Kaia

Mate to Adon & Stonefeather

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Many years ago, but not so many, a young Pearlcatcher woman was trying to push the boundaries of what magic could do. She'd never been satisfied with her curriculum at any of the universities she'd attended, or even with the knowledge she got from the hedge-mages practicing at the fringes. Right-handed "orderly" magics bored her, even at the grey fringes, and even most of the so-called "dark magic" practicioners tried to tell her there were places she shouldn't go.

Kaia had never liked those answers. She wasn't evil, exactly. She didn't really want to do others any harm. But she didn't believe that magic and knowledge should be limited by the confining morality of dragonkind. Forbidden magics, the dangerous ones, shouldn't be gated behind an arbitrary notion of where "the line" was. So, she started making exceptions. Eventually, any academic pursuit at all led her to put aside her sense of ethics in search of the truth. What had made her her became less defined as days went by; she drifted further and further into the abstract in terms of how she saw herself.

Soon, blood sacrifice of Beastclans wasn't enough; dragons were so much more magically potent. And soon after that, blood sacrifice itself wasn't enough any more. That was how Kaia found herself whittling a blade out of another pearlcatcher's pearl. There was a brief pause, a brief moment of self-awareness as Kaia came back to herself, where probably any other dragon would have stopped. But Kaia had never had that kind of restraint.

She had a vague inkling, heard a vague voice in the dark, that suggested there might be a seam in reality nearby. And so Kaia inserted her new pearl knife and twisted.

That was how she found herself somewhere she knew she wasn't supposed to be, seeing things that nobody should see. Infinite pathways spiraled off in infinite directions, infinite repsitories and words and symbols doubling fractally back on themselves with impossible geometry. Darkness the likes of which could only be dreamed of back on Sornieth crept in from every angle, tempting, whispering, welcoming, beckoning. She felt the attention of beings, otherworldly and grinning, beginning to pluck at her sense of reality. Kaia felt the tear she'd made start to seal shut behind her, as much as "behind" had ever mattered in a place like this. She leaped back through before it sealed completely.

When she reoriented in the real world, Kaia found herself changed. Her once-smooth hide was covered in foreign shapes, reminiscent of but not quite perfect in mimicking the twists and turns of that strange land. The most dramatic change, though, was in her pearl: it'd become black as night, her very soul twisted by the energies of the place she'd been and what she'd done to get there. For once, even Kaia was rattled.

But she didn't stay rattled for long. That other world became an obsession, a scab she couldn't help but pick and pick and pick. She returned once more, and then once more, learning the fundamentals of this place no dragon had ever been before. Others she tried to bring in had limited success; any besides Pearlcatchers were unmade in the darkness immediately. Housing one's soul outside one's body had a unique protective effect, it seemed, but any who ventured in were immediately touched by the place. She found that different Flights were affected in different ways. Eventually, she found out that once someone had been brought in, they could use their attuned pearl to reenter without the pearl knife she'd made. And that bright colors, bright wings, attracted the murderous attention of the denizens within.

For once in her life, Kaia realized she was out of her depth. She needed others, others just as interested in the darker aspects of magic and reality, to help her explore and chart the Black Spiral. She put out feelers, developed rituals for crossing over, and built a small team over time to plumb the depths. Over time, she and her organization became known as the Black Pearls for their visibly twisted souls.