Disclaimer: I own nothing in this world. Bioware claims to own Neverwinter Nights, let us believe that. Ingrid is her own woman – she often made choices I would not dare to, like abandoning a glorious career of a sorceress in order to pledge herself to Sehanine and follow the clerical path when she realized her companions needed more healing than firepower. Also, this story is complete, and I will post all the thirteen chapters as soon as I finish proofreading. This is but a prologue.
1. Prologue
She sits by the fire and tries not to whimper too much. Gann and Safiya throw careful glances at her now and then, and Ingrid knows they are concerned. Scared. She scares them.
It grows worse. The hollow cavern inside her is so empty and dark that she is sinking into it. Her ribcage constricts on itself. She tries to chew some bread, but she is not really hungry, it is just that weird feeling that gnaws at her gut day and night, day and night. She touches the place where her necklace should have been. Gone, as all of her belongings. She has never owned much, but now she is naked in the dark, a reprehensible monster lurks inside her, and she misses having something familiar to the touch. She summons her arcane magic, then her divine magic to feel their comforting thrumming. She manages to muster a small trickle of power, but it is too weak to distract her from the void that demands her attention and screams at her to crawl closer to Okku, to find a fey, a ghoul, something.
Ingrid hugs herself tighter and hums a prayer. She needs to deal with just another impossible thing, and fast. Her friends must be going crazy looking for her. Or they may be dead. Or they may be hurt, they may need her help. The gargoyles said that Casavir is dead, but that is not true: her goddess would tell her. Merciful Sehanine, the protector of loving souls, would tell her if he was in the gods' realm. A different fear grips Ingrid's heart. What if her goddess tried and she didn't heed the words in the haze of this excruciating fight with the hunger? What if she cannot hear the gods in this cursed state? Her normal feelings seem dull, her memories lack colour, and even Casavir's face is in fog. What if she does not have a soul for the gods to address? What is this thing inside her anyway?
She is injured and hurt and tired after the day's long road and deeply upset by the looks people give her wherever they pass. She had faced ungrounded hostility before everybody started to love her all of a sudden, and she knows how to deal with it, but it has never been like this. This guarded fear and unkind whispers are completely new and way more disheartening. Villagers make a sign against evil and do not look her in the eye; mothers hide their children in their skirts and old women spit at her sight. A spirit eater is a monster whose humanity is all pretend to them. Half of the nights they camp in the cold hills of Rashemen because no one would take their coin. Those who do take her coin charge her extra for the bedding they will have to burn afterwards.
Ingrid is not used to the level of hatred reserved for inhuman threats. These days, she thinks about the Shadow King a lot. He used to be a man, he was consumed, he was a monster and they killed him. It is simple, there was no different way. Yet being in his place is horrifying. She was sorry for him the day she learned his story – how he sacrificed himself to protect Illefarn, how he was in pain and screamed in the cruel transformation, how his sentience was taken from him. Now Ingrid cannot but compare her new burden with that ancient one. This spirit eater curse smells somehow similar, somehow connected.
The sad thoughts make her forget about the hunger momentarily. Or perhaps the essence of the monster is partially sentient, and it listens to her musings. This is not especially encouraging. Or maybe it is. She starts talking to it tentatively, as if she is talking to an injured child. The hunger listens quietly, and she is flooded with some vague longing, some muted desperation. She sighs and tries to lull them two, the restless companions, to sleep. It starts to snow, and first winter snowflakes – large, soft, beautiful – float in the air. Tomorrow they will set off for the deeper parts of Ashenwood.