Oinnanai was filled with a certain smugness as Nexus followed suit with her kiss. Soon he would feel the fire in his lungs and by that point, it would be too late. Once it was inside of him it would grow, expand, and eat him from the inside out. It would be absorbed through his pores and turn his blood into liquid fire.
It also helped that her entire body was still encased in flames and that was licking at his skin. Unlike her, the flames would burn him in their loving caress, not soothe and strengthen. It was a lovely thought, his charred skin. By the end of the night he would resemble those same Drows that she had killed numerous times in the attempts to rid the world of such vermin. His skin, it would turn black, and he would become unrecognizable.
She lost herself in the power of the flames that she guided down his throat, disconnecting her mind from her body and following the flow as it entered him. Lost in the ecstasy of the power she was using, the High Priestess followed the flames through him and...
Into the ground?
Oh no...
With a snap she returned to her senses and felt his strong hands collapsing her windpipe, holding down the arteries to her brain. She choked and sputtered and raised her hands to her throat where he held her. In a wild attempt she focused all the power she could muster and shot it through her fingers and onto his hands, burning him, hoping that it would be enough, that it would not be too late.
But already it was.
She could feel her brain failing her, her lungs screaming for air, her vision clouding with red and fading into nothingness. The fire around her body flickered, sputtered, and dissipated with her consciousness, leaving her body smoldering. Her toes felt cold, and this sensation inched its way up her legs, but she did not collapse. Unlike most bodies, as her life force was drained from her by Nexus's fingers, her limbs became stony.
With a final shudder, her eyes closed and all resistance left her. Her hands fell from their attack at his hold and stiffened at her side. The same strange thing that happened to her legs encompassed her face until she felt, and looked, like a life-sized porcelain doll. Her strange appearance when she was alive had now taken on those same properties in death. It was as if, while she lived, the High Priestess was nothing more than clay and now, in death, she had been fired in a kiln and turned into a doll. A beautiful, unblemished, perfect doll.
In a way, she had returned to her natural state.
But her mind was very much alive.
As she died, Oinnanai's psyche flashed through her life, her seventeen years of life. She saw her parents, her temple, her training, her fellow priestesses, a woman who looked like her, except for brown eyes...
Her mind sharpened on this image. She had no memory of her. The woman's lips were moving, opening, closing, as if in a chant, but there was no sound. No longer worried about her physical well-being, Oinnanai focused on this memory. In her bones she coudl feel that something was not right, something was off, something was...missing.
A part of her...this woman....
She felt drawn to her, she felt as if she knew her. But how could that be?
A strange language entered Oinnanai's mind as she drew this memory to the surface. It was a language she herself knew very well, a language that she used when speaking to the Great Mother, a language that she herself was only privy to know as the High Priestess.
"...sun and light and fire rise" was the crude translation, "Give life, give strength, give me" Give me? That seemed strange. This woman...what was she? Oinnanai felt that this image was important, more important than she had ever found anything in her entire life.
"she is me, I am she" the woman continued in that same language. Even in a memory Oinnanai could feel the magic building around those words, bubbling over with power. Oh, such a power that she had never felt before in her entire life. Even Nexus and his strings failed in comparison, even her own powers blanched to the magic she felt. The fire, it was flowing through her, flowing around her, flowing in her. "In this vessel make her rise, give a mind, give a fire, give her me"
Oinnanai realized that this woman terrified her, knowing that she had such glorious power...
"Rise, my servant. Nerti's servant." same language, but the chanting seemed to have finished, "You will bring my will to the people, you will carry my message, in my image I have made you and the Lumenari will have their savior in you."
The Lumenari?
Goddess...could this....was this...?
In an out of body experience, Oinnanai turned her gaze to the vessel to which this woman was talking. She had an idea but...it couldn't be.
With an inward, mental shudder, Oinnanai saw herself on the table, the perfect replica of herself. But this was made of clay, or porcelain. She could see the shine, until...a fire was entering her slightly parted lips from the woman's chanting and her eyes opened...the doll came alive...
No...she came alive.
Oinnanai never had a family...she was never chosen as the High Priestess because of her special gifts...she was the gift to them.
And this woman...
Even in a memory she knew that this woman was no Goddess. She didn't know what she was, but something told Oinnanai that she was not what the Solisi believed. But...that couldn't be, could it? If she herself was created by Nerti...by the Great Mother...she had to be real! She had to be a goddess!
"Now you have me, you live for me. Lead them, lead them to me."
Suddenly, other memories flooded through her as Nerti seemed to be uploading them into her vessel. She saw the people she had been led to believe were her parents, saw her training as the High Priestess, saw her arrival at the temple where the people were overwhelmed by her perfect appearance they did not question her story. The followed her, revered her as a Prophet for she, surely, spoke directly to the Great Mother herself. Everything that she had been lead to believe about her life had been planted in her head by this woman, this Goddess. Oinnanai could not believe that she was not a goddess, not yet...she needed...she needed...
Goddess, what was real!? She didn't know!
And it seemed she would have more time to figure that out as she images faded from her mind and she felt herself pulled by her invisible navel downward and into a cold, hard shell, much like the first time she felt life flow through her porcelain features. The limbs that had once been stone now started to warm and she felt herself reconnect with the body that Nexus had tried to destroy.
Time had seemed to stand still while she was lost in her hidden memories and she had no idea how long she had been lost, nor did she know what her close brush with death had done to her.
Surely she had been dead for some amount of time, and while her body had been returned to its original, clay-like state, her body had slowly been turning into stone itself, a black, obsidian stone replacing the color that had been painted into her shell by Nerti herself. Now, as the porcelain shell warmed as she was brought back to life, the obsidian growth stopped its destructive work halfway complete and nearly half of her body was the same white, pale Oinnanai she had been, and the other was a deep, deep black. The tips of her hair had begun to change as well, inching its way up to her face and covering the far side of one cheek, as well as an ear, and a few sections of her hair. Death had transformed her from the perfect Solisi, to a blackened freak, as if the fire she wielded had scorched her perfect features, permanently scarring her for life.
If she could call this life.
With a shuddering gasp, her eyes flew open and her chest heaved as breath re-entered her body.
It appeared that even a memory held power and she had been granted a second chance.