Prologue: The bargain

    Darkness filled the once luminous chapel, any chance for it to still be considered a holy place washed away by the blood spattered windows and burnt carpeting. The windows of the great hall were now debris, elegant tapestries nothing more than tattered remnants of a time forgotten by war. Shattered statues and broken pews lined the walls, some great force having pushed them away from their natural place within the desecrated chamber. The absence of light was frightening, then again to see this chamber illuminated would be even more so. The silence was telling, not even a moan escaped the fallen priests strewn about the feted ground, their bodies scattered like dolls by an ill tempered child. The only sence of life, if it could really be called that, came from the now befouled altar.

    Upon the alter sat damnation incarnate, brought upon the one so fallen they could not see their own folley. The writhing mass a spherical cacoon, circling and consuming itself as rapidly as it consumed the body within, It pulsed and shook, waves of force crashing into the alter like waves battering the stoic shore. The wrought marble cracked and crumbled, the final testament to the holy chamber falling away like desert sand. Suddenly there was nothing, no seething rage, no crushing force...only an unearthly calm heralding it's own sinister storm. The sperical mass slowed, the liquid, almost organic metal shell comming to a stop, its hunger deciding on another meal than the one within.

    Without warning the cacoon struck, Stretching out a sinewy tenticle to grasp at one of the fallen clergy, pulling it toward the ozzing shell. More hands peeled away, tearing at the corpse and pushing it into it self, content with the flesh it was now feasting on. The content hands retreated back into their viscous mass, hunger sated by the consumed corpse. The metal continued to recede, the cacoon pulling taut against the body captured within it, a humanoid shape now visible underneath the metallic mass. It puled tighter to the frame, finding scars and wounds upon the body to use as entryways, fortifying and repairing the damage done as it went. The shell was gone, the host now the only evidence of the monster within. Lithe and toned, the body landed on one knee, pushing dark strands of hair away from it's face, now recognizeable as female.

    "I'm glad to see we have an arrangement..." the melodic yes sinister voice reverberating around the desolate chamber. Rising to her feet, the woman once known as Riel surveyed the result of her...predicament.
    "You live so long as I get what is mine, girl." The almost serpentine slither of the metalic voice chimed against the broken walls, the menace a reminder that Riel was no longer alone to her thoughts.