were very few dark benders in the area. Even the staff had never seen it done before. The young girl spent most of her time alone, daydreaming, thinking of Attheon and practising the previous night’s bending lesson. As their relationship grew Attheon became more and more protective of her, more worryingly though he became stronger and more influential with her.




Attheon was a type of spirit that fed off of negativity either in or around the host, a rare kind that could only survive by bonding with a physical organism and using their negative emotions as a source of sustenance. Marisa was an ideal host, lonely and confused about why her parents had not wanted her as well as passionate enough to get angry and frustrated about various things. In addition leaving in an orphanage set in a slum, surrounded by misery; meant Attheon got fed very well. Their bond was deep enough to be symbiotic and so when he craved negativity so did she, meaning that his presence often led her to dark thoughts. The intended end game of this relationship was that the spirit would eventually completely take over the host’s body and mind. Marisa didn’t know this of course. Not at the time, and to Attheon it was instinct, it seemed like the normal way of doing things.

When Marisa turned ten she had mastered everything Attheon had to teach her, it was also around that time that she began to sneak out of the orphanage at night, venturing into the slums, confident in her ability to protect herself. Her career as a thief began then. She had practised taking things form others without them realising in the orphanage by stealing toys he other kids were hogging. It seemed natural to her, they weren’t attentive enough to keep a hold of their possessions so she took them. Plus it wasn’t like taking a few morsels of food here and there was going to hurt anyone, right? No one but Attheon knew that about her though, and he wasn’t about to stop her. Powerful as he was becoming his mind was still young and undeveloped and the concept of physical possession is not one that comes easily to immaterial beings.

Meanwhile word of Marisa’s gift spread through the slums like wildfire, but it took a long time before her story snuck its way into the city proper, but when it did it went all the way to the ears of some nobles who saw an opportunity to earn some popularity by helping out a poor little orphan child. The got in contact with the orphanage and proposed to fund her travel to and education at a school for dark benders in the Dark State. The orphanage was Marisa’s legal guardian, and the decision was theirs to make. Naturally they accepted. The orphanage was already over-populated, and they had faith that this school would be able to take better care of the girl than they ever could. Not to mention Marisa’s bending had been a constant and unnervingly threatening thing to the staff who weren’t too sad to see her go. And so she was shipped off to the Dark State when she was twelve years old, barely able to sleep during the entire travel out of excitement.

She integrated surprisingly well at the academy for someone whose only real social interaction had been with a spirit who could only communicate through directly sharing its emotions in her dreams. The kids at the orphanage had never really given her a chance because they were scared; if they’d tried they would have found she’d never really been a pain to be around. Easy going, humble and with a strong sense of humour she fit perfectly with the other students. At the academy everyone was a dark bender, no one feared each other and everyone lived like a family. It was the first time she felt like she was part of a community, and the academy was her first true home. Her years there were hard on Attheon though. His host was happy and content and he had barely enough to be satiated by relying on the negativity of others. After all in every school there is always someone somewhere feeling down about something, still the negativity of others did not feed him quite like that of his host. The nourishment was barely enough to sustain him. Despite that the bond between spirit and host kept growing. Attheon was now able to contact and influence Marisa even in her waking days, which increased the amount of time he could be around her greatly, further strengthening their link, and getting him closer and closer to his ultimate goal of fully taking over her carnal envelope by completely swallowing and replacing her spirit.

Marisa spent a total of five years and two months at the academy, learning from masters and befriending kids her age. She had her first romantic relationships there, mostly short, awkward affairs that ended peacefully enough and were short enough not to warrant an intervention by the ever jealous and possessive Attheon. Eventually though Attheon’s hunger grew to the next level as he aged and matured. The academy was no longer providing enough nourishment to sustain him. Through his bond with her Marisa could feel the effects of this. It was like withdrawal for a long-time addict, it was painful mentally and physically and it made her act differently. Soon enough she was willing to do anything to just make it stop. Unlike an addict though she had no idea what the drug that she was craving was. Attheon himself had no idea, but he was becoming more and more unstable by the day and inevitably things went badly.

In the weeks of Attheon’s slow starvation Marisa had become snappy, jumpy and generally unpleasant to be around. Several of her friends, amongst them the boyfriend of the month decided to take things in their own hands and tried to talk to her, enlisting the help of a teacher along the way. She refused to hear them, and they got forceful, hoping to snap her out of what they saw as a stress attack due to the rapidly approaching end of year exams. They had good intentions, but Attheon had grown so unstable and so madly possessive of Marisa that anyone who made contact with her he identified as an enemy, it didn’t help that that pesky boyfriend of hers had been around longer than Marisa’s usual boyfriends did. He used his strength to completely take over his host’s body, breaking bones and tearing flesh as he rampaged in the physical world for the first time. In his hunger-induced madness Attheon had betrayed his survival instincts, his host had not been ready for him to reveal his nature, and his acts did not leave her or their bond unmarked.

When the staff found her she was in a room with three mauled corpses surrounding her, eyes wide and unable to speak, react or even cry. She had taken refuge within those confines of her mind that were free of Attheon’s presence, trying to make sense of what had happened. Why had he done this? He was her friend, those he’d killed had been her friends too. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with her? It took her a long time to emerge from her own thoughts and back to reality, and during that time she was completely unable to utter a single syllable. By that time she’d somehow managed to blame her anger from Attheon to herself. She loved him too much and their bond was still too strong to be able to admit to herself that he could do such a thing. She was the issue. That was the only logical explanation her teenage mind could grasp. Attheon was too kind, too gentle. He’d never do this. He couldn’t do this. That was the bond speaking of course, the bond which had been weakened by the event, cracked slightly, but which was still very much there and strong enough to let Attheon encourage her misguided logic.

When she awoke she found herself in her room at the academy, lying on her bed. Attheon’s warm, comforting presence was the first thing she could feel. He was no longer unstable, during her path to self-loathing he’s received plenty of nourishment. Their bond remained strong thanks to her inability to blame him, but a tiny part of her in the back of her mind began to distrust him, that bit of her was the one she had decided to ignore, it was like a small fissure in the link between host and parasite, one that would either fix itself or grow over the coming years.

Her first waking actions were to get up, get dressed, and leave. She was convinced the death of her friends was her fault and she was sure she needed to get away before they locked her up. She’d had half a mind to stay and take whatever punishment she deserved, but Attheon begged her to leave and she relented. She fled the academy, then the only place she’d ever been able to truly call home, and with it her only family. She was seventeen, and this was the beginning of the first in a long line of chronic depressions she would suffer from over the years.


Days of aimless wandering , were all the immediate future had in stock for her. She stumbled from town to town, walking in the day, training her dark bending in the evening and sleeping at night. Whenever she reached a settlement she would steal whatever she needed to survive. In her mind she was responsible for three innocent lives being extinguished, she was already damned, what more damage could stealing some food do? She kept living like this, until she tried to steal from a thief. A master thief to be more exact. Kao Xhi, an old man who had a sharp ear and an eye for talent. Softened in his old days he took pity on the half-starving girl that had crept through his window and took her under his wing. She didn’t want his help at first, but he gave her little choice, threatening to have her thrown in prison if she didn’t accept his offer. So she did. Kao, a fellow dark bender, completed her bending training, but that was not all he taught her. He’d seen potential in her, potential to become a great thief. He taught her what he’d learned over decades of stealing as well as how to use her bending to help her in what he called ‘unofficial repossession’.

Once again Attheon found himself hungering. Marisa was growing out of her depression through her training in both bending and thieving. Being good at something helped her ease some of the self-loathing that had plagued her, reasserting some of her self-confidence, and maybe, just maybe, allowing her to start listening to that little voice at the back of her head that was accusing Attheon. That tiny bit of her that knew the truth was growing very slowly, but growing nonetheless. The spirit tethered to her could feed off of the surrounding misery, but he was at a point where nourishment wasn’t his only concern. He’d always been possessive and protective of Marisa, the only reason he hadn’t throttled her dates at the academy was that he was starving then, and that those relationships had never lasted long enough or been serious enough to concern him. Those feelings of wanting to have her for himself was his survival-instinct’s way of pushing him to take steps towards completely taking over her body and mind. During Marisa’s apprenticeship under Kao Xhi he was fed, but his bond with Marisa was barely growing and he did not know why. It took him years to realise what the problem was, in great part due to the weakening bond he had with his host which meant he could no longer be in complete emotional synchronisation with Marisa, and in part due to his complete lack of understanding of inter-human relationships.

Marisa spent three years with Kao Xhi, mastering both dark bending and getting well on her way to master the art of thievery. He also insisted that she was to resume her education, and so she did. She learned of history, mathematics and many other things during the day, and of bending and stealing at night. Some nights her master would send her out to perform real assignments, a way to gauge her progress. It was during these assignments, which ranged from sneaking through certain areas of the city unnoticed, to grabbing a certain object without being caught, that she begun observing how people fought. In her sneaking she came across many fights, some were bar fights, some were full on gang war skirmishes, some were professional tournaments. From every single one she learned moves, storing them in her memory and practising them on her own. Kao Xhi lived by the rule that if he had to fight he had failed as a thief, but she preferred to be at least somewhat capable if she had to get in a melee for whatever reason. Another of Kao’s lessons was to always be prepared.

Her life with her master, whom she had come to see as a father, was cut short one night. An assignment went wrong, the wine merchant she had been supposed to steal from found her as she was going through his valuables. Her first reaction would usually have been to run as fast as she could. That was the way of the thief. But Attheon had other intentions. Using all of his strength the spirit took over her mind, hunted down the merchant, and killed him. The spirit had acted out of desperation, he had been feeling his bond with Marisa weakening to the point where he could barely even feel her strongest emotions. He had hoped that by using the energy he had been storing up for twenty years he could reaffirm the bond definitively. He was wrong. His control of her was only temporary. When she saw what he’d made her do she ran back to Kao Xhi’s home and rushed to the roof, where a she began to let loose the pent up frustration she had been starting to feel towards Attheon at the spirit, who did his best to soothe her, and failed miserably. Marisa had been harbouring increasingly deep concerns about Attheon as her happiness grew she started to realise how much sense that little voice that was screaming at her that everything was the spirit’s fault was starting to make more and more sense, and as the bond between them weakened Attheon himself was becoming less and less able to regulate her thoughts, which only allowed Marisa to continue listening and being convinced by that little voice of reason.

Disturbed by the commotion Kao Xhi came to see what was wrong just as the argument went south. A dabbler in spirit bending, the old thief had sensed something in Marisa when he first saw her, but this was the first time his suspicions were confirmed. Through spirit bending he could see Attheon. He tried to calm the situation, and when Kao Xhi’s words had an effect on Marisa which Attheon’s own had had been unable to produce the spirit flew into a blinding rage fuelled by jealousy. He’d found the root of the problem, the reason why Marisa had slowly been drifting away from him. At the orphanage Attheon had been everything to her. A brother, a mentor, a friend and a father. At the academy he had become a brother and a father and now Xao Khi had stolen the latter position. Unthinking in his anger Attheon took over Marisa for the second time, using his considerable power to slam into the unsuspecting, frail old man, throwing him off the roof. Kao Xhi died before he hit the pavement below. The symbiotic relationship between Attheon and Marisa broke that day. He was still linked to her spiritually but he could no longer influence her, communicate with her, feed off her, and he could certainly no longer take over her body, which he’d only been able to do temporarily and with massive effort until now anyway.

Marisa was not immediately aware of this as she rushed down to her mentor’s body. She was vaguely aware of the disappearance of the warm presence which had followed her since the day she was born, but right then and there she was too busy to think of that. She rushed down to the street, flying down the streets to reach the wreckage of the only man who’d ever cared for her like a father should. She stayed by the corpse all night, mourning and when dawn came and the first guard patrols passed by she was taken into custody. She admitted to killing the old man knowing that her imprisonment would be a good way to indirectly punish Attheon, and she was just fine with that. She now knew that the spirit was responsible, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she was also to blame. She carried him, he couldn’t go anywhere if she didn’t go, prison was the best place for the both of them. It was the best way to protect others. In truth Attheon himself was subconsciously responsible for those thoughts of hers, his kind had a habit of sucking positivity and hope out of people with their mere presence. Her confession was accepted and she was locked away in a small single cell in the port town where Kao Xhi had lived, the only occupant and meant to be rapidly transferred to a more secure establishment. The cell’s only real luxury was a decent view, its single, high-set and barred window opening up on the sea.



She was meant to spend most of her life locked up, but she never served her sentence. Barely a week after she turned herself in the town was hit by pirates. All Marisa knew of the attack back then was that a couple of fairly huge blokes broke into the holding area, piling their arms with goods, until they saw here. They looked confusedly at her for a while, and then looked confusedly at each other, before running out of the holding area, leaving all the goods they’d been carrying in a pile on the floor. Marisa barely had time to register confusion before she found herself face to face with another woman.

The two women couldn’t be more different. The pirate had long pale blond hair, Marisa had a messy mop of raven black hair. The pirate had one eye behind an eye patch and the other was burning fiercely, but not unkindly from below the rim of a wide brim hat, Marisa’s were blue and right then they were blank slates of confusion and despair. The pirate was standing straight, tall and proud while Marisa was curled up on her bunk, little more than bones and skin, having lost several pounds from finding herself unable to stomach eating more than the bare minimum she needed to live. Most importantly though, the pirate was free, and Marisa was shackled both to her prison cot by a physical chain, and to Attheon by a spiritual chain. A prisoner in more ways than one. At that moment Marisa begun to realise she didn’t want to punish herself. She wanted to be like this pirate, to be free.

The pirate woman, whom Marisa could only guess was a figure of authority to the others, stared for a long time before snapping her fingers and whispering a few hushed words in one of her crew’s ear who merely nodded in response. Her word given, the woman in red turned about and left. The tapping of her boots against the cold stone hadn’t faded yet before one of the pirates bent the earth below the cell’s entrance, pulling the door right out of its hinges, she tried to get up, but she’d barely been touching the food she was brought twice per day and found she was too weak to even get up, much less resist two full grown men. One of them propped her up to a standing position, but the sudden upwards motion caused a sudden and violent onset of orthostatic hypotension to hit her, combined with her self-imposed starvation it made her world spin out of control and fade to black as she passed out.

She slipped in and out of consciousness several times in the next few days and it was only a week later that she woke up on the ship, in the captain’s cabin (it became apparent a day or two later that that was the only room aboard which was even close to being suitable for someone in Marisa’s condition). When she regained consciousness for good her fever had broken, but she was still weak from lack of nourishment, confined to bed. The woman from the prison was the one who came to see her first. She introduced herself as Isanoen, the captain of the pirate ship known as Hood’s Gavel. Marisa was ‘their honoured guest’, for as long as she was too weak to stand on her own, but as soon as she recovered she was expected to either go her own way or work on the ship as part of the crew to earn her bed and board. And so she did.

After waking up Marisa’s recovery was jump started. She was inspired, inspired to live and inspired to live her life without shackling herself to Attheon’s actions and misdeeds. She eventually came to the realisation (or was it a decision?) that he was a person and she was another, his actions weren’t hers, and neither were his decisions. Much of that inspiration came from Isanoen. Being the captain of a pirate ship at her age and while being a woman was no easy task, you either had to employ great cruelty or great charisma, Isanoen had chosen the latter of the two. She was capable of lighting the flames of passion and determination in the coldest of hearts, earning her the unquestioning loyalty of those she led. Of course in Marisa’s mind Isanoen’s influence was fought tooth and nail by Attheon’s, forming an unstable balance. In the months that followed the two were evenly matched, but every once in a while one would get the upper hand, making Marisa something of a bipolar individual during those days, capable of flitting between deep depressions and euphoria in the span of a few minutes, but on average her mind set was balanced in that time.


Her first days on the ship as part of the crew were a little hectic as the crew tried to find a place for her. She had everything to learn. She’d never sailed a ship before, she couldn’t even swim back then. She wasn’t much of a fighter either, not yet, lacking any proper training. She’d probably have been little more than a deck scrubber if it wasn’t for her skills in dark bending. Hood’s Gavel had not a single dark bender aboard except for her. At night, which was when the crew carried out most of their attacks on ships, she was a force to be reckoned with. She could cut ropes, slash sails to ribbons incapacitate the crew of targeted ships from a long distance or even counter enemy projectiles by sending them back at their point of origin. Her preferred method of being useful to her crewmates was by scaring the enemy crew into submission by making them see things in the dark watery depths. She could do this from a massive distance as it was essentially smoke and mirrors, but it was surprisingly effective. In total she would spend eight years aboard Hood’s Gavel.

A typical day on Hood’s Gavel started late as the crew rarely went to sleep before the wee hours of the morning, staying up all night raiding or merrymaking. The days were usually reserved for cleaning and repairs of the ship as well as planning. Marisa often took part in the latter, Isanoen and her were the only ones capable of reading and counting on the ship. The two women’s relationship grew rapidly during these long sessions in each other’s company, becoming fast friends. They shared a strong sense of humour and a dedication to finishing what they started. Isanoen also admired Marisa’s resolve, the dark bender never told her why she’d been in prison, or why she always had a look of being haunted in the back of her eyes, but she could see that Marisa had been through much and nearly given up, that she hadn’t was worthy of her respect. Marisa on the other hand knew that she had given up and that the only thing that had saved her was Isanoen.

It was during this time Marisa learned that Isanoen and her crew were no mere pirate. They were survivors from a village that had been driven into misery and chaos when the man in charge had run off with the peoples’ possessions, all done in an actually legal manoeuvre. Hood’s Gavel was dedicated to making every corrupt, or even simply rich man and woman on any coast in the world pay for that. They were more like vigilantes than pirates in many ways. She’d inherited the ship and crew from her father, he’d been the one who had started Hood’s Gavel on this mission, she was only keeping it on the course he’d set.


Over the time the two women grew into more than friends. It all started rather innocently actually, with music. Marisa’s time on Hood’s Gavel was where her appreciation for music truly began. On the ship, every Tuesday evening would be ‘Music Tuesday’. After the evening meal everyone would get together and perform some sort of musical number, either alone or in a group. The first few times Marisa was profoundly embarrassed as she had the musical talent of a shoe, if that. Seeing the lack of improvement, and the poor girl’s shame at having her lack of skills put on a pedestal, Isanoen eventually took pity on her. As it turned out the pirate captain was quite the musician, a singer, pianist and mandolinist in her spare time, Isanoen taught Marisa the basics. Working together they’d become friends, but there’d always been that captain and crew barrier between them. A seemingly indestructible wall that neither of them had ever really thought they wanted to cross. Music, when allowed to, communicates on a rawer, more basic basis that reveals emotions you might not have suspected to be there. Over the course of many an evening shared between work and music the two women’s’ friendship became love before either of them could realise it. It was actually Marisa who came to terms with her feelings first, she was new to the crew, unaware that Isanoen had some rather strict personal rules about her relationship with her crewmembers, but more importantly Marisa had grown highly introspective, always questioning what she was thinking meant. Her realising what her feelings meant first isn’t what was surprising, that she was the one to take the first step was.

The night she confessed her love was a first in many ways for both women. For Marisa it was the first time in years she’d taken control of her own life, that she’d come to a realisation and acted to her heart’s content on it. She’d never realised it before but it seemed so obvious now. Attheon’s presence had been rooted so deeply in her that she’d never realised to what extent his existence had shaped her life. For Isanoen it was not the first time a crewmember had declared their love for her, it was the first time said crewmember was sober though. More importantly it was the first time control was taken away from her, she wasn’t acting, she was reacting. She wanted to say ye, she knew it, but she couldn’t. Not while Marisa was of her crew. And so Isanoen shot her down. Did that stop Marisa? Nope. She was making her own decisions, and she liked it, and she wasn’t going to give up that easily. Every Tuesday she repeated her confession. A simple ‘I love you’. Like a friendly reminder and every Tuesday Isanoen spent a long time convincing herself that her desire to reply in kind was just simple curiosity.

In the meantime in Marisa’s head things were changing dramatically. Spirits like Attheon relied on their host’s belief that the spirit’s need and emotion was their needs and emotions too. Marisa had slowly been breaking herself out of this illusion, ever since the day Attheon killed those students at the academy. Even back then though he’d been in control, he’d broken the illusion, not her. Their roles had been reversed now, and Attheon’s ability to soothe her anger towards him was waning. Every day Marisa was starting to realise more and more that she had done nothing in her life, that she’d been nothing but a corporeal envelop for a spiritual overlord. She knew she’d been duped by him for a long time, she hadn’t ever stopped and realised that she’d been a complete puppet. The anger was building, and dreams, his last ability to interact with her was stripped from him. He knew what the problem was of course, the catalyst that had helped Marisa finally pull herself from his grip. Isanoen. Unlike Xao Khi though there was nothing he could do about her, he could no longer use Marisa’s body. He needed a new vessel. His only link to Marisa was spiritual, his spirit and hers were forever intertwined, their emotional and physical connection were completely destroyed though, and he was free to find a new body to possess, but in his state he was too weak to overpower a human, and in the animal world he had neither the understanding nor the strength to possess something useful, but he had time. Time and motivation, and so he began to train, possessing critters, krill, insects, anything small and simple, slowly, carefully working his way up the food chain. The problem with such a plan was that the relationship between parasite and host goes both ways, the host becomes subservient, but the parasite takes on some of its hosts’ mentality and traits. As he began possessing animals Attheon began losing his humanity, only retaining a desire to harm humans, and the cunning to target them.

It took two months’ worth of Tuesdays before Isanoen stopped being fooled by her own excuses and another month before she found a solution, albeit a weak one. Isanoen, as a pirate, did not exactly follow the rules of normal, polite society, she did however follow her own personal rules, after all a human without rules is but a beast. One of those rules was to never enter in a romantic relationship with any member of her crew, of which Marisa was part. Removing Marisa from the ship wasn’t an option either, the dark bender had made herself very useful to their cause, more importantly Isanoen was very fond of the woman, after all if she wasn’t there wouldn’t be a problem in the first place. If Marisa was removed from the crew, and kept on the ship as an honoured guest though, well that was an entirely different story right? It was a workaround, a logical loophole that didn’t really hold up to any scrutiny, but it was enough for her.

Marisa and Isanoen began their relationship on Tuesday the seventeenth of February, a miserable day that found the ship and crew struggling against a vicious storm in the middle of pouring rain and freezing weather. The first of many Tuesdays they’d share together.



One advantage of being part of a pirate crew is that you get to see all kinds of fancy things pass under your nose. One such fancy thing that caught Marisa’s eyes was a collection of scrolls, simple enough in appearance but its content was invaluable. It was a spirit bending scroll collection, old and fairly detailed. Multiple volumes spanning lessons from the basics to advanced rituals and techniques. The opportunity was too good to give up and she kept them, without explicit permission from any of the crew per se, but she was good at hiding things. Years as a professional thief had taught her some things after all. Her hope was that eventually she’d find a way to permanently get rid of Attheon, a way to end him. For good. It would take work, but spirit bending was as good a place to start searching as any. And so, after having mastered darkness, Marisa Terthras dove into the study of how to master spirits.

Marisa and Isanoen’s relationship was the best thing to happen to the dark bender in years. Maybe in her whole life. For the first time in decades she slept soundly, and she wasn’t cold all the time anymore. These were the happiest years of her life, without the shadow of a doubt. She was free of Attheon, and only mildly worried about his disappearance. She was with the woman she loved. And she was doing something she was good at while sailing around the world surrounded by friends so close they might as well be family. She was learning to fight in hand to hand and armed combat from the crew, and she got to practise her dark bending every day. Their days were counted though.

The spirit bending scrolls weren’t receiving half as much attention as they should have been though, because Attheon wasn’t gone. Oh no. He was around, graduating from insects, to mice and rats, to small birds, to fish, to bigger fish, diving deeper and deeper into the marine food chain, reaching creatures living in such depths that no human had seen their like. It took him years, but eventually he found what he was looking for, a creature big enough, mean enough and armed enough for his purpose. More importantly he was strong enough to take it over.

On Tuesday the seventeenth of February, a date that was by no means randomly chosen, five years after Isanoen gave that oh so important ‘yes’ the paradise on earth that Marisa had managed to find for herself came crashing and burning around her, the dream collapsing in screams of pain and the groaning and shattering of wood.

It came from the depths, in the middle of the day when he bending was at its weakest. Its dense, bony muzzle rammed into the ship’s underbelly with enough force to leave a gaping hole in the dense wood. Many of the crew died in that first impact, leaving Gavin’s Hood severely undermanned. As soon as the first impact was felt screams of panic and alert rang out on the deck. Marisa stepped out a few seconds before Isanoen, having sensed a presence she hadn’t felt in years, as they both stepped out of the captain’s cabin there was no need to explain what was going on as the second impact once again shook the slowly sinking ship. The beast charged into the portside this time, the bony ridge of its back cutting deep into the ship’s flank. As the beast dove again its massive tail arched in the sky, blotting out the sun and slamming down with the force of a lightning bolt, sundering the ship in its middle. Those of the crew that survived were thrown out, launched many meters away, on the ship oil lamps smashed to the floor, lighting what little wood remained dry on fire. Marisa was separated from Isanoen as the beast’s tail hit the ship. She was thrown out into the sea, and from there she was locked in a struggle for her life, panicking as the weight of her clothes dragged her down. She cut her vestments off just before losing consciousness, and managed to grab a piece of flotsam, but she was already far away from the wreckage, in the middle of a brewing storm, being carried away from the smouldering wreck of Gavin’s Hood by towering waves. The assault lasted under twenty seconds.

Sometime during her drifting she lost consciousness, waking up days later, retching and coughing up water, as a water bender was dragging the water out of her body. The worried folk of a small Vermilion Empire fishing village took care of her, clothed her and fed her for a few days as she regained her strength, and then she vanished in the night. She didn’t cry. She didn’t mourn. There were only two things she wanted to do. To forget the past eight years and to kill Attheon.

The first she was convinced would be the easiest. She still wakes up calling for Isanoen to this day. I guess that’d proof enough that she was mistaken. Drinking, that was her first solution. Marisa had been drinking reasonably ever since her days at the academy; she’d never been well and truly drunk until a few nights after waking. She’d found a temporary job as a goat-sheep herder and she spent her first pay drinking herself into oblivion. Being drunk wasn’t as bad as she’d been told, not for her at least, but it did help take the painful edge out of her memories, and by then she welcomed any progress, it was also the beginning of the state of near-perpetual drunkenness she is known for. Other than drinking Marisa started picking up hobbies left and right, dancing, playing (and cheating) at cards, reading, magic tricks, anything to keep herself from thinking back. She’d never actively tried to keep her mind away from her memories, she was trying everything and anything, but she did find sleeping alone was her worst enemy.

The latter of her two new priorities she knew exactly how to handle. Spirit bending. Her scrolls had been lost, but now she was free to wander from town to town, country to country, without sticking to coasts. She began to hunt down masters of spirit bending, seeking to train alongside them. Many shut their door to her. She made no secrets of her intentions, and few were willing to indulge her hate and thirst for vengeance. That is until she found one man. An air monk, or rather an ex air monk, who had been cast out for acts not dissimilar from those Marisa was seeking to accomplish. He taught her many things, most of them rituals and meditations intended to calm her, allow her to focus and to allow her to ignore pain. He taught her how to condense them into a single action (in her case her pre-combat ritual of drawing a red line over her nose). He also taught her to fight with staves, claiming that the precision and concentration required was something she sorely needed. The old monk’s teaching method was not traditional, it wasn’t widely accepted either, making use of many techniques that weren’t considered ethical, humane of just, but Marisa didn’t much care for any of these things then. She needed power, and she needed it as quickly as possible.

It took her a few years, but eventually at the age of thirty nine she finally considered herself capable enough to complete her grim business, and she began her hunt. She ken Attheon, she knew he was careful and that he’d never be mad enough to face her openly. He’d use his host to stay where he thought she couldn’t reach him. She had a plan though; all she needed was his whereabouts and a ship. It took her a full year to track him down. During that year she asked around, trying to learn of rumours or stories of trouble anywhere in particular on the coast. Eventually she was directed to a whaling town in the far Northern shores of the Earth Kingdom, a semi-independent town named Blaviken. The big whaling company that handled most of the town’s business had been losing ships at sea, more than usual, rumours had it a beast had risen from the depths of the sea to torment them. She was willing to believe that.

Blaviken was easy to find, lodged between mountains and cliffs, a very odd city. Nothing like the other places she’d been to in the Earth Kingdom, or anywhere else. She didn’t like the place, it was dirty, smelly and everyone seemed unpleasant. A few days in town got her an audience with the man she was looking for. Gansraal Balashar, the head of the local whaling business. She expected a rich, fat merchant, like the ones she’d robbed on Hood’s Gavel. Instead she was greeted by a man that managed to look as thin, as cold, as rigid and as dangerous as iced steel. Balashar’s business had been severely impeded by the recent events, and unlike many others he didn’t seem to take his whalers’ reports of a giant sea creature crushing his ships lightly. He listened to her plan, and he agreed to completely fund her expedition. Two days later she was aboard one of his whaling ships, with him aboard along a full crew of his most experienced whalers.

Marisa wasn’t entirely at ease having Gansraal around, something about the man seemed off to her, but she could respect a man who led from the front. The fact that he obviously knew that the story she’d told him of why she wanted to hunt down the beast was a lie also didn’t sit right with her. Why was he trusting all of these resources to some random woman from the streets. Then again she’d never been one to look a gift ostrich-horse in the mouth, no reason to start now.
Finding the beast wasn’t as hard as Marisa would have feared. The closer they got, the stronger she could Attheon’s presence, and she knew he could feel her coming as well. He was probably thinking he was safe down there at the bottom of the ocean. He wasn’t. She was certain of her victory, right up until she ordered the ship to stop and they showed her what sort of ship they’d be making their final approach in. The harpooning was rarely done form the main ship, for various reasons, but rather a small dinghy was lowered off the side and the hunters were rowed out into the open sea to stick their spear into the whales. In this case she would be alone in the dinghy. Her resolve was stronger than her fear though.


She rowed for the best part of a half hour before she was sufficiently far from the main ship. The night was pitch black. There was no moon out today, just as planned. Sitting cross legged in the tiny boat she closed her eyes, feeling the darkness below the waves, travelling down, down, down, down, down, seeing through the darkness, until she found her prey, all the way at the bottom, at the very edge of her reach, hundreds of meters down. She’d trained especially for this, lengthening her reach.

She could see Attheon’s new body. It was a long mass of muscles and meat and blubber, dozens of meters in length, with a dense bony nuzzle. Taking it down would be no piece of cake. Or rather it would have been no piece of cake for anyone else. The beast would be easy to kill. Attheon would not. Focusing she dipped her hand in a pouch at her belt, her middle and index fingers coming back thick with a red liquid. She drew a circle in the boat, inscribing a single pentagram in it and etching several symbols along its edge, before drawing a line in a single fluid motion across the bridge of her nose. The dyes and scents helped her focus, calming her breathing, sharpening her senses, the pentagram would assist in the ritual she needed to condemn Attheon to oblivion. Everything was still for a fraction of a second as she held her pose, arms and fingers outstretched.

Attheon’s host was too deep to kill, She couldn’t control the darkness finely enough to gut it that deep, she could pull it up though. Around the deep sea creature the shadows hardened and jerked upwards, waking it from its sleep. It took the spirit within a split second to recognise what was happening. He’d seen Marisa do similar things to entire ships. Decades ago Attheon had been smart, years of living as a whale had dulled that cunning to simple rage and aggression, in response to being pulled up he began to swim up, right into Marisa’s kill zone. As soon as he reached those water the darkness formed two blades that tore through the water dweller’s belly like a hot knife through butter, ending the great beast. The spirit was still very much alive though, and still rising.

On her dinghy Marisa had gotten up, the corpse of the leviathan would float back up, that would be all the proof Gansraal would need. She wasn’t done though. She shadows at the water’s surface spun at her command, forming a larger circle and pentagram on the water’s edge by constantly moving. She could feel her old ‘friend’ approach, as he passed through the pentagram the first part of her ritual was complete. She released the shadows and began to move slowly and smoothly, not unlike a water bender, except she wasn’t affecting the water. She was affecting Attheon. The pentagram had painted a target on him, allowing her to single him out from all the spiritual interference in the vicinity, and she was in the process of breaking him down. Layer by layer. Screams of pain were tearing the silence and peace of the night apart. The air was shimmering, the water was bubbling, the rising smoke forming the shape of a struggling torso and gaping, screaming mouth as it was carried off by the wind. Eyes closed, focused, practically in a trance, Marisa could still hear it. And it wasn’t satisfying. She’d expected to draw pleasure form this. She’d been wrong. Her movements steadily quickened until her hands were blurs, and then they suddenly stopped, along with the screaming, shimmering and smoking and bubbling. Attheon was dead. For good.

As she returned to the ship, back to the mainland and away from Blaviken, she slowly came to realise the extent of what she’d done to herself. When she’d killed Attheon the link which had been weaker than the day she was born shattered, but not before much of the powerful emotions Attheon felt as he withered into oblivion rushed through. A part of her died with him, leaving only a shrivelled stump where once her spirit and he had been intertwined. She has been unable to feel or see spirits and to be felt and seen by spirits that were not physically manifested since that day. You could say that spiritually she is dead, well that actually isn’t quite right. If one considers living things and spirits to be shining stars she is like a black hole. A gaping hole.

The two years after Attheon’s death she aimed about aimlessly, practising her dark bending, finding herself incapable of performing even the most basic of spirit bending moves. She worked as a mercenary, as a thief, as a lady of the night and as many other things trying to forget and mourning Attheon. Not what he actually was, but what she thought he’d been, all those years ago.


Next is how she was recruited into the Order Of The Elements and how she trained the next dark bending Warrior and those are stories for another time and another place.[/size][/list]