Assumed Ipseity

"Fear not, little sister. You can still serve our house... as a martyr."

Those were the last words Tylactia would ever say to her sister, deeming her worthy of nothing more than a wave of one hand and the words take her to the house guards. This was no surprise... betrayal was the highest virtue among the drow. Family members were tools to further one's own ambition, nothing more. Expendable assets... and having failed to respond to the Chair, Tyrdaste would be expended.

A desperate scramble followed in the manor hallway with the short, lithe dark elf woman shoving one of her captors out of an open window and kicking the other in his unarmored groin. She cut her bindings on his half-drawn knife and then was off before he could regain his footing.

Her heavy breathing echoed in the passage. Through the bookcase she could hear her pursuers shouting in confusion. The passage into the cavern was a surprisingly well-kept secret. The flight through the cold, damp cavern would have been impossible for a lesser creature but the eyes of the drow did not suffer from the absence of light. In the field of detritus that lay beyond the cavern, a lone soldier kept watch. Bored, inattentive, unaware. She ran straight at him, the crunch of her boots on the rock below the only warning. He turned and she climbed him, pulling his short sword from his side and driving it point-first into his throat. Shock filled his eyes; was he even one of theirs? There was no insignia on his armor, so she took it.

She was wearing it when she saw the sun for the first time, such searing illumination as she'd never felt or seen in her life. It made her skin feel thin and fragile, pained her eyes in a way that made tears fall from the corners when she squeezed them shut. The heat was unwelcome, the loose air and the constant wind discomforting to her subterranean senses. But there was no going back, not yet.

Soon she found herself in a surface city. Parts of Zirnakaynin carried a stench but it was a kind of quiet, easily dismissed odor. Up here everything baked in the oppressive sun and radiated stench that the constant wind carried for miles. She was holding a map in her hands, one that showed roughly the streets of this place called Augustana, the "Copperdown" district. There were several mercenary guilds to inquire with, and she felt it would be easy to convince any of them to employ a dark elf.

But she wasn't really looking at the map. She was looking through it, to her future when she would return to Sekamina, to Zirnakaynin, with the weapons and the hirelings necessary to claim her birthright. She would put Tylactia in the Chair, and never let her rise from it. It would be Tyrdaste that would be the heiress of House Parastric. The small smile she wore was the only hint of the anticipation she felt for this destiny. And it would all begin here in this grubby surface city.

It was while she was staring at that crude map, thinking of the promising days ahead, when a half-orc hit Tyrdaste in the back of the head with a club. The world opened up to her in that moment, the sudden trauma to her skull accomplishing in an instant what the Chair had failed to do in a year. It was as if she had a third eye, one that had been closed her entire life and only now was open, capable of peering into an expression of reality only perceptible to those that wielded the invisible arts.

This new sense, this blooming power in her, did nothing to help Tyrdaste Parastric against her five attackers.

= = =

It crawled up from the sewer, sensing violence and emotion. There was blood in the drain, but it found little nutrition in blood. A green-skinned hand had floated down here, cleaved in one swift motion from a sharpened blade. The rats would be on the hand soon; It needed to take what there was to be found before they arrived.

It did not see the world in the way other creatures did, with senses or organs. To it the world was sixty feet of psychic presence and a mass of assumptions and probabilities. But the minds of other creatures were to it like lights in a black and featureless desert. Five minds were fleeing the scene, two in states of frustration and agony, and a sixth was lying motionless in the gutter close to where it lurked.

That mind was dying. Some of the blood belonged to its body and the rest to her attackers. Her killers. She was on her back, looking up at the sky, her life measured now in breaths.

It sensed an opportunity. And so it emerged from the storm drain to perch in the shadow that the creature had failed to reach as it lay bleeding. For the first time in its existence, it spoke to another.

You are dying, it told her.

She didn't have the strength to speak, but she could think. That was enough.

Tell me something I don't know.

It did not understand levity. It had never had a conversation before. The words were interpreted literally.

I can consume you, it told her. You will live on in me. It did not know if this was true. It only wanted her body. Any body was better than none, even one ravaged like hers. It would last for a time. It was being pragmatic.

Eat me? Is that supposed to make me feel better?

It spent a moment calculating. It is the alternative to feeling nothing.

A single breath escaped the drow's mouth alongside some blood, not quite laughter but an expression of amusement all the same, at the end.

What do I have to lose?

On its four short claws it crawled forward, onto her leg, onto her chest, drinking in her will to live, tasting her desire for life. For revenge.

I cannot save you, it told her. I can only devour what is left.

She was beyond feeling the pain of it forcing into her mouth, lost in the moments-long space between life and death. Tyrdaste died as her flesh was torn within, invaded by a parasite that ate its way to her core. It was messy, instinctive and slightly frantic. The ministrations of an amateur surgeon on their first patient, as likely to kill as to save.

Deeper it clawed, all the way into the skull, eating everything it found and pulling it into itself along with its legs so it could fit. It was snug, comfortable even. The layer of bone felt right, and safe, and still warm from what was here before. It could feel warmth, now. There was emotion in this flesh, and instincts and urges. And oh how intense they were. How thrilling. Bursts of identity and being and memory. It ate everything without reservation, uncaring that its first feast was the leavings of other scavengers. It had to be pragmatic. It was a Pragmatist! And it was starving! It had been starving its entire existence and now there was sustenance!

It ate her and drank her and swallowed her whole, chasing the last traces of thought and feeling into that space between alive and dead in ravenous pursuit of the thing which it had been created without: identity!

In the final bite it sank its teeth into something that was not merely mind, not merely flesh, but the fragments of something broken free in the moment of death. An essence that others of its kind found distasteful and undesirable. But it had to be pragmatic... better too much than not enough... It must take any opportunity to eat... Any opportunity to be someone... anyone...

And as that last mote of self was devoured, Pragmatist Tyrdaste came to be.

= = =

It opened her eyes. Yes, it had eyes now, like the rats and the humanoids. They could see, but the vision was blurry from a lack of blood. That was easily rectified, pulling some up away from the wound in her neck where it had been leaking. It looked down at herself, blinking to clear the view. Blood had color--yes, it could see color now, and knew what it was. She had known, so now it knew. It was striking. Red was the color of warning.

With a deep inward breath it replenished the oxygen. Too much of her blood was gone to be viable long-term but it could stop the loss at the shoulders and the legs. The bones were easy to strengthen and keep from buckling under the weight of muscle. As its tendrils slid down further and further into the body, its awareness of the damage became comprehensive. She would need help to stay stable.

Her feet were bare. Her killers had taken her shoes, but they had left the sword and shield. Highly impractical of them. She gathered the sword from the storm drain it had crawled out of and plucked the shield from where it had slid after Tyrdaste had used it to knock out most of someone's teeth. Then she found the map, half-torn and blood-splattered.

It was not far to a spot marked temple.

As she walked, Pragmatist examined its host. The pain in her body flared intensely, and was intoxicating. It felt an urge to stop maintaining it, so the pain would get stronger and stronger, more and more stress placed on every constituent nerve and cell. But then it would rot, decay and decompose and Pragmatist would need a new body. It could not afford to be so indulgent, and so it worked the organs to keep the blood away from the side of her neck that had been cut. It took significant energy to do so, and would be worth it.

The alleyways of the Copperdown district could be dangerous, as Tyrdaste had learned. But bloody, half-decapitated and barefoot the drow seemed now like the danger that travelers went to pains to avoid. Those who saw her radiated terror which Pragmatist could sense and feel more strongly as she neared them. To make expressions took energy that it did not care to expend, and so a blank stare was all anyone received. It seemed to amplify their fear of her, and that was useful.

Sword at her hip, shield on her back and hands at her side Tyrdaste stepped through the threshold into the temple, pale yellow hair untied and streaked with reddish brown from her violent death in the gutter. The holes in her chainmail aligned perfectly with the injuries in her side and back. The area of her throat pulsed with held-back blood, and not nearly enough of it. Candlelight from the walls reflected off of her body and made her seem like nothing so much as one of the undead.

A cleric in a brown robe and sandals walked out of an antechamber with a stack of tin plates in his hand, caught sight of her and walked into a doorway, dropping them to the stone floor with a clatter. "Merciful Sarenrae preserve us," he stammered, quickly stumbling backwards and falling as Tyrdaste took a few steps forward.

"Someone," he croaked, "Someone! One of the risen is in the temple! Someone come!"

"I am in need," Tyrdaste said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion. Emotion would take energy that it did not have to spare.

"What?" the cleric managed, still fearful, still uncertain. Still thinking he was talking to a corpse. It was not an unfair assessment. Success depended on deceiving him. On deceiving the whole world.

"Of healing," she finished. She walked forward further and came closer to light falling down from a hole in the temple's roof, showing the drow for what she appeared to be. The words dark elf came out of the cleric's mouth and a new sort of fear blossomed in his mind. New, but lesser and therefore more desirable. More malleable.

"I do not possess money," Tyrdaste went on. "I have been victim to a robbery. They took my shoes."

"I think," the aged cleric pointed out, pulling himself up to his feet with the aid of a nearby bench, "You've been victim to much more than that."

"Can you assist me?" Tyrdaste asked. The priest produced a small rag from one of his robe's pockets and mopped his bald head.

"Well I'm no necromancer," he warned, "But I'll see what I can do."

= = =

"Do you have family here?" the cleric asked, pulling the needle and thread through the dark elf's flesh. It should have been pouring blood but it merely throbbed. The scarring would be terrible.

"None that I know of," Tyrdaste replied. Images of another face, similar to her own, were dredged up from the murky depths of inherited memory.

"Then what brings you to Augustana, if I can ask?" The old human spoke to distract from his work, to let muscle memory guide him. And it was easier to be considerate to someone if you knew something of them.

It was the first question Pragmatist had ever been asked. It decided to tell as much of the truth as possible without arousing suspicion, to increase the chances of its deception being believed.

"My family tried to kill me," she explained flatly. Yes, that was true. It was true twice.

"Ah," the cleric said, and he believed it. The rumors of what the dark elves did to each other in their treacherous domain far below the surface were the fuel of nightmares here under the sun. "You have my sympathy."

"I would prefer your sandals."

A gap-toothed grin split the old human's wrinkled face. "I think a new pair would fit you better."

= = =

The fighter left the temple in significantly better shape than the one in which she'd arrived. The cleric had warned that the sutures would tear her if she so much as stretched too far, but between his prayers and Pragmatist's psionic regeneration she would be healed before the next sunrise. Already the smaller injuries across her form were drying out and becoming scars as the cells were stimulated, their regeneration amplified by the creature now nesting in the head of the dark elven body.

With the immediate danger of her host's expiration avoided, Pragmatist now was left to consider what came next. It had never been someone before. What did a person... do?

Pain still throbbed through Tyrdaste, distracting and enticing in equal measures. Everything felt intense to Pragmatist... the air on skin, the sounds of the surrounding city, the scents of food and people and filth, the sounds in her pointed ears... the colors of the world, so vivid and sharp and satisfying to look at. So informative. So much data, and so far a field of view from on top of these shoulders, even if Tyrdaste was not as tall as some other creatures. To call it "better" did not properly encapsulate the magnitude of the improvement! This was being alive... all it had been doing before this was subsisting, scavenging... now it could do anything... it could have a destiny!

And it could have a meal. Not merely sustenance but a meal. It could sit and eat and taste and drink with a tongue and a throat and then process things with organs... It could take its time and other creatures would not scream at the sight and try to stab it with a broom handle. Pragmatist felt anticipation for the prospect, and even the anticipation itself was inebriating. How engrossing it was to feel things... How addictive... It knew already that it would be difficult to go back to being without a humanoid host. Even the lingering taste of blood in the mouth and the shabby environs of the Copperdown district were exhilarating on their own, not just compared to the greyscale mind-sight that was all it knew before these fleshly senses became its own. The new blood, begged into being by an old human's pleas to a distant deity, pumped clean and strong through the drow body. Pragmatist could account for every minute quantity of it and send it where it needed to go. Its control, its inhabitation of this form was total.

Standing in the alleyway in front of the temple's doors in the early evening, the sandals beneath her feet feeling smooth and pleasing to her calloused soles, Tyrdaste shuddered softly, bordering on being overcome with pleasure. With great effort Pragmatist dialed down the sensitivity of its elven host and sought to order itself. Sought to impose structure and practicality. And its thoughts turned thus to practical concerns.

It could wander now among humanoids and experience what their lives consisted of. It could integrate, and experience. But it had no money, only this sword and shield and battered armor. It had no nutrition for its body and... no home. No family that did not wish it dead. In terms of physical capability it could scarcely have done better, but in the realm of social standing it was a pariah. An outcast.

And that could be changed.

It began to compile a list of methods by which to enrich itself and ingratiate it to others. Tyrdaste was new to Augustana and drow were not well-received on the surface, but both of these things could be turned into advantages. She would do the dark, brutal things that surface-dwellers longed to have done but lacked the conviction to do themselves and for that she would be well-compensated. She would have a reputation: effective, efficient, ruthless. One who solves problems, and well worth the cost she would demand.

It was while examining these things that Tyrdaste's ears picked up the sounds of stumbling feet down the alleyway. The growing shadows posed no obstacle to the drow eyes and the shape of a bulky humanoid materialized, one hand under its opposite arm and the other being used to steady itself against the temple that was surely its destination. Sandals barely making a sound on the stone of the alleyway, she slid back against the exterior wall of the opposite building (a derelict warehouse with high, lead-glass windows) and did her best to blend in with the darkness. There were few advantages to being seen in the open, and many to being hidden.

When the figure came within sixty feet, Pragmatist's mind at once poured over it, looking into its mind and dissecting the intellect of the ragged traveller. Pain and frustration was foremost in its thoughts, the cause being that its hand was missing, recently chopped off at the wrist. The creature, a half-orc, half-human that called itself Brogan did not want to visit the temple of Sarenrae but there was no alternative. Its hand stump would sicken and lead to its death if it wasn't treated. He fumed with anger at how the robbery had gone... Krastel had lost a few of her teeth, but he had lost a hand! How was he going to swing his club now? Well at least the coin he'd gotten had bought him the piece resting in his heavy coat pocket--that would come in handy to be sure...

As Pragmatist poured over these thoughts it felt a rising spike of emotion, hot and furious and corrosive, burning through its self-control and discipline. This was one of the creatures that had attacked Tyrdaste. Taken her things. Killed her. Why was it feeling this fury? That had been a good thing for Pragmatist... created this existence for it... Should it be feeling gratitude? But it did not. No--it had eaten Tyrdaste and so eaten her emotion and her pride. It had made these things its own and now it felt them with all the same rage and will to survive that she had.

But none of the helplessness.

Brogan staggered up to the steps leading into the temple and, bristling with aggression, Tyrdaste's body tightened up. Her toes curled against the sandals beneath them and this soft scratching noise was audible in the otherwise quiet alleyway.

The half-orc stopped mid-step, breathing heavily, sweat rolling off of his bald green head and coursing down his neck to soak into his leather coat. Slowly he turned to look at the direction the noise had come from.

There she stood, nearly motionless against the faded grey stone of the opposing building, roughly seventeen feet away. Her neck was stitched together and her chainmail shirt was full of holes, and of course her boots had been replaced by the sandals, but she was on her feet. The dark elf woman that they'd beaten, stabbed and left for dead was standing there in the alleway, looking at him with white eyes that were stark against the shadows hiding her.

"Gorum's nuts," Brogan breathed, panic welling up in him. "You gotta be shittin' me."

Tyrdaste placed her right hand on her sword and began to draw it, the hiss of steel not at all diminished by the fact it still had some of the half-orc's blood on it.

"Fuck!" Brogan screamed, launching himself off the steps back the way he'd come and rolling into a mad dash away. Tyrdaste pushed off the wall and began a swift, efficient pursuit, her movements stiff and mechanical to keep from straining her neck. She did not need to exert herself to keep up with the exhausted half-orc; already his burst of speed granted by terror was wearing off. As she watched he tripped over a pile of refuse bunched up on one side of the alleyway and pitched forward, ending up on his hands and knees.