Kurai Hikari Kaosu

She/Her

Currently, 22

Lillian's test subject

Phoenix

28th of February

100lbs give or take, depending on how well fed she is.

5'2 if her bones aren't broken at the time.

Black with streaks of red that shift and glow, as if lit with an inner light. She's not sure why it does that, but the theory goes that it's because of her ash magic and Lillian's experiments.

Wavy, and often messy if Lillian isn't feeling nice. If straightened out it's a little over shoulder length.

Pale silver, though the edges of her eyes are ringed with red; this seems to happen over time in all her lives.

When she's allowed them, her ears are usually studded with little grey stones; Lillian's used the piercings for other purposes sometimes though.

Svelte, if albeit occasionally malnourished.

Her brand is a series of interwoven spirals that spread out from her lower back, snaking over her hips. The edges can't be seen from the front, but can be from the sides.

Whatever she's allowed; a lot of the time, nothing or the barest slip of cloth.

A simple band of twisted silver fashioned into a necklace. Much like her studs, she doesn't have it all the time, but given the apparent lack of value other than sentimental, she's sometimes allowed to keep the homemade gift.

Kurai is, mostly, a broken woman. Bits of her have been pieced back together enough to function, but the misfortunes she's suffered at Lillian's hands have rendered her personality a shell of what it might have been.

Often resigned to her fate, Kurai holds perhaps the tiniest spark of hope to change her life someday, but buried beneath a deep-seated depression and despair that smothers it constantly.

Her one solace is the companionship of Luva; perhaps a function of Stockholm's Syndrome, or simply because it was the one place she could build rapport, the fleshling is her only friend, and her lover. As such, much and more of her personality revolves around wanting to be around it and not upsetting Lillian.

• Spending time with Luva


• Reading, when allowed


• Flying, though it's rare


• The scent of jasmine; a holdover from another life


• Keeping Lillian satisfied with her performance

• Upsetting Lillian, or Luvia, or Luva


• Her punishments upset her, as they are designed to


• Being caged up, though it's often the case


• Luva being hurt or disappointed in her

Capable: She might not seem like it, but Kurai learns quickly. Many things she has a small piece of natural talent for, sometimes awoken purely thanks to Lillian's experimentation on her as a Phoenix. But the rest of the time she learns quickly because it's the only way to mitigate her punishments - as such, whenever given even the slightest modicum of time and freedom to practice, she will master what's put in front of her.

Resilience: A mix of her own personal resilience and results from Lillian's experimentation - Kurai is rather hardy, and heals fast, even for a Phoenix. Mentally, many would call her unstable, but even as broken as she is, she functions and somehow manages to get through her life, day by day.

Resignation: For 99.9999% of the time, Kurai has given up. She stopped trying to escape Lillian multiple lives ago. She no longer believes she'll ever find Hikari unless Lillian decides to do so, to torment them both. If someone walked in and offered her freedom... she probably wouldn't take it, thinking it was either a trap, or a person naïve enough to believe it, even though it wasn't true. Lillian will always find her - that much she believes.

Emotionally Vulnerable: Intentionally so, Lillian hasn't exactly given Kurai any support to build herself up. Her emotions can still get the best of her, even though she's forcibly hardened herself as much as she can - threatening Luva still gets to her, as do thoughts of Hikari. And Lillian knows it.

She loves Luva. I think that's enough said.

Except for other subjects, Kurai has given up on friends; Luva seems to be her only real one, and trying to make friends before Lillian finds her in any given life just means suffering - for her and for the friends.

She could probably regard Lillian as an enemy, if only because of their positions, but.... there's no anger or hatred left to be stirred. It was all stamped out multiple lives ago, leaving mostly just faint resentment and hollowness.

Somehow, miraculously, she has found something resembling love - inasmuch as she's allowed it, anyway. Luva means everything to her now, really, and she is a devoted and often exceedingly subservient lover; she once failed him, and that stain on her consciousness drives her to never, ever do so again.

Reds and oranges, mostly.

The handmade necklace, a token Lillian keeps for her, if only to make her hurt all the more for the sentimentality behind it.

She doesn't have much of an accent anymore, the closest resemblance left being something Slavic. For the most part she doesn't talk a lot to anyone besides Luva; she learned early on to only speak when spoken to or when absolutely necessary.

The earliest life Kurai can still remember (at least, when she has the necklace), she had a sister named Hikari. She doesn't remember their parents, only her sister - and mostly just her death. As her sister, who was a human, laid dying, Kurai turned her; they'd fought about it many times, with Hikari refusing on the grounds she was fine with being a human and living out that life with her.

But seeing her death in front of broke Kurai - the first time of many - and she made a promise to find Hikari again. Turning her didn't save her life in the end, only that she would be reborn.

Since then, Kurai has only encountered who she believes is Hikari's new lives twice; it was only the second time that Hikari seemed to recall anything about her, and she was ripped away by war before they could reconcile.

That was more than six lives ago, inasmuch as Kurai can keep her lives straight. There has been no other sign since.

Her current life saw her born as a navy brat; her father is still out there somewhere, but her mother experienced Ash Death at Lillian's hands when Kurai was taken.

Her parents, and siblings should she have them, often end up as resources for Lillian to utilise. This fact alone has weighed heavily on Kurai, as it has been used to torment her many a time.

28th of February.

International waters, near Malaysia

Bloodmare manor

Before she was taken, she had had a few years of schooling at military academy; since then, she only really learns what Lillian deigns to let her.

English, some Malay, and fragments of other languages when her necklace is worn.

Kurai has been reborn a lot of times; she doesn't remember when exactly the first life was. She knows it's old, at least a millennia or more, but that's it - Lillian likely knows, however.

When she's wearing the necklace, Kurai can remember far more about her previous lives than a normal Phoenix might; more than anything, it gives her a sense of just how many lives, and in which order, she's had. For whatever reason though, details about her first life remain clouded, as if blanketed by Darkness.

Her current life has been spent mostly as a test subject; she was only 10 when Lillian captured her this time, snatched up from Malaysia alongside her mother. In the struggle, her mother perished - or so Kurai has been told, the truth of the matter being something she can't verify. For all she knows Lillian lied, and holds her mother captive just like her.

Phoenix (born).

Born to, and raised by, a phoenix mother, Kurai has been aware from a young age. She knows what she is, and once Lillian found her and placed the necklace on her, various tidbits have come floating back.

Like all Phoenixes, she possesses Ash Magic, and is fairly skilled in its use.

However, she also possesses an unique form of magic, something she can barely control and has been aptly referred to as Wild Magic.

It manifests spontaneously, usually when trying to use Ash Magic, which in itself is a kind of wildness - her Wild Magic however is more like unrestrained chaos. It has caused various reactions such as completely warping the element she was wielding, to changing the scope or destination of the effects she was enacting. Occasionally, it has even sprung up when not using magic and merely focusing her thoughts on something - as if the magic responds to her desires like wish fulfilment.

With the amulet in her possession she can exert some control over the effects after they appear, but not their initial effects usually. The few times it's allowed her to 'escape', she has simply waited, so that Lillian can bring her back.

Kurai's phoenix form is a mute swan, though she knows she could never pass as a normal one; her plumage is streaked with red and gold rather than the usual white, and even her beak is crimson rather than orange. She's quite large, perhaps of the top 10 percentile of the species, and is more quiet even than her brethren usually.

It is not entirely unknown for her to find an oddly-coloured feather however; she suspects it's due to her unique magic, but from time to time she will produce rare feathers made of a colour, or even colours, not belonging to her normal plumage. Lillian has a habit of plucking these whenever they're found, as else they often seem to disappear.

Kurai's Amulet: It has no name, and to most, appears just to be a twisted thing of silver and a simple grey stone pendant. In truth, it's connected to her at so deep a level that it lets Lillian find her no matter what body she is in, and should Kurai wear it, it connects her to her past lives in an unusual way.

This manifests in knowledge about her previous lives, better clarity of the lives and their order they were in, and access to some of the skills she has had in those lives, though the extent varies. Her first life is an exception to this, as all she can remember is the moment she turned Hikari, and then saw Hikari die nonetheless.

It also affords her some control over her weird magic, enough to stop it being as much of a threat to herself - she suspects that's part of the reason Lillian lets her have it most of the time.

Kurai cannot control her transfer of lives; for whatever reason (she presumes it's Lillian's fault, or some cosmic joke), she will be reborn on the next February 28th. As such, she believes it has something to do with her birthday during that first life - but if Lillian knows something, she's not about to tell Kurai.