Nobody's Servant 1.0

Nym

It didn't take long for the ship to begin moving. Most of the crew generally paid me no mind, but Jori was happy to help me settle in, and even gave me the rundown on the crewmates she kept close to.

The Nahrrimurn Family, mercenaries from the Republic to the west. Presiding over them is Neien, their elderly mother. Didn't have Sal til she was almost 50 and just recently crossed 80. Nobody here ever heard her speak, save for her own children years prior.

Eldest is Sal, the cat I encountered in the showers. Best shot on board; doesn't seem like he'd need to be so built for that, but I imagine a physique like that can't hurt.

Youngest, I'd wager younger than myself, is Rohka. Hides himself in that oversize coat; even his voice is modulated by the Faigani chloronaut mask he sports. Gives off the sense of someone scrawny but is apparently an absolute terror up close.

Dahlia, the crew's head engineer. Honorably discharged from naval service after losing her right arm and leg, but she returned as a supervisory officer to the privateering armada after designing herself suitable prosthetics. She was one of the few that greeted me personally. She seems kind.

Tsing, the captain; born, raised, and aberrated in Dominion lands. A cheetah who looks to be mostly prosthetics at this point; long digitigrade stilts in place of her legs, and wide circular rims at the synthetic shoulder joints, feeding thick cables to two arms each. The less known about her, the better, so I hear.

And then there's Nym, whom Yhana had mentioned by name before. In all my time people-watching with Jori, we never did see him. He seldom comes out of his quarters, and much of the rest of the crew prefers it that way. In actuality, he is second son of the Empress, but he left his cushioned life voluntarily to pursue eternal youth, which he found in undeath. He could have gotten any role on any ship he desired, but his choice to become a privateer keeps him well out of the way of his older brother, the inheritor and grand admiral.

Lastly, Yhana herself. She tried to enlist with the navy about ten years back, after the last of her immediate family passed away, but her own health complications precluded her from that. Instead, she's here with the other unregulated expendables.

"What about yourself?" I eventually ask, "I know about Leonov, but I still haven't heard your story."

The human shrugs at that, taking a seat on the rail. Leonov looks like he wants to follow suit, but hesitates, likely out of fear of bending the metal under his weight.
"Well, mine's a revenge story," she begins. "I was young when it happened. Soma's followers often run clinics with a religious affiliation where you come from too, right? Well the Empress placed a limit on their establishment outside of the capital here. The decree was made with the intention of controlling places that might harbor Prelature spies. Most of them weren't spies, of course, but among those that were, a lot of them decided to take drastic measures if their cover was already at risk."

She turns her head to face me, but her eyes look right through me. "Have you ever seen what a vivicalligraphic healing specialist can do when they want to hurt you instead? Once the delirium of rapid onset fever takes hold, you're powerless to stop them from doing the rest." Her pupils refocus, locking with mine. "They only spared me because I was a child. Still waiting on teeth to come in; no radiance, no threat. My mother and father didn't linger, and there was nobody to help them. Anyone with an arcane proficiency for healing got a quicker death, just to make sure of that."

The expression on my face is one of shock and yet all Jori does is smile at me.

"That was a mistake," she continued. "You don't do something like that to me and expect me to forgive and forget. As long as this war is going on, I'll use it to show them just how bad a mistake it was."