Quote Originally Posted by ixious View Post
Cale is ignored by ALMOST everyone, until a devil nearly twice her height in a heavy cloak lays a blue hand on her, feeling a chill run through her body, she hears it command directly to her telepathicly "Try it again!" His handprint leaves a wound of frozen flesh, and as he walks away she gets a glint of
his face, antlike with a dull stare.
The addled Tiefling stares after the departing ice devil in bewilderment. The frozen handprint on her chest pulses with primal cold, drawing heat from her body at a dangerous rate, even as its creator vanishes around a bend of the cramped, twisting street.

'A dangerous rate?' asks a faint, alert fragment of her mind. A strange notion. Nothing is dangerous in the Hells; pain exists only to break the minds of the damned, but never brings the release of nonexistence. Yet as the icy marks continue to sear her flesh, Cale feels certain that her first thought was correct. This pain, despite all logic, is real. Enough of it could kill her.

The realization intrigues Cale more than it frightens her. After untold years of phantom pain, phantom hope, phantom defiance and phantom defeat that all fade without changing a thing...to feel anything real is a bit like being alive. Besides, the wound is not going to kill her. Already, the frozen tissue is slowing its expansion. It is not the worst pain she ever felt, or even the worst cold. Compared to that night trapped on the peaks above Silvergate...

Cale frowns. She remembers that icy night in agonizing detail, though most memories of her world are clouded and vague. She waits for the wave of confusion that will steal the memory, but it does not come. The memory, like the pain, is real.

For the first time, she considers the command the Ice Devil had given her. "Try it again." Curiosity triumphs over caution after a brief internal struggle, and Cale raises her left hand once more. The gestures are clumsier than before, the incantation a dull rattle in her parched throat, and the spell she manages is a pale shadow of what she could once have done...but like the wound, like the memory, the swirl of frigid wind which plays around her feels real.

Others seem to notice as well. Fellow damned souls shoot her furtive, fearful glances, while the looks she receives from demons range from cautious evaluation to open anger.

At that moment the hot winds of Avernus shift, carrying the distant sounds of shouted alarms and terrified screams...the voices of the tormentors, not of the damned. The nearby fiends forget about Cale as some of them run, fly, or undulate toward the commotion, some flee from it at top speed, and others fall to debating its meaning among themselves.

Cale herself walks slowly toward the distant clamor. The part of her mind that can think and remember still seems a small fragment, an island of clarity in a stormwracked sea of confusion. If she moves too quickly, tries to do too much at once, the island might vanish.

She turns in the direction where she last saw the departing Ice Devil and whipers a hoarse "thank you", then continues to walk.