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While Khel didn't exactly have anywhere he needed to be, he did like knowing where he was going. That wasn't really possible in his current situation, so he continued to wander the city for a bit before finally sitting down in front of a large temple. "The irony is not lost on me," he muttered to himself, waiting. He had been told that "Sheeana" would meet him in the 'city', but finding the city had been hard enough. Now he had to hope that Sheeana could find him. Still, he had waited for decades with nothing before. He could wait five minutes.

Of course, five minutes was not how long it took, and soon the skeleton was sure he had been there for hours. He paid it no heed, however, and continued to spend his time waiting, watching the fake sky, and wondering how it was all done. It was a remarkable magic, to be certain; he had not seen a blue sky in quite some time, and the sight of it made even the undead warrior feel nostalgic.

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Luckily the worms were even more sensitive to vibration than she was. Their great leathery bodies turned in the sand filled great pool, pointing like loyal dogs at the source. She walked out, away from the alien YMCA and listened. ancient leather on the concrete, the sound of rattling bones. She walked towards the source and called when she saw him a block away.

"You set upon yourself to find me, eh Bone Lord? Most would be terrified to hear that, but i'm flattered."

"Sought thee I have, for I find thee ... fascinating. Thou shan't flee from my sight, but rather thee would converse with me, and shy not from my visage. I have ... never met the like of thee." He truly was interested, and found himself vaguely curious if his magical fear would even effect her. He would be honest with this one, however, of his abilities. He needed someone at least to be privy to his abilities, that he might not feel like he must keep secrets even from a community that was tolerating, if not accepting him.

Sheeana is caught between empathizing with his feeling of otherness, of being set apart, and using his obvious need for human affection for her own purposes...Or rather those of the Sisterhood.

"A Bene Gesserit does not flee from the strange, for we are also called Witches by those who are ignorant."

"Witches? Such magics thou must be capable of, to earn such a name. The magics I am capable of are few, but powerful, and all connected to the circumstances in which I find myself."

"Oh?" Her expression silently bids him to go on.

"I believe some mages refer to them as 'inherent abilities'. As a death knight, I am capable of many things. I can instill fear in souls at will, and am immune to cold, resistant to fire, and nigh-immune to bladed weapons. I can heal people with a touch, and likewise slay with but a touch. I can call forth other weak undead once every few weeks, and they remain by my side until destroyed." He ticked them off slowly, though from the expression on his skull, he was hardly proud to have them.

Sheeana listens with interest. "Fear? Would you care to give me a demonstration?"

That was easy enough. Magical fear was probably the simplest of his abilities to use, and he stepped closer to Sheeana, summoning up the fear power he had, causing the enchanted terror to exude from him in a wide field. He didn't want to panic her, certainly not, but she did ask for a demonstration, and there was hardly anyone else in sight to demonstrate upon.

Sheeana felt her heartbeat quicken a moment, willed it to slow down.

"More. Don't hold back for me."

This will be an interesting test of her abilities too.

Opening his jaws wide, the death knight let out an eldritch roar at the woman, letting the full power of his fear wash over her. He'd terrified dragons before with it, and the cold grip of horror became like icy claws digging deep. "For testing my power, the consequences be on thy own head!"

There is real fear, the first she has felt in years. This isn't just a phantasmagoria designed to fool the gullible.

She begins the litany against fear, softly to herself at first.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

Sheeana is fifteen, the youngest non-preborn to ever go through the Spice Agony. A proctor straps her to a bed, puts something soft in her mouth so she doesn't bite off her tongue. That glowing liquid, the deadly poison that unlocks OTher Memory is filled into a long syringe.

I will face my fear, I will permit it to pass over and through me.

She is twelve, running onto a no-ship that will take her off Rakis at the very last moment. Above them, Honored Matre ships circle like black, menacing clouds. Their obliterator weapons rain down on the planet, destroying everything she's ever known.

I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

She is eight, collecting Spice just outside her hardscrabble desert village. There is a distant vibration...Shaitan's great mouth appears inside it. Her parents are the first to be pulled into the jaws of the sandworm. Then the rest of the village.

Where the fear was, only I will remain.

She is back on Stacy. She hasn't moved back from it, though she is flushed and breathing hard. In fact, she's taken a half step forward.

Sheeana had asked that Khel hold nothing back. Whatever she was doing, it was apparent to the undead that him not holding back anything was important. So he didn't. His eyes glowing a piercing and malevolent red, the knight loomed over the woman, towering and unleashing another echoing howl. He usually saved this only for the most hardened of adventurers who came invading his wrecked palace, and though a part of him worried what would become of the young woman's mind, the logical part of Khel was fairly certain that Sheeana would be fine.

She felt herself floating. A numb body, in blank, room temperature nothing. The fear had driven her out of herself.

An observer would see her blue within blue eyes roll back in her head.

A voice called to her.

Sheeana...Sheeana...dozens of times great granddaughter...

She saw a woman with features like her own, sweating and breathing hard. Black hair bound in a ponytail. Wearing a singlesuit that showed dark blotches of perspiration.

Siona. The Tyrant's second greatest enemy and her own distant ancestor.

You still hate him don't you.

"No...I don't..."

You can't hide that from me. It's written on your heart. I know how you feel. But he made the neccesary sacrifices. You whose life was made possible by him must pay some of it back.

The woman's voice faded. Sheeana felt a change in her, like a switch that had been thrown to the other side. She fell back into herself and stumbled.

Forwards. Into him.

Khel let the fear fade immediately, reaching out to catch the young woman.His gloved and armored body, luckily, kept her from hitting and possibly cutting herself on the edge of a bone or something. He held her up easily, lightly prodding her shoulder with his free hand. "Are thou alright? Please, if thou still hath breath, awaken!" He leaned over, speaking, whispering as he attempted to use his healing powers on her. He was dead, with no lungs, true, but he still had breath, oddly enough. Anyone awake might have noted that it smelled like a strange mix of incense and cinnamon, the burial spices used to preserve the warrior.

Sheeana for once doesn't notice the scent because it is the scent of the familiar and nostalgic to her: spice smells of flinty cinnamon.

Her breath, in fact, is very much still there. She is flushed and breathing hard. Her body is clutching at homeostasis. Her eyes gradually focus as she realizes her face is buried in a bare neckbone. She tries to push away, wobbles for a moment, but manages to stand on her feet.

"I'm...alright."

"Good. I have no desire to cause thee ... suffering." Truth be told, Khel was now feeling rather guilty for what he'd done. He hadn't meant to do anything to her except cause some fear at her request.

She mumbled the litany one more time as she stabilized herself. "Thank you, Khel. That was most impressive. Would you consider doing that again at my request? It would prove a useful training tool for acolytes."

"I would not terribly mind, no, but I must admit that I feel ... uncomfortable using evil energies for any reason."

"Good? Evil? The gift is yours, Bone Lord. Don't judge it." She sits at a bench designed for more limbs than she has, momentarily tired. To someone educated in a tradition that owes a lot to the Zensufi masters, moral judgements are very carefully avoided.

"Negative energy is indeed an evil energy, Milady Brugh. It powers liches, devils, and other undead such as even myself. The more I use it, the more temptation I have to use it, and the more I use it, the more that same energy eats away at my spirit and morality. Eventually, I would be corrupted and wicked, like any other Death Knight." Khel shuddered, looking up to the temple behind them.

"Once I have crossed that threshold, all that remains for me is destruction, whether through my own hubris, or some fortunate adventurers." His face turned back to Sheeana, and even for a skeleton he looked extremely old.

"There have been nights when I have prayed for some young fool with a blade to have fortune enough to overpower and destroy me."

There are parts of himself he fears and detests. She thinks.

"Now what have I told you about brooding, Bone Lord?" She lays a hand on bare scapula, unsure if the gesture of support will have the right effect given his nerveless state.

If he could have made such a subtle gesture, Khel might have smirked. "Thou speak to me as if I were a man," he commented, uncertain about why it pleased him so.

Be careful. His need for human affection is nearly palpable, and having it come from a girl as young and pretty as yourself could...confuse him. This was not thought with arrogance. Reverend Mothers knew how fleeting beauty was. It was a tool, nothing more, and she did not think less of old, fat Bellonda, for instance, for not possesing it. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Of course you are. You're a man in a strange body with strange circumstances. But you are a man."

To Khel, it wasn't about appearance. Not really. He knew that Sheeana was attractive, but it was a minor observation. Without a man's body and with the stretch of time came a separation from the idea of being human. He didn't feel those urges anymore. What he did notice was that she treated him like a man, like he was a human. It pained him as much as it it caused him joy. "No I'm not," he replied honestly, turning away. "I'm just a monster."

She wanted to slap him, but again there was that nervelessness to contend with. Plus she might accidentally spin his skull around on his spine causing it to abruptly fall.

Or pinch his nose but he had none.

"Ahem. Are thou alright? Please, if thou still hath breath, awaken!...I have no desire to cause thee ... suffering." A perfect imitation. A Bene Gesserit trick. That is far from the worst they can do with their voices, too. "A monster wouldn't have cared if he caused me to suffer."

"Lacking the muscle that pumps blood through the body does not render me heartless, Milady." He did not understand why Sheeana fought so hard to prove him wrong. Even Khel admitted he was a monster, and it was the truth. He was a violation of the laws of nature, an affront to gods of good.

"However," he continued, "if it shall please thee, no longer shall I call myself such."

"It will please me." She stepped back to the bench and fit herself into the indentation where some unknown part of an alien body would normally go. "And now you will tell me your story, as you said you would."

Khel did indeed tell his story (http://forced-unlife.livejournal.com/profile), leaving out nothing, not one detail about his betrayal, or one iota of what he felt as an echoing spirit lingering over the site of his end. He told of his fruitless revenge, and of the loneliness when surrounded by nothing but death and undeath. "And so I cannot rest or find peace until I am absolved by Tyr, for the breaking of my vow."

Sheeana listened with total attention. There was something of the Fremen in his attention to oaths. To her people, words were magical.

When he was totally done, she smiled beatifically. "Thank you, Khel."

"Now thou might ken why I do not fight my presence here, why I do not deign to argue with the presence that has brought us here. Were only I to find redemption here, it would be a boon I have waited centuries for." Khel's eyes dimmed, making the skull appear as empty as it truly was. For a moment, he seemed less eldritch and more like a macabre puppet.

"Whether through restful afterlife or empty oblivion, I only desire for peace."

"I do. And I think you've been given such a chance here, which is why I am going to break you of that habit of brooding you've fallen into over the centuries." She favored him a mischevious little smile.

Taking in strange cases, Sheeana? Odrade-within teased her from Other Memory. You'd think I was you. She replied in her head.

"Just before I found myself here, I was departing for parts unknown in a no-ship anyway. It was unlikely I would ever see my homeworld again."

"Brooding, is it so bad? To think on the past?" Khel tilted his head to the side, his eyes brightening again.

"It can be a trap. I know this more than most, for I am a Reverend Mother. I have the ancestral voices of all the previous Reverend Mothers of my order in my head." She emphasized it by tapping her temple and wondered if the flickering of the lights in his sockets is his equivalent of opening and closing his eyes.

"That sounds like ... magic. I comprehend not what it must be like ... to never be alone."

"I wouldn't call it magic...Spiritual you could call it though. It...can be a comfort at times. But the temptation to get lost in it can be strong." She doesn't fear it though. She's not like Alia, The Abomination...She's there in her ancestor's memories too, another reason she doesn't call Khel a monster.

"That I well enough understand. To become lost in the ... spiritual collection of voices, of beauty. There are legends of such a city in my world. A city where men go and dream and ne'er return." The points of light were no longer red or yellow, but an odd blue, reflecting the strange glow of Sheeana's own eyes.

"Thine eyes are ... they are reflections of this spiritual power?"

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