They'd invaded slowly, like dark pools and pits amongst an otherwise vibrant portrait of city life. Those dark pools and pits had been the earliest warning signs, and upon her travels one day back and forth between the wholesome walls of work and the bakery across the square, the last of them came in the form of a comely young woman handing out black ribbons from a basket as one might be pandering flowers or candied nuts. It all struck her as strange, but Elle did not investigate further, and why should she" Given the nature of Rhydin and it's ever undulant state, for one to seek every collectively strange occurrence they came across would drive a person mad. So with a skeptical, lopsided smile and a polite decline, the librarian slowly left the wide eyed woman with her cheshire smile and turned back to the places she called safe.

Rumors and names floated about the streets and in the warm, dank nooks of the taverns at night, people began to divide in a way one couldn't quite place with a common eye; something was off, something was odd. Those dark pools and pits were growing more numerous with each passing day, and what was most unsettling was that those inky deposits were emerging from within people. Though Elle was adverse to contact in general, her twitchy ways and that bumbling sense of awkwardness she often succumbed to when another body got too close had begun to skyrocket. It had come to the point where she'd taken to wearing her kid gloves again, and given her position in the library, who could argue the meticulous detail such a studious woman was taking to preserve the volumes with that extra measure of care" The strangeness came back to haunt her without fail though, appearing in the library itself at times in the hearts and queerly dilated eyes of patrons baring books back from their trip away for a borrowed while. Those too occasionally had those thin, short strips of ribbon strewn in them. Were the appearance a less common and eerie thing, one might see the delicate piece as a shiny silver found hidden in the fold of one's pocket, or a treat in a place one wasn't expecting to find one....But this ribbon did not scream reward or treat. Not when so many of the city seemed to be carrying them now, and not when their emotions reeked of a snarling black.

The empathy she'd been cursed with had actually served as a blessing, for when all those little signs came to a destructive fruition, she'd come to realize later just how great a blessing it had been. It came the night that she lay in bed and the skies blossomed with fire.

Screams erupted from the streets as buildings were rocked and shaken down to nothing but shambles. The distant sound of what seemed like thunder shook the very walls of Elle's apartment as she stumbled from her bed, bare feet smacking clumsily against the floor as she fled to glue herself to the nearest window. Her eyes widened at the site. The distant sound of thunder was nothing with any substantial distance at all, it-they were close, and they were troops. Dozens upon dozens of troops in gleaming white armor turned orange and black from the dark explosions of bombs and buildings around them. Terrified beyond coherent means, Elle fell back from the window, crashing into a small table and further over a stack of books as she did so. Pain shot through her left ankle, but that pain was a trifle; her panic was greater.

'Charles! The library....I've got to get to him, I've got to protect him-it. I've got to get to them both before this takes the entire city!' Her hurried thoughts began to spin wildly into the defensive. The mild mannered woman with her overly quiet ways and debilitatingly shy disposition was gone in that moment and would be until the chaos was over.

There were few things Elle truly cared about in her infinitesimal life, but the two that held the top spot on her list were currently in the forefront of her mind and truly at risk. The building had minor enchantments like several other buildings in the city to keep it from ever being truly destroyed, but Mr. Tibbelt has always been old fashioned when it came to keeping up with the countless volumes in the building, meaning he installed magic means as little as possible.

"It'll be destroyed" everything. All of it!? The thought terrorized her, blooming into an unstoppable mantra that beat furiously inside the confines of her head over and over again like the throb of a second heart.

Down the stairwell she went, stubbing her toes and scraping fingernails along the railing as she went. The change was upon her, she could feel it flood her body with that inhuman warmth as her bones began to shrink and reshape to fit the sudden seize of her new muscles. By the time the shifter reached the door, it wasn't a young woman with wide, frantic eyes that streaked across the terror ridden streets, it was a lanky calico cat. One of the many soldiers turned and took a dicey shot towards the cat, but his timing was off and she escaped by the skin of her teeth. Ignoring the baser instincts that told her body to keep pumping and running until she found a dark hole to hide in, Elle pounded up the library's staircase and shimmied through the door. The instant she was inside she was changing back, yelling at the top of her lungs as soon as they'd formed back properly. She was screaming for Charles, but no matter where she looked or how frequently she hollered, she couldn't find the old man.

It was during her feverish search that the building shook from the foundation up, knocking the librarian from her feet and into a nearby returns cart that sent her crashing to the floor once more. Half buried in books and oblivious to the pain in her side that'd undoubtedly later blossom into a brilliant bruise, Elle wheeled around just in time to watch the corner stone of the building begin to collapse in a complex crumble of shattered glass, metal, and brick. Horrified beyond her wildest imaginings, Elle sobbed angrily as she turned and ran full bore back towards the entrance.

The change was on her again, raging through like an untamable fever, and this time there would be no chance for the soldiers or their guns to attempt to her harm. Skin turned to stone, fingers to iron tough mits; there was nothing left of the diminutive librarian when she crashed out through the giant glass doors of the building, none at all...

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Sheer will had not been enough, for what muscles were left and not laid to waste were far too fatigued to carry out the mental commands. The ground was hard and studded with all manner of sharp and unpleasant bits, but it was cool, oh so cool. With her eyes closed and her body as throbbing warm as it was, she could concentrate and imagine that it was the softness of her own bed.

"Charles" I'm sorry." Somewhere far away, she realized he'd miss her. But it was hardly enough.

"Gone" Gone. Just want to be gone. It hurts, everything hurts." She'd fought for days in the defense of her beloved library, her home away from home, the sanctuary that kept her as whole as she could manage. Yet despite her efforts, that was nearly gone too; pillaged and searched by Travanix's men even after one of the many bombs rained throughout the city had taken out the front right corner of the revered structure.

Elle still lay amongst the rubble the soldiers had left her in, crooked and half dead. She looked a starved thing left to die, all skin and boney limbs, her hair lank and faded, eyes closed, lips cracked and apart, a mass of bruises and abrasions. Even the clothes on her back were tattered beyond repair, her glasses long lost and smashed in a means too great to ever be saved. Barely a breath escaped her, and with the city's night streets being tread so less often these days because of the chaos, no a soul would see her passing.

So it seemed nothing less than a miracle, then; a piece of night padding softly amongst the ruins and rubble with gleaming eyes of topaz. Snuffling in search, the panther scented distress upon the wind, and huffed a low growl back to its mistress. Hugging the shadows not out of fear, but out of necessity, the woman crept quietly towards the crumpled girl on the ground. Clad in black silk like a second skin, openings present to allow access to her tattoos, long tresses of strawberry-blond bound up tightly to forbear any distraction, sea foam-green eyes peering down in concern. Her voice, once uttered, was a mere whisper to avoid detection. "If you can hear me, move your left hand. I am here to give medical assistance."

'Who...' Having spent the bulk of her time amongst the debris speaking within her own head, the sound of a second voice had enough of an impact to jolt Elle harder than she thought possible. The voice seemed farther away than the shadow it cast dictated, however. In fact, the extreme measures she took to crack her eyes open, Elle noted absently that the woman was all but standing on top of her....At least it looked like a woman. The world was a blur she couldn't quite puzzle between the nonstop fever and her missing spectacles.

'Move....hand. Left' Right....Wait. Right' Right.' Somewhere between confirming what she heard, and repeating the directions, Elle weakly wiggled a pair of fingers on her right hand instead of the left. Considering the poor girl's state, that a hand moved at all was a testament of willpower.

"Don't try to get up. I am going to pick you up to relocate you, but first I must examine you. If you understand me and agree, move your hand." Kalinda added in the same quiet, even tone.

Moving again. That was too much. Maybe talking" Flexing the muscles in her throat made her cringe however, and it sent a violent ripple through her entire body. Like her lips, the soft, delicate tissue in her throat felt cracked and abused. What came out wasn't any real means of communication, just a pitiful croak and a reflexive, inward tip of her head. It was as close as she'd come to an affirmative, but she could already feel her skin heating anew from the first tinges of panic.

'Don't touch....please don't touch.'

Brows furrowing in concern, the woman briefly brushed a fingertip over the knight in armor tattoo gracing her right bicep, letting a miniscule suffusion of faintly-glowing azure overlay her body. At the same time, her right hand slid downward, tracing the outline of the rose with thorns dripping blood upon her right calf. Holding her hand close to the girl's sternum, she let her eyes drift closed, willing a measure of healing and energy through the space between. Enough to ease pain, but not to heal injury. Without a thorough examination, such an act could prove more detriment than assistance.

Were there any real sort of fluid in the woman's body, she surely would have cried. The mixture of relief and a feeling of complete helplessness struck Elle hard. Nothing on or within her felt like it worked, ever limb felt super extended and weak as water bogged noodles. Every part of her ached and was riddled with tension from the severe overuse. Oddly, there was not any real injury to the woman, it just seemed as though she'd been forced to labor without rest, and had been starved for weeks" In reality, it'd only been a few days; but that was all it'd take, and Elle knew that, but the realization had come too late. She was little better than a rubber band that'd been overly stretched.

Fortunately for the girl's sense of ease, the azure glow prevented direct contact. "Try to relax. I am going to pick you up now. This location is not safe for recovery." With a glance, the panther faded from view. With her hand on the dragon-dactyl tattoo that flowed across the back of her thigh, she willed the creature into being. Many hands tall, the beast appeared an unnatural cross between equine and draconian, with leathery bat-like wings, smooth scales, and hooves. However ferocious it appeared to be, she had complete control over her creation. With a deep breath, she began to slowly slide her hands beneath the girl at the shoulders and knees, letting the near-frictionless surface of the glow ease the passage.

Ever careful to keep her voice even and calm, and to shield her mental and emotional states, to an empath's sense she would feel as a smooth, cool bastion of stillness, a pillar of polished marble.

Elle felt herself seizing up, though it hadn't been from the sudden blur of the dark, beastly apparition, but the feel of the world about her shifting. She was being picked up. But hadn't she been told that' Hearing what was to happen, however, was much different than the actual happening. That small spark of panic flared up into a full blown blaze of fear. The memory of the last hands to touch her had been smooth, had been cool; they had been soldiers.

"Soldiers....I killed them. Killed so many!" A piteous crack of sound escaped her chapped lips, and though the motion she struggled to make could in no way be called a buck, it was the closest in description to what she attempted.

"Sssshh. It's alright. The soldiers are gone." It wasn't likely that the woman would drop her burden. Another tattoo's power suffused her limbs with strength to spare. "I am going to take you somewhere safe. Try not to move, it could be a goodly distance to fall." A nod given to the beast, which knelt in a smoothly practiced motion. Lifting up the girl as if she were stuffed in goose down, she gently cradled the poor dear to her chest, a layer of silk and the power of her armoring tattoo separating them. Moving with a combination of care and grace, she stepped to the dragon-dactyl and kicked a leg over, signaling it to stand with a thought. Leathery wings spread with nary a sound, before the beast stood. "Please, do not flinch. We are about to fly, and I do not wish to crush you."

A coughing fit followed, but all that did was set her throat aflame again. It was swollen now, angry from the use after that wickedly short silence it'd lingered in after so long a series of screams and anguished cries. Elle was against talking again, and whole heartedly so. The fit had wracked her entire body, which weighed little more than goose down in all reality; it was horribly depleted. The fear subsided, but only slightly. There were too many questions firing away within her mind, and not all of them any manner of good. 'He's back....it's him. He'll kill me. Where am I going" Charles, where's Charles" The library....I failed. What day is it' What's happened to the city' Who is this, what does she want"' These and so many more plagued her, and with old ghosts always looming just behind the darker bits of her brain, Elle couldn't quite muster the calm; her sinuses were plugging up from the sudden urge to cry.

As the woman adjusted her burden on the back of the beast, she reached behind for the square pack attached to her belt. From within, she drew a small flask from her emergency supplies. Within the flask, water. Enhanced with vitamins and electrolytes, but water nonetheless. "Here. Take a sip of this."

Using a tattoo without touch required a much greater focus, but the situation demanded the time be taken. Even weak flailing, once airborne, could prove fatal. Waves of calming emanated from the eye with tears tattoo upon the side of her neck.

Demons her unlikely savior couldn't see had come up from the depths of her memories to plague Elle, but those memories were fed by hands....By fingers and lips and cruel words, not the cool, welcoming drizzle of water or the soothing smoothness of metal. There was no calm in those memories, no moment of respite; yet now the world felt softer, more welcoming, like a rush of cool air against her visibly flushed skin. 'Water"' More a question than an affirmative, but her lips were hesitating, questioning about as fervently as her mind. Then there was only thirst, and her natural reaction was to guzzle.

"Easy....easy. You'll go further into shock. Brace yourself." Lifting away the flask, the woman made a final adjustment before giving her mount a silent command. Leaping upward, mighty wings cupping and rowing the air in the fight against gravity, before the motions smoothed themselves out, a long glide toward the Clinic and relative safety.

Her words came too late. Elle was already choking again. It was one meager catastrophe after another, but she hadn't died yet. The feel of the water shocked her stomach and system as a whole. Though she was fidgeting, there was a deep inner struggle that opposed her twitching and shivering. Instinct wanted her to flee, instinct wanted her to hurriedly drink and drink, instinct wanted her to curl up and die, because the road to recovery was far too daunting and painful; fighting instinct was challenge, but it was all she had besides the warm bodies around her.

The wind's passage felt cleansing, sluicing away the soot and smoke. En route, she again gently touched the flask to cracked and swollen lips, offering another life-sustaining sip. "We will arrive shortly. Do I have your permission to examine your injuries?"

'Examine, examine....Touch. No touching. Please don't....Please don't.' Elle turned her head from the water with a broken sob. Through the bruised circles that haloed her eyes, and dried bits of debris that'd settled into the crusted gunk, she stared up at Kalinda with turbulent eyes that fuzzed between colors, all of which were dull as if she were half blind.

"Do you have to?" A dumb question for one with her intelligence, but she couldn't help it. Hurt to talk or no, she was quaking again.

"You are in deep shock, obviously in dire straits, and I found you in what appeared to be a war zone. Yes, I believe I must examine you for injuries." She kept her eyes on the move, watching for any aerial pursuers as she spoke. Guiding her mount with knee and heel, she breathed a deep sigh of relief as the clinic came into view.

Too thin, too tired, bruised, battered, exhausted, half here, half gone. She was all those things and more. Elle knew it, she felt it with every inch of her being, but she couldn't, she wouldn't. Why had she even been plucked up from the rubble....it would have been so easy to just close her eyes and float away. They would have found her and turned her to ash no doubt, perhaps Charles would have found her. Maybe he would have kept her leftovers in a box and had her mixed into the library's new cornerstone when it was rebuilt' She'd have liked that.

"....Tired." She gasped quietly, eyes closing once again as she turned her face away, clearly ashamed. Falling silent, Kalinda guided her mount to a smooth landing, taking care to personally carry the girl into the clinic. The head nurse on duty glanced up in alarm, looking between the girl and the woman carrying her. "I need a trauma kit and IV setup in a private room as of five minutes ago. Am I clear?" Her tone remained steady, to not cause distress to her patient. The glare given to the nurse however, told a much different story. The white walls and the sterile smell hadn't registered, but the words IV had. The medical jargon was enough for her body to wake up and rebel against. "No tests! N-no...No please!"

"Please, no....they'll throw me out. They'll know something's wrong, they'll think I'm a freak." Elle wailed brokenly, her eyes bleary and wild all at once as her hand made feeble attempts to push at this or that. She knew she was odd, she knew she was strange, but once others saw that, there was no telling how they'd react. Her entire life had been comprised of adverse reactions to her strangeness; it was sad, yes, but commonplace practice. Odd how little she'd ever been truly sick, save those vicious fevers from the changing. Yet another oddity, another thing that marked her as other.

"Easy, easy. Relax, little one. No one will harm you here, you have my word." Again she brought the power of the eye with tears to bear, seeking to calm the girl down before she could do more harm to herself.

There were no tears, her body simply didn't have anything in stock to produce them. The rims about Elle's eyes were red however, and the rest of her skeleton-pale skin wasn't far behind. The panic had welled up again, and she was so, so tired of the up and down pattern of it. The wash of calm was inexplicable and welcome, yes, but she couldn't bare the next moment where her heart threatened to burst from her chest and the buzz of her body bubbled up in an another unbearable heat. Closing her eyes, she curled, shaking silently as her shoulders slumped; she was done. Very done.

Taking charge of the situation, the woman carried the girl to the room in question, intent on caring for her personally. More orders snapped en route. Liquids in abundance, soft foods and the like. Once they arrived, she gently laid the girl upon the bed. Unlike any doctor the poor dear had experience with in the past, her methods of examination were entirely personal. No external testing required for her purposes. A simple glance at her aura, a pass of the hand, these were all she required.

Though her body was light and seemingly limp, Elle struggled viciously to keep it that way. She was waiting for the needles, the hands, the ominous sounds of man and machine conferring with one another over her physical anomalies. The urge to flee, to shiver, to recoil; they were ever present, but that underlying calm kept her level enough to remain grounded. She didn't know where exactly it came from, but she held onto it tightly. It was all she had. Those unstable eyes of hers remained closed, simply because she refused to open them. One too long a glance at what was going on might be her undoing, and she was so tired now. So deeply tired. She could sleep for a hundred years and still wake up wanting more. As much as the woman allowed, she curled, aiming for some minor means of comfort as she prayed for the blackness of sleep to roar up and claim her.

"Sleep?" The word enforced by the powers of the eye tattoo, as she rose to collect the articles ordered. Keeping the armoring active, she turned away from closing the door. Perhaps the child would forgive her in time, as she brushed her hand over the winged knives surrounded by flames and dripping blood, a scalpel-sharp blade forming in her hand. As soon as possible, she would see about replacing the ruins of those clothes. But such rags could not remain in a hospital bed"

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OOC Note: This is a thank you to the wonderful player of Kalinda that helped me recapture a character I didn't quite have the heart to go the NPC route with all by myself, and a many thanks to the folks I badgered until I found someone with the time, the patience, and the willingness to play hero with me.