People are talking around me. I can’t understand their words. I hear sounds, but they are just sounds. Far off and incomprehensible.
KRYSTOFF: N-no way…
REGENALD: Lady Angkit…? But… how?
I’m dying. I’m dying. I am going to die. That’s all I can think. I have to do something.
I push myself off the ground with my good arm and force what remains of my other hand into a pointing position. Studies. My studies.
ANGKIT: Your servant has rendered its flesh unto me, that I may manifest in this physical realm for the first time in over two centuries. My death was a veneer. I traded off my own humanity to…
Hours spent with books, studying things that I didn’t even want Krystoff to know I knew about. I excavate those memories from my mind and try my best to replicate the images printed in those ancient texts.
ANGKIT: …And stop the engkanto whom I foresaw would raze the lands of both the otherworldly and the humans alike. It was my sworn duty as a diviner.
My finger traces the shapes using blood as its ink. Curves and straights. The most basic elements of a symbol. I have to push and pull my entire body to move my arm the way I want to. It takes patience I don’t have time for.
JUN: Napyks… lexiv… fui’xiv… hivav…
I whisper the words to myself as I carve out each letter in careful traditional Cyrabuian.
ANGKIT: Come, for you are my own blood. Lend me what remains of your strength and we will end your father’s reign.
KRYSTOFF: But—Jun is—
Each word has to be just right.
JUN: Flesh… exchanged for life…
The curse activates and glows, engulfing my body in its light. It seems that this wrenches Krystoff’s attention away from his newly reformed mother because he shouts my name and tries to drop to my side, but the curse pushes him back as it works its way into the crevices of my mind.
KRYSTOFF: Jun…? Jun!!
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The Duenkhy 