There is a house, and in the house is a bed, and in the bed is a girl. She sleeps soundly, curled up very small under her blanket, while a steady accumulation of snow makes round soft piles on the roof and against the outsides of the walls.
Something creeps into her dreams.
It creaks like old wood, tall and four-armed and gnarled, fingers warped and many-knuckled. It bristles with vicious intent, curved hooks and barbs of hatred built to tear into flesh. Though its body seems insubstantial, at its heart lies a fist-sized lump of polished bone.
It turns, and looks at her. Its eyes are ophidian, predatory. Fine gold chains bind together its lips, sealing away its wintry voice.
Five bright shards of possibility shine from within its withered fist.
Though it does not open its mouth, it speaks nonetheless.
Choose.
The shadow tenses, swallowing hard - then the golden chains threaded through its mouth compel it to form words.
"The body type, strengths and weaknesses of your new body. Lifespan, as associated with the strength of your body's aura. The manifestation of your aura's power. The talent that you will gain. The ways that your aura will be etched, and the techniques of its use that you will know."
Damn it damn it damn it damn it!
"The body type, strengths and weaknesses of your new body. When your body will stop aging. The reputation of your family. Your demonic heritage. Your bodyguard. The supernatural strengths of your demonic body, and the tomes of forbidden knowledge that will come into your possession."
Boredom and half-interested cruelty, as its lips are shaped and moulded by the magic.
Cambiare: too many things - no, she should try to remember them anyway. Lots of body things and some fate things.
She takes a deep breath (because this is scary and she needs to focus) and stares hard at the creature, and at its reflection, and she asks: "What exactly can I choose about the Hermit's body - what different," what was it all again, "strengths and weaknesses can it have, and what else can I choose about it exactly?"
"Even with the closest possible body, you will lose about an inch of height. As for weaknesses: if you specialize your body towards learning or strike a balance between dexterity and learning rate, your strength or overall health will suffer: if you specialize it towards dexterity, your learning rate will suffer."
Parkour is closest to what she already knows... okay.
Quick review: She wants agility and learning ability, the closest possible appearance to her own, a Gymnastics talent in parkour, and she isn't sure about the lifespan and she still needs to pick the manifestation and etching and techniques of her aura.
"What can I choose about the manifestation of my aura, and what other effects will the choice have?"
"Each lotus consists of five powers. I will explain each in turn.
The Dread Lotus is a dark, shadowy aura.
Firstly, it makes your every movement graceful and hypnotic.
Secondly, it lets you slow your falls and levitate as a physical effort, as fast or slow as you can walk or run.
Thirdly, it allows you to control another being for up to an hour each day.
Fourthly, you may use your aura to move objects within it, as if you were standing anywhere within its range.
Fifthly, no-one will suspect you of wrongdoing until confronted with hard evidence.
The Lilting Lotus is a gentle, protective aura.
Firstly, it allows you to relieve or cause pain with a touch.
Secondly, it makes you regenerate rapidly from any injury, be near-immune to diseases, and purge sickness from those within your aura.
Thirdly, you may mend the flesh and bone of anyone within you aura.
Fourthly, you may create defensive barriers within your aura.
Fifthly, you may restore the recently-dead to full life and health.
The Jade Lotus is a dynamic, pulsing aura of electric potential.
Firstly, it allows you to strike those within your aura with lightning-like spiritual energy.
Secondly, you may drain stamina or life from those within your aura.
Thirdly, you may teleport to anywhere within your aura's range, creating a shockwave where you appear.
Fourthly, your aura will actively retaliate against anyone who tries to harm you, requiring no action from you.
Fifthly, you can use your aura to accelerate your movements and speed your cognition.
The Hidden Lotus is a subtle lavender aura.
Firstly, it makes your footfalls and movements muffled and hard to discern, and grants the ability to see vast distances regardless of lighting conditions.
Secondly, it allows you to become invisible so long as you minimize your physical interaction with objects.
Thirdly, it grants you perfect sight of everything within your aura.
Fourthly, it allows you to conjure simple solid objects, made of lavender light.
Fifthly, it allows you to throw your voice anywhere within the range of your aura.
The Brilliant Lotus is near-blinding to those with aura sight.
Firstly, it extends your lifespan by five seconds for every second that you are alive.
Secondly, it fixes your apparent age at any age you choose, in a range from 7 to 21.
Thirdly, it allows you to view the past through any mirror you touch.
Fourthly, mirrors allow you to view any place you know of within the city.
Fifthly, mirrors allow you to view a single branch of the future.
The last aura is the Spectral Lotus, which manifests as a kaleidoscope of shifting colors.
The Spectral Lotus grants a strong innate resistance to magic. Its remaining four powers may be selected from any of the auras above - but each manifested power must come from a unique aura."
She wants a lot of things from the Lilting Lotus, but she also wants the five seconds per second of lifespan, except...
"If I had the aura thing that gave me five seconds per second of lifespan, what would that do about my aura strength? Does aura strength affect anything besides how unnerving I am?"
She wishes she weren't too scared to have her selfspace avatar get up and get a paper and pen and start writing all this down. But she can still half-see into the reflection of her desk, and - yes! - she can make the reflection of a pen write on the reflection of a notepad. The strange magic creature can't stop her.
"Can I choose any lifespan at all when I choose my lifespan?" she asks, and in the meantime she writes:
Agility and learning ability, the closest possible appearance to my own, a Gymnastics talent in parkour;
The Spectral Lotus aura manifestation, with the Lilting Lotus's second power of health and sickness-banishing and the Brilliant Lotus's first power of unbounded lifespan and the Jade Lotus's fifth power of making myself faster and ... maybe the Dread Lotus's second power of levitation but maybe the Hidden Lotus's second power of invisibility...
Etching? Techniques?
And a longer lifespan comes with a stronger aura, and a stronger aura sounds like it's actually useful. She underlines the invisibility power, since if she's going to be as unnerving as all that she might as well be invisible too, and adds 1/8 aging rate to the line about her body's properties.
"What can I choose about my aura's etching?"
"There are fifteen possible aura etchings.
First, the ability to levitate as a physical effort, as fast or slow as you can run or walk.
Second, the ability to teleport twelve feet, once per minute.
Third, perfect grace and elegance, and the ability to fall any height and be uninjured.
Fourth, supernaturally enhanced hearing.
Fifth, a supernaturally enhanced sense of smell.
Sixth, inhuman flexibility.
Seventh, speed-reading at full comprehension.
Eighth, perfect knowledge of one scientific theory.
Ninth, natural parkour skill and the ability to adhere your hands and feet to surfaces at will.
Tenth, resistance to heat or cold or electricity.
Eleventh, a mind safe from all intrusion.
Twelfth, general magical resistance.
Thirteenth, your aura is naturally hidden and impossible to read.
Fourteenth, you can detect and read others' auras.
Fifteenth, you can completely disable your fear response at will."
"Bolt. Project bolts of spirit energy. Burst. Make your aura explode, destroying the area around you while leaving you unharmed. Can be combined with Bolt to make the bolts explode. Resilience. Increases how often you can draw upon your aura. Clothing. Allows you to form your aura into any set of mundane clothes. Spikes. Allows you to form a shell or wall of aura spikes within your arms' reach. Sphere. Create a protective sphere of spirit energy. Can be combined with Burst to produce a blast of energy when struck. Beam. Maintains a continuous beam of spirit energy for ten seconds. With burst, can once again cause explosions where it impacts objects. Lash and Naginata summon weapons of the appropriate type, formed of your spirit energy. Breath. Allows you to go without breathing and ignore the effects of pressure and radiation. Form. With tremendous effort, separate your spirit from your physical body and act with supernatural strength. Collapse. If you should die, your aura will destroy everything within ninety-six feet. Fade. Temporary invisibility. Mask. Disguise your physical features. Clone. Temporarily duplicate yourself. With burst, yet more explosions."
Aura techniques: Resilience. Clothing. Breath. Sphere. Bolt.
Riya takes another deep breath.
"If I chose the Hermit with the closest possible appearance to my own, body specializations of agility and learning ability, a Gymnastics talent in parkour, one-eighth of my aging rate; the Spectral Lotus aura manifestation with the Lilting Lotus's second power of health and sickness-banishing and the Brilliant Lotus's first power of unbounded lifespan and the Jade Lotus's fifth power of making myself faster and the Hidden Lotus's second power of invisibility; the five aura etchings of safe mind, hidden aura, aura reading, levitation, and grace-and-safe-falling; and the aura techniques of Resilience, Clothing, Breath, Sphere, and Bolt, what else would be left that I could have made a choice about and didn't?"
Well. That settles that. The aura techniques seemed mostly undesirable anyway.
"Then I want the Hermit," she says, "with the closest possible appearance to my own, body specializations of agility and learning ability, a Gymnastics talent in parkour, one-eighth of my aging rate; the Spectral Lotus aura manifestation with the Lilting Lotus's second power of health and sickness-banishing and the Brilliant Lotus's first power of unbounded lifespan and the Jade Lotus's fifth power of making myself faster and the Hidden Lotus's second power of invisibility; and the five aura etchings of safe mind, hidden aura, aura reading, levitation, and grace-and-safe-falling."
She curls up under her blanket and examines her reflection. She can tell which things are from the Hermit card and which things are from the fragments. For some reason, all the fragment-things seem to be about parkour. She did not want this much parkour. Why is there so much parkour.
Her thoughts seem clearer somehow, more crystalline. Easier to hold simultaneously in her head.
Her body reacts perfectly to her commands, with fluid, natural grace. This is more than simple agility - every motion seems aesthetically pleasing somehow.
Her bed-head appears to have fixed itself, not a single hair out of place. And she smells faintly of vanilla for some reason.
She investigates her reflection until she sees exactly how and where everything is attached. It would be terrible not to know herself. It's already terrible enough to have been changed like this.
Still, it's not so bad being able to think easier and move easier and having... very convenient hair? Smelling like vanilla is weird but she can probably get used to it.
All this self-examination takes her a lot of time. Now she's hungry. She sits up in bed and sends her reflection tentatively out of the reflected room to look around for where she might go to find food here.
There are all sorts of unusual objects. Some are recognizable variations on things she knows: some are completely foreign to her. Many things are made of a strange, unnaturally smooth material, like the black, polished bones of some ancient beast. Copper wires snake this way and that, through the walls, from one strange device to another: what arcane purpose could they serve...?
It's very odd. But when she follows and studies the wires, she figures out soon enough that they connect to mysterious objects. Some sort of bizarre local magic. This must be a strange place indeed, to have produced the bone-hearted shadow with the golden-chained mouth. It makes sense that there would be all kinds of bizarre magic here.
Now she is done eating the food. Her reflection returns to her reflected room, and curls up in bed at the same time as she does. But only the reflection cries.
... This is wrong.
This is too much city. There needs to be less city. Why is there so much city. This is much worse than too much parkour. Too much parkour is an oddity; too much city is - is -
How high does she have to climb, how far does she have to run, to get away?
Well then, Riya can just. Stay. Up here. Forever.
...
No. She cannot do that. That is not a thing she can do.
...
She slowly lowers herself back toward the roof, eyeing the other girl warily. When she is just barely close enough for the other girl to have a reflection in her selfspace, she stops to examine it. What are this stranger's properties?
... This girl does not really exist here. She exists everywhere, smeared out across the city like a brushstroke. And she has far too many eyes and mouths to be altogether comforting.
But she is a person, beneath the shadows' taint. She is whole and strong. Something about her is faintly silvery, reminiscent of the cards she was offered. Reminiscent of herself now, come to think of it.
"I picked..."
She closes her eyes in concentration, to better remember her exact words.
"The Hermit with the closest possible appearance to my own, body specializations of agility and learning ability, a Gymnastics talent in parkour, one-eighth of my aging rate; the Spectral Lotus aura manifestation with the Lilting Lotus's second power of health and sickness-banishing and the Brilliant Lotus's first power of unbounded lifespan and the Jade Lotus's fifth power of making myself faster and the Hidden Lotus's second power of invisibility; and the five aura etchings of safe mind, hidden aura, aura reading, levitation, and grace-and-safe-falling."
"I have demonic blood: I'm a Lilim. I don't age, and have a ten thousand year lifespan. I also have high status in this world. Though I was originally an Umber demon, I sacrificed the innate power in my blood in exchange for the Tome of the Gate's capabilities. My other augments allow me to summon demonic defenses and see the futures, pasts, and auras of other people - though your aura is very difficult for me to perceive. It seems fragmented somehow."
They repeat this process a half-dozen times, until-
Ishmerai is standing on a balcony. She hands Riya a small, silvery key and gestures towards the balcony door.
"Your room. It's one of my various safe houses. This is the only door, so you don't need to be worried about anyone else disturbing you."
Ishmerai steps in with a nod to Riya, and drops the backpack down next to the bed with another loud clank. Unzipping it, she efficiently lays out various instruments of destruction on the sheets.
"Sorry, I would use a table if we had one big enough... I'll have to bring one over here when we're done with the weaponry."
"Powerful magical weapons, found or retrieved from the shadows."
She taps an impressively ornamented longsword.
"The Bastard of Dalheim. Powerfully holy. Causes pain in those who lie while it is unsheathed, and cuts through the Shadows' defenses like butter."
She brushes the notched handle of a rusted revolver.
"Spite. A vicious gun, which seems to guide its envenomed bullets to its opponents' weakest points. Only six shots, though."
A double-edged knife.
"The Lady. A fated blade that draws its bearer towards great dangers - with even greater rewards."
A scimitar, curved like a treble clef.
"Dirge. Sings when unsheathed with intent to kill. The more that enemies fear its bearer, the weaker and more helpless they become."
A battleaxe, heavy as a stone, sharp as a razor.
"Gloryseeker. Grants immense strength and fortitude, deflects incoming missiles, and a canny awareness of one's environment. Unfortunately, none of these enchantments will function for anyone who has ever lied."
Hmm...
The battleaxe sounded like it had the things she wanted most. She gently peels the reflection apart, picking up the layers for 'immense strength and fortitude' and transferring them to herself as carefully as possible. She doesn't care at all about the lying criterion, and the reflected copy of it is shredded to uselessness in short order.
Meanwhile, her real body stands there blankly.
"I don't know what things there are. But I want to be able to get rid of the shadows." She looks at the other weapons. "Maybe I will copy some things from the others of these too. But it's hard to figure out what being holy is made of exactly. Do you think it would be useful to be holy?"
The holiness is rather complex. It's 'destroy evil in general' and 'speak honestly' and 'strengthen the righteous' and 'destroy demons specifically' and a half-dozen other things, all tied together in intricate knots that reinforce each other. It looks rather likely to shred if she pulls at it.
"It's better! It's all the books. The people here call it a magicomp."
She sets down the slab of metal on the small desk, then pokes it: a three-dimensional image of a row of books rises from the metal, little stone gargoyles at each end propping them up.
"This is my custom library application, set on 'shuffle': just tap one of the gargoyles to get a new random shelf of books. If you see something interesting, just take it from the shelf: the books are semi-real and will persist as long as you're reasonably close to the sheet."