ULW runs sick with corruption, its halls filled with the toxic reek of destructive forces, injecting poisonous personalities into the arena week after week after week. To what end? What purpose can all of this possibly serve? Why is our general manager, overseer, and Windex spokesmodel Raymond der Vaart so keen on courting elements that are bad for business?
I've worked my ass off for this company. As stands I am the only individual on the ULW roster who has competed to their fullest extent on every single show that has made it to the air. Across eight Fuck'd Up Fridays and two Pay Per Views I've wrestled a record 12 matches, more than anybody.
I've never taken a show off.
I've never shown up to the arena in a state so poor that I am not fit to perform, and had my performance suffer as a result.
Not only do I not indulge in the vices of drugs and drink, but my body works so very differently from your typical human being that even if I were given these substances, that they would simply be broken down into harmless components by my metabolism and elemental digestive system.
Members of New Eden have come to the arena physically and mentally devastated, unable to perform their jobs to the fullest extent. They've blown off their duties to the company to help build and promote our shows, and to deliver the best product possibly on TV.
Willow Wilkes, Cassidy Haze, Adam, Serenity. Each and every one of them has failed this company on one occasion or another simply through their arrogance and callous disregard for standards.
New Eden is a cancer, everyone can see this. I know it, the fans know it, my co-workers know it. The only person that doesn't seem to have realized this is the man with the power himself, Raymond der Vaart.
For all his empty platitudes of love and compassion, Raymond fails to see the contempt, the disgust, the hatred, that New Eden's actions show week in and week out.
Love does not attempt to whip and flay the skin off the back of a friend.
Love does not seek to gain dominion over its fellows through intimidation and fear.
Love does not cut itself off at the knees by subverting the will and the mind of somebody's lover in order to manipulate and control them.
Love is, and has always been, about equals, not overlords and serfs.
ULW has been built upon a foundation of disgust for hard work, a contempt for upholding standards, a loathing for effort, and an utter hatred for fairness.
Look around. Just take a moment to stop and look. Look at who has been here since the very beginning. There are three men and one woman who have never let ULW down. Four people that have brought their very best without fail to the ring. A handful of individuals that take their commitments and promises seriously.
Jason King.
Cameron MacNichol.
Clay Colton.
Kalinda Kriegsdottir.
We're the rock that keeps ULW from sliding into a sea of pure, putrescent shit.
ULW started out with 20 people, only 9 continue to this day. Only four of those people have spent the last six and a half months giving their all for a company that dumps on them at any and every opportunity.
For some reason this company appears to be doing anything and everything within its power to drive us away, to rid itself of its most reliable performers and most skilled superstars.
I'm the only one of us four NOT currently holding a ULW title belt, and why is that? Because this company bends over backwards to accommodate anyone and everyone that just so happens to be in opposition to me.
Every title match that I've taken part in, I've been attacked by somebody who has no right being in that match in the first place.
Every opportunity I've had to secure myself the title has been spoiled by outside forces.
And no one is ever held accountable. No one is ever punished. In fact they're rewarded. They have attention and praise lavished upon them by this wretched company and our wretched general manager.
And what happens when I follow their example?
Dante has, after a reign of terror spanning several months, only just now been signed to a ULW contract AS A PART TIME WRESTLER. Dante, who has interfered in pretty much EVERY SINGLE main event since he showed up. Dante, who put Silencer on the shelf for months with an injury. Dante, who spent the better part between two PPV's FUCKING TRESPASSING IN EACH AND EVERY ULW ARENA.
Not even a slap on the wrist.
Dante has FUCKING ABDUCTED another member of the roster, RUINING a planned, promoted, and advertised main event match. This masked man has basically pulled down his pants and taken a shit on each and every ULW main event since ReBirth.
And yet somehow it's not acceptable behavior when I do those exact same things.
When I bring my buddy to interfere in a match it's a horrible, dire, and disgusting violation of ethics. When Willow Wilkes does it it's completely okay and fine, in fact it's encouraged to the point where making her DO HER JOB AND WRESTLE HER OWN GODS DAMNED MATCH is seen as UNFAIR.
Dante and Cindy Todd, two individuals involved with New Eden. Two individuals signed to limited date contracts. Two individuals that are a part of ULW FOR THE SOLE REASON OF FUCKING AROUND WITH IT.
Two people that, if rumors have it right, are here basically to screw with the show, wrestle one match at Paranoia, and then go right back to fucking around with the show without repercussion because they don't actually have to go out and wrestle matches.
It's disgusting.
And it's been that way since the beginning.
Since the very day Adam plopped his former-guitarist-for-Limp-Bizkit-evil-eyed ass in the ULW crowd Raymond was doing everything to hump his leg and get him in the company.
He did everything but pull down Silas Mason's pants and suck his dick on live television to get Lenore Price-Mason signed with the company. Lenore, whose big things thus far have been sticking her nose into my matches and wrestling Piddle on international television TWICE.
Why?
Why bend over backwards to satisfy people like New Eden, like Silas World, like motherfucking End Effect?
You remember End Effect, don't you? Yet another faction that had a whole bunch of their buddies hired, who demanded to be given great things on a silver platter, and who ended up doing precisely fuck all for this company in the long run.
Why put so much effort into keeping a bunch of bitchy primadonnas happy? We've had people threaten to leave ULW far behind and head for the fucking hills over random shit I've said on Twitter, of 140 little characters on an LED screen. What do you think would happen if Willow Wilkes had to deal with half the shit I've had to put up with?
Here, let's play make believe for a moment. Let's pretend that instead of my partner being abducted on the big show after a PPV, that Lenore had her teammate kidnapped. There would be a statewide manhunt, there would be helicopters, there would be bloodhounds, there would be police officers swarming the scene trying to find where the victim had gone.
Backgrounds would be looked at, places of last known residence investigated, and Silas Mason would demand that the match be called off, because his client should not be made to fight in a two on one handicap match against such dangerous opponents as Willow Wilkes and Adam.
And if the show must go on? Why ol' mealy mouthed Silas would get on his phone, break out his rolodex, and be able to find SOMEBODY to show up to fight alongside his client.
But you know what you didn't see? You know what DIDN'T make it to air?
Me being shot down time and time again to bring in someone to serve as my tag team partner. Because none of my friends are signed with the company! Because I'm not one of the chosen few who is allowed to RUN ROUGHSHOD over this fucking company and do whatever they like!
I had forty seven different Bobs, I had former ULW Tag Team Champion Ron Raeth, I had former ULW Hardcore Champion SPIDER. I know the incantation to summon the monstrous, former IWC No Holds Barred Champion and winner of the 2014 Last Stand Rumble winner, Legion. Hell, I was brought into this business by his handler Leeland Gaunt.
And do you know what? He was my first choice. You wanna know why I was so pissy with Jason King? Who was so beat to shit after his PPV match and getting attacked on the show that I was NOT going to let him kill himself in the ring out of a sense of obligation.
Because the moment I brought up Legion, the moment that I voiced the possibility of having a demon-devouring MONSTER in the main event, Raymond der Vaart turned white and damned near shit his pants before screaming himself red at me about how he's not going to have rampaging occult monsters on his program.
And then do you know what happened?
I dropped a fucking bombshell.
One phone call and a puddle port later and do you know what you would have had?
The Dark Man himself, Desolation, in a ULW main event in 2015.
And yet the very first man nominated for the ULW Hall of Fame Class of 2015, the man who has given this company a standing offer to appear on any show if they just ask, somehow just wasn't APPROPRIATE to take the place of Silencer in a main event.
Raymond did everything to move heaven and earth to assure that New Eden got their advantage, that they got their two on one victory, that Weeping Willow Wilkes finally gets to clap her hands, slap her meat curtains together in grotesque, sticky applause and FINALLY say that she's got a pinfall victory over me.
If I were anyone else, if I were a normal human being, I wouldn't be here right now. I wouldn't be standing and snarling into a ULW camera professing my undying hatred for Raymond der Vaart and the puppetmasters pulling his strings.
Because I'd be in the hospital with a cracked skull.
But I'm not a normal human being, I'm a motherfucking fire-breathing dragoness for another world.
Adam's basically been orgasming on Twitter about how wonderful it was to crush somebody's skull.
Well guess what, fucko? You didn't. You CAN'T. Things just don't work that way with me. You didn't even compress the skin. It stung a little bit and gave me tinnitus for about 15 seconds, but not much else.
That big bad blow that made you feel like a man, all tingly down in your big boy panties? Yeah, it wasn't even the most painful chairshot you hit me with. How's that make you feel, Adam? Knowing that the dire, destructive blow that you so adored wasn't actually anything of the sort?
And I know what you're thinking right now. You thinking "But Kalinda, you who speak so highly of doing your job and doing your utmost to promote your upcoming matches, instead of hanging around and taking illicit substances in the parking lot with Cassidy Haze, why are you ranting for minutes upon minutes about New Eden when you have a rematch with Lenore Price-Mason?"
And I'm glad you asked! Because I get to verbally smack that stupid fucking grin you've got on your face while you asked that ridiculous question.
It's because there's a conspiracy afoot. There's a faction behind the scenes that seeks to monopolize professional wrestling. It's the answer to the question I asked at the very beginning of this promo. "Why does ULW do so many things that are bad for business?"
And the answer is the Shadow Cartel, the manipulative front that's got its sticky fingers into the Triad and resists any attempts and removing them. The Cartel doesn't care that courting Adam and LPM with highly visible, high priced, lucrative contracts is bad for ULW. Because it's good for the Cartel, good for the puppets that dance upon the strings.
Adam and Lenore have thus far been decidedly mid-card tier, tops. Adam's performance at times has been so damned bad at times that he makes people look forward to Mya Denton.
Adam's made it into two ULW main events, riding Willow Wilkes' coattails the entire way. He totally fucking blew chunks on live TV the LAST time he main evented FUF, so this time he had to do something big and spectacular to get his name out there, doing something unspeakably violent against ULW's most badass superstar.
Me.
And it's not like this hasn't happened before. Oh no. It's a known strategy. It's a plan that';s been put in place before. And you have to think I'm as dumb as a box of rocks not to see it.
I'm not stupid. Adam got to do the same thing that Lenore Price-Mason was given free reign to do for weeks. Beat on the big blue bitch so that you look like an amazing, powerful, wonderful professional wrestler BECAUSE YOU CAN JUMP SOMEBODY FROM BEHIND AND BEAT 'EM DOWN TWO ON ONE!
Your parents must be SO PROUD of yourselves.
And do you know what? Right now there's somebody going around all smug and full of themselves because they've got things lined up for a triple play. Willow finally gets a pin on me, Adam gets in a big hit that makes him look like a beast, and Lenore Price-Mason magically obtains a rematch after a draining two on one handicap match and a good walloping with a chair.
Because Lenore couldn't get the fucking job done at Ascendancy. All the pieces were there, after all. Run in after run in to piss me off to the point where I would be off my game, an attempted sneak attack, and running the numbers game.
And even with Mr. Joshua and Speech Impediment Silas out there holding your hands every step of the way, Lenore, you STILL got your ass kicked.
I thought that would've been enough for you. I thought you would've learned your lesson. I thought that seeing what I did to Mr. Joshua. What's it going to take, Lenore? How many times are you willing to poke me with a stick and risk your arm getting bitten off?
What do you think's changed, Lenore? What makes you think you can beat me this time, when you failed to do so at Ascendancy?
The handicap match. The attack. The chairshots. You think because you got a free ride wrestling Piddle, and because I had to fight off two champions of the Shadow Cartel on my own, that you think there was some damage done, that I'll be weakened for this match. And that your little pals in New Eden will be there to hold you hand so that you can dedicate this match to poor Mr. Joshua, who at this very moment is learning how he can install coin purses in the palms of his hands for fun and profit.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
I don't know if you noticed this, Lenore, but I'm not like other wrestlers. I would think that the being bright blue and being able to spew flames on command would be a hint. But yet somehow I have to come out here week after week, month after month to remind you people that I'm a fucking DRAGON.
You can cause me pain, you can make me feel sore, you can make my muscles ache, but you can't hurt me. All the chairshots in the world aren't going to be enough to keep me down. You belt me in the head with whatever the hell you like, it's not going to give me so much as a bruise, let alone a concussion.
You can't wear me down, Lenore. I'm not a rock that time and effort can grind into dust.
I'm water. I'm the rain. I'm the ocean. I'm eternal.
When your grandchildren are dead and gone of old age, I'll still be around, alive, kicking, and more lethal than ever.
You're 25, Lenore. It's all downhill from here for you. Sure, you'll gain experience, gain knowledge, maybe if you ditch that word slurring brother-cousin-husband of yours you might actually have something useful penetrate that noggins of yours, take root, and eventually bear fruit.
But from here on your body is only going to get worse. All the little aches and pains, the things that will never quite heal right, you're going to start bouncing back slower and slower, and in time it's all going to pile up.
If you're a normal wrestler, that is. If you're just hear because Silas thinks your pretty face can launch a line of cosmetics after a year or two in the business you could find your in ring time far shorter than you ever imagined.
The moment you get a wrinkle, a frown line, a crow's foot someone might decide that you're washed up. That you're not as pretty as you used to be. That they can find someone prettier, younger, and cheaper than you.
For women like you, Lenore, careers in wrestling spanning decades are the exception. Not the rule.
But I doubt you've got what it takes to tough it out for the long haul. You just want some glory before you huff it back to the board room, pointing to your one big fling with actual combat while you grow, old, fat, and riddled with cellulite.
Things haven't changed between us, Lenore. Just because I hit some moves, then you hit some moves, and then I hit some moves again doesn't mean than my thoughts on you are any different.
You need to be punished, Lenore. You need to be shown the error of your ways. You need to learn that if you tweak a dragon's nose, you're going to get the flames.
I thought maybe that beating the fuck out of you, beat the fuck out of Silas, and putting your head of security in the hospital, again, would get the message through your thick skull.
Professional wrestling is not a toy, Lenore. This isn't a game where you get up, walk away from the board, and go back to your normal life. This isn't a book that you can just put down.
I want you to remember that this is what you wanted. I want you to remember that this is what you asked for. I want you to remember that you begged and pleaded and wept and probably hired some blonde from Silas's Bimbo Factory to do unfathomable things with chocolate sauce, a set of silicone cock rings, and 400 grit sandpaper to Raymond der Vaart's person in order to get this opportunity.
I want you to know that you had the chance to walk away with your mind, body, and soul intact.
I'm going to break everyone and everything that you bring to the ring with you, Lenore.
The ring is a battlefield and any of your friends, allies, associates, and brother-cousin-spouses that step onto it within my reach are considered enemy combatants.
Silas damned near gave himself a heart attack over what I did to Mr. Joshua.
So just imagine what it's going to be like when I pick up that obnoxious kid you've got carting around like some middle school teacher slash pedophile and take a bite out of him like he's a jelly donut.
Call Raymond. Have him deck out the first three rows like it's a fucking Gallagher show. Tarps and Jason King Fruity Pebbles themed raincoats for everybody!
Because it's going to be a bloodbath.
Yours. Stewie's. Silas's. Adam's. Willow's. Cindy's.
Whomever the fuck is dumb enough to come down to that ring with me in it.
Each and every one of you that stands in my way?
I'm going to drown you in a sea of your own tears and your own blood.
That is your fate.
Sealed with a Frostbite Kiss.
It's never a good sign when the voices in your head are conspiring with one another.
The Manifold Matriarch, the deposed dragon goddess that I managed to accidentally make myself the avatar of, and the Hand of Arimus, the powerful sentient necromantic artifact crafted by my world's own god of death. For the last few days they had been worryingly quiet and unobtrusive.
Evil overlords, much like small children, are at their most dangerous and destructive when you can't see or hear them doing anything. Children, however, are limited to breaking things, crayoning the walls, and covering things in their own bodily fluids.
With such sinister powers at work, the end result is usually rather similar, except that the scrawlings on the walls are in an arcane tongue that drive the read mad, the things that are broken are usually lives, and the bodily fluids belong to someone else and tend to be spilled in far more prodigious amounts.
For the first time the pair had a project, some conglomeration of arcane and divine magics involving energy, life force, blood, genetics, and probably a good half dozen spells and curses that would unsettle my stomach if I knew about them.
They had their own little experimental test subject, one Claudia O'Rourke. Well, technically she does have a last name any more, since she kind of doesn't exist. I wiped her pretty much from living memory with the use of a powerful artifact from my collection of stuff from my adventuring days. So her husband has no idea who she is and her family doesn't remember her in the slightest. She's not even in the family photos any more.
Doctor Claw, as I call her, was sent by the Shadow Cartel to "evaluate" my mental state, a blatant attempt to get me barred from active competition in ULW and giving one of their darlings, one Lenore Price-Mason, a victory by forfeit over one of the most impressive physical specimens in the world.
She rubbed me the wrong way with her smugness and condescending attitude, so I brought out an enchanted scythe by the name of Memory Ripper. One swipe with the scythe and bam, as far as the rest of the world is concerned no more Claudia.
And of course she took being rejected as a crazy woman by her family and friends very badly. Very, VERY badly. To the point where she decided to pull a gun on me to try and make me unfuck the situation.
Oi.
I've explained in depth that due to a particular elven ancestor coupled with innate draconic durability, mundane attacks don't do much more than cause a bit of pain and soreness. One only need look at having my head sandwiched between two steel chairs and being not only lucid, but moving around and generally peeved about the whole thing.
On any other wrestler that's a thing that puts you on the shelf for a few weeks, usually with a concussion. Claudia almost broke her fingers hitting me in the head as hard as she could with a barbell, so I'd think she'd have gotten the picture. Though she didn't actually shoot me. Well, she kind of did. But she was aiming for the Matriarch and I had to catch the bullet so some random passerby didn't end up getting it in the jugular.
She also managed to get roped into a fight between me and a bunch of opportunist demons who thought that kicking my ass would get them into the good books of the powers behind the Shadow Cartel, who have their dirty, sticky fingers in a lot of pies besides pro wrestling. Seriously, half the wrestlers are a part of one major corporation or another, if you have CEO's and shit stinking up a wrestling ring, something really weird is going on.
Like a bunch of demons and their mortal allies craving power, glory, and dominion over the masses.
A few weeks back, before my very first ULW World Heavyweight Championship match, my mentor Desolation loaned me the original ULW title belt for a few days. The adoration of the crowd, the presentation of several metals and leather as a symbol of power, the strife and struggle to obtain and control such an artifact. All these things come together to make a pro wrestling championship belt just as much of a repository for elemental energies as the bones of any saint.
Probably more since 4 million plus people don't tune in to watch St. Snazzypants not-rot in his dirtbox because he was so pure and holy in life every week.
The reason that your local mall doesn't have a chain store catering the leashes, harnesses, food, and accessories for your typical range of sorcerous familiars and the reason why LARPers in the woods throw beanbags instead of striking their foes down with as actual LIGHTNING BOLT, LIGHTNING BOLT, LIGHTNING BOLT is the same reason why we've seen a rash of demonic forces invading pro wrestling.
Magical energy is hard as fuck to come by on this backwater ball of a world, and to bend the laws of reality you tend to need more of it than you can just find lying around.
Planet Earth is basically the California of magical power. More infrastructure put into place to suck all the mana slash water and put it to specific uses that mean that in the end there isn't enough for everybody to be able to work on their personal projects, have green lawns (filled with man-eating plant monsters), and grow almonds. Those things are a waste of water to grow. Seriously. Fuck almonds.
And fuck demons.
The ringleader of the bunch that came after me was a Corpsetaker, a thief stealing the husks of the departed and wearing them like a rented tux he never will have to pay the bill for.
The son of a bitch had carefully cultivated a self-destruct mechanism for being forced to leave his favored body; Abyssal Rot. It's an infernal fungus-like thing that devours whatever it touches and digs in to where you'll never be able to get it clean without a great deal of ritual purification, and burning whatever the fuck it happened to take root in.
It just so happened to take root in Claudia. It's crippling. It's probably how zombies came about in the cultural zeitgeist. It devours all non-essential tissue, leaving you a withered, desiccated husk. It takes you to the verge of death but refuses to let you go over. On your own you're an agonized wreck with bits falling off who can barely think through the pain.
Signing up to host a foreign exchange succubus will clear it right up, though.
It's why Abyssal Rot is an effective defense for a Corpsetaker, your foe will be either easy to kill, or stumbling over their flayed, skinless legs to sign on to Team Demon in exchange for an end to the suffering.
And since this is the fucking California of magical existence, you people don't have the power hanging around to easily banish it. Neither do I. I'm not a spell caster. There's just something about me that fucks up just about everything I try to cast on my own. I tried healing somebody's six inch sword wound. Healed it shut, alright. Healed it so good the cells kept growing and dividing and didn't want to stop.
Yeah, my healing spell gave a dude cancer. Thankfully other people who aren't walking anathemas to sorcery can actually cure cancerous growths given the opportunity to ply the healing craft.
But here I've got no clerics, no healers, no druids. I don't even have a goofy wiseman with strange herbs, potions, funny mushrooms, and a role as designated comic relief. Well, I have SPIDER, but he's definitely not a healer, and he samples far too much of his own product on a recreational basis.
So as a result the only way to cure Claudia is to have the Matriarch or the Hand do something within their power. And considering Claudia was quite vehement about not becoming a bloodsucking, soul-eating, brain-devouring member of the undead, that's left us pulling something out of the dragon goddess' toolbox.
And she does have something, a ritual learned from another world to empower "lesser" beings with the wondrous gift of dragonhood, where a dragon takes her blood and infuses it into another being, binding them to her will.
In return the newly minted dragonspawn gains the usual host of dragon-related abilities, has their bodily vitality restored as mortal flesh is transformed in draconian wonderment, and wuvs their new mistress forever and evers. Whether they want to or not.
Yeah, magic happy funtime brainwashing.
You can see why I don't trust the Matriarch and the Hand with this. Especially since the ritual is supposed to make a couple barrels worth of transformative blood-mixture.
I'm going to need to put some of my blood in the ritual, because there's supposed to be a living dragon driving the whole thing, but the form is going to come from a donation of blood from the Hand.
The Hand of Arimus has many useful properties for your run of the mill dark wizard, your typical loathsome necromancer, your bloodthirsty vampire, and your everyday door to door salvation salesman.
In this case the ability is one that's proved invaluable for wicked witches and vampires alike: being able to recreate the blood of any being that the Hand has tasted. It's got some pretty sharp, magically enhanced talons on it, so it's sampled quite a few dragons.
So while the Gruesome Twosome have been going over the specifics of the ritual, the spells that will need to be used, and what sort of draconic features to give Claudia, I've been left with the dirty work; constructing the ritual altar.
Its not been too difficult. The hardest part was finding an analog for the massive cauldron that's supposed to hold the resulting blood that the dragonspawn-to-be gets dipped in. Amazingly you can't find a cast iron cauldron big enough to use as a hot tub for sale on the internet.
So I've had to make due with whatever Spark managed to find on Craigslist. Considering I had to pop down the Pennsylvania and the fact that despite all the scrubbing, it still smells enough like chocolate that I'm pretty sure it's either castoffs or loot from the Hershey corporation.
Stainless steel mixing vat out to work well enough.
"So you're sure about this?" I ask Claudia's shade. I pulled her soul out of her body so that she can actually have input on the whole process of her alteration.
"What choice do I have, other than die or lie in utter agony? That's not much of a choice."
"Those two are definitely up to something. They're probably going to twist the thing to perform some kind of unpleasant experiment that's going to end up with me pissed off and you absolutely loathing your new existence."
"It's still better than dying."
"Considering the Hand would be perfectly happy to transform you into one of a few dozen critters that devour various bits of the sentient mind, body, and soul and feel it's an improvement, I think you ought to consider your options quite thoroughly."
"I don't want to die, though." she pauses for a moment, a thought entering her mind.
"But demons and devils and angels exist, so there's an afterlife."
"Yup." I say, going about the process of attaching ten similarly sized skulls each from a different species of dragon equidistantly around the vat. I took measurements and made little marks with chalk. I'm doing everything by the book.
Oddly enough I'm actually rather talented with ritual magic, it's just the basic, hands on manipulation of the stuff that gives me issues. Though I've had rituals figuratively blow up in my face more frequently than I'd like.
"But there's not really any way to figure out where you're going ahead of time. There are infernal rituals that involve human sacrifice that kill the victim, trap the soul, and assure a trip downwards. I have no idea if there aren't like abyssal spiderwebs on the road to the afterlife that do the same thing."
"Is… is that a thing? Can they really DO that?"
I shrug, lining things up carefully and applying super glue to keep the skull held in place. I'll be dripping some metal on it and welding it to the vat later, but this'll do to keep it stable and aligned for the time being. Unfortunately they don't sell skull clamps at Home Depot.
"I dunno. I don't have a clue how the whole passage of souls thing works here. Especially because no divine powers seem to be pointing to their followers and calling "Dibs.""
"The Matriarch snatched you up, anyway. Which puts your post-vital existence solely in her hands. And she hasn't been able to locate said hands in at least a millenia. I'm pretty sure that Afterlife with Eleanor means she om nom noms your soul and you get to spend the rest of eternity as a slithery snake-dragon head that's basically a you-flavored reflection of her."
"So if I'm going to be mindfucked into being some draconic abomination, I might as well take the chance that I come out of things normal, as opposed to the complete uncertainty. Plus I'll be alive, and that means that down the road there might be an opportunity to fix things."
"It's extremely difficult to undo something like this. It's not just reshaping your body. It's altering your DNA and splicing bits on to your soul. Too much shapechanging also tends to have side effects of its own. Like with me."
"I'm soul-bound to an elven gal back home, her thing is enchantments. Gamers would call them buffs and her a solid support class. Magic tends to go derpy when you throw it at my physically, but through our spiritual connection she can drop spells on me and get by the whole thing."
"Her stuff tends to be enhancing my physical attributes, being stronger, faster, tougher, that sort of thing, and it comes through totemic forms. Representations of animals and mythological critters and stuff."
"So that's happened so often that anything that could be considered a positive effect with a transformational aspect, I soak that right up and ignore the negative aspects. Some stuck up bitch at a dinner party thought I was a primitive, rude beast of a woman and tried to turn me into a gorilla. The physically empowering part of that happened, the mental degradation to an ape-like level didn't work."
"You seen the Avengers?"
"Yeah."
"Think Hulk and Loki. I did that then threw her out of a window."
"Ouch."
"She ruined my sexy little red dress and shoes. I liked that dress, it was the only one I found that I was simultaneously comfortable and good looking in."
Claudia chuckles at the mental image and is quiet for a moment. She looks down at her translucent form, looking right through her hands.
"Since my soul is out of my body, couldn't we just put it into a brain dead coma patient or something?"
"Kind of? Your soul is outside your body right now, but it's not broken off from it. There are gurus and meditation experts and shit that can pop themselves out of their body naturally."
"In order for you to take over another body, we'd either have to get you learning some master's level sorcery, or actually kill you and make you into a body hopping ghost."
"Either way it's not a good idea, once you cut the cord to your original body your connection with the world starts to fade. Pretty quickly you end up on the level of any other ethereal being with the same weaknesses. You could start losing autonomic nervous function in the presence of a suitable large amount of salt."
"So if the lid falls off a salt shaker, I'd get kicked out of my borrowed body, which would start dying?"
"Yup."
"Forget I brought it up. Between the hazards and the dying thing that is definitely not an option."
We sit in quiet for a little while.
"Question for you: why aren't my emotions working right? I ought to be pissed off and terrified and so worried that I throw up."
"Because you're used to having glands and stuff. The body triggers hormones that activate or enhance emotional responses. You consciousness is disconnected entirely from your physical form. Because if you weren't you'd be experiencing your body's reaction to basically having half your weight's worth of water and fat devoured by demonic fungus."
"So you don't really experience emotions unless you're actively concentrating on something that provokes an emotional response. You feel it when you're thinking about it and it goes away when you're not."
"I'm sure once we fix your body you can go right back to screaming obscenities about how I'm a horrible monster for doing this to you. I'll give you your gun back, you can wave it at me, and we can continue where we left off.
Claudia winces.
"You'd be surprised how much human behavior is random brain firings and glands."
"I… kind of like being this way better. I'm not so… angry and hateful all the time. I feel… better about the world."
"Like I said, you need a deep state of meditation to kick yourself into this state naturally. So it's only natural that you feel a lot more relaxed. But if you really want to, I guess it won't hurt to ask the Hand about it."
"Thank you, Kalinda. For helping me with this."
I wish I'd known. I wish I could've foreseen what was going to happen because of this question and the result it would have.
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