As the tarot card she represents would suggest, Ahlai has the capability of being the single most patient person you’ve ever met. She has her hot buttons, though few and far between, but unless you push one of those she won’t snap. As a result she isn’t a terribly emotional person. She has emotions like everyone else, and she expresses them like everyone else, but she is almost normal, even civil (you know most of the time), in the way she does so and no overly emotional.

Unexpectedly for one of her time, especially a natural born shade and a crimson stained one at that, is her gentleness. Ahlai is unusually gentle (sometimes even in combat – though often that isn’t always the case). She has a heart that aches for the pain of others, especially other shades – manufactured (well…depending on whether they were willing or not) or natural. As a result she often feels very slight confliction when she murders people she deems innocent. This shines through in the way she finishes them – quickly and painlessly. Moreover, Ahlai loves to smile and loves to see smiles of all kinds – even fake ones. To her, a smile is a sign of joy or courage, and both are things she envies and adores. That being said, she rarely smiles herself, if she does you probably won’t want to ask her why as often that means she’s achieved something immensely bloody (though there are rare exceptions). As a totally general side-note: she may have the world’s worst sense of humor, she honestly just doesn’t get it – this might stem from how simple-minded she occasionally tends to be, which might also account for her usually straightforward attitude.

Ahlai is also rather accustomed to working in teams, or at the very least in pairs. She and her brother have been a dynamic duo for quite a while now, so working alongside someone or adjusting her movements based upon the actions of others is something she is very good at doing. This applies both to combat and normal day-to-day interaction. Furthermore, and more linked with battle situations, she takes direction surprisingly well (considering how stubborn she is). This stems from the fact that she has accepted that she is not the most talented strategist. She relies totally on instinct in a fight and she is aware of this, so when someone else who she is aware would know better than herself tells her to do something she listens (as long as its someone who wouldn’t purposefully put her in a bad situation) and executes their commands with ease and efficiency.

As stated above, she is generally accepting of people and situations. That doesn’t necessarily means she likes them or trusts them (them referring both to people and the situation at hand), but she doesn’t deny that they exist as they are and she doesn’t attempt to change things outside of her control. That being said, she has a very strong sense of purpose and everything she puts effort into doing she is doing for a specific purpose. If Ahlai believes a situation needs to be changed, or if she believes that a certain event must occur, she will make change it or enact it as she believe it necessary. Moreover, Ahlai herself is seeking some form of acceptance; she wants to rise above simply being material or a shade.

Finally, courage is a trait she highly values in others and actively works for. Often she is successful in remaining steadfast, facing some of the most dire terrifying situations with ease, though there might be question as to whether this is due to courage or partial insanity.

As mentioned before, she does have those big red buttons that you really shouldn’t press (yet, undoubtedly you can never resist the urge to) – one such hot button is mentioning her scars in any way, but especially in a derogatory way. Also, science in general, but especially the science concerning the manufacturing of shades – she holds it in the highest contempt and won’t resist the urge to lash out. And when she lashes out she’s like a demon that’s been unleashes from the deepest pits of hell, and all she leaves in her wake is a trail of red.

Speaking of lashing out, Ahlai is a grudge keeper. She may be patient, but she remembers everything, and if you are bothersome enough or cause her enough pain, one day you may unexpectedly find yourself with a knife in your back or to your throat. Don’t mistake patience for forgiveness. She is an angry, unstable, fearful, and vengeful shade and she usually responds to pain of all kinds with pain of the physical sort. Words are meaningless, an “I’m sorry” will never be enough. Guilt of any level could never heal her wounds, and though inside she knows the pain of others won’t either, she’s still satisfied knowing they’ve felt pain equal to or greater than her own. As a matter of fact, her greatest motivation now is her mission for revenge against the doctors that experimented on her and any other doctor that may think to do the same. Furthermore, she keeps a tally of favors. If she does something for you, you can expect it wasn’t for free.

Moreover, Ahlai, though accepting, is wisely untrusting. Most every person she’s trusted in the past has betrayed her in someway, and lets face it, the trusting person is the first to die. Of course, this in part means you can’t fully trust her. Trust is often mutual, as is mistrust. If she thinks you’ll stab her in the back, you can bet she’d do the same.

She has a reckless streak. Especially when she’s in the heat of battle, mainly since in the heat of battle she’s basically a crazed berserker. Instead of thinking things through, often she’ll choose to forego thought completely and simply act based on instinct and her blood-thirst, as a result she ends up in situations she could have avoided. All in all, her ability to plan for long-term anything is basically non-existent as she generally lives only in the now.

Like many people and many shades in this day and age and certainly in contrast to her out of place gentleness, Ahlai can be rather violent. Actually, often the stronger she feels about someone, positively or negatively, the more violent she is towards he or she. Furthermore, she can be playfully violent during combat, specifically combat related towards achieving her revenge, and will occasionally torture her victims or ensure they have a slow painful death even if she isn’t there to witness it. (Of course, she can be playfully violent in an innocent way too, but that’s far less interesting).

One can easily wonder how someone can possess so many conflicting personality traits. It’s easily explained by simply stating Ahlai is mentally tired all the time. She doesn’t sleep well, at all since she suffers from multiple sleep disorders. She has nightmares almost every night, suffers from bouts of sleep paralysis attacks, she sleepwalks and sleep talks, and occasionally has night terrors. As a result of the poor sleep she gets at night, she can be quite unstable and when placed in stressful situation (especially combat situations) she will quite literally lose her mind, which further explains her recklessness. Also, it should be stated that often these sleep ‘attacks’ may be rather violent (with the exception of sleep paralysis as obviously she can’t move), she has had some very rare instances of homicidal sleepwalking. During times when she has lost herself, generally she relies on her brother to bring her back. Now that being said, she gets enough sleep to maintain her physical condition. However, it is mentally draining sleep.

Mercy | Hurts

It is questionable whether or not life in Degluttait could ever be a happy one. Though innocence is birthed here, it seems that the city itself is encompassed in a omnipresent shadow that perverts it the moment it releases its first cry and foolishly announces that “I’m here! I’ve arrived!”

Life is perhaps not worth living if you must live it in such a place. Yet, still it goes on. And innocence is destroyed every moment, and the scenario surrounding Ahlai’s birth is no different. One could say she was born into a somewhat happy family, or as happy as anyone could be. A family that despite the things the city threw at it had managed to hold onto some surviving joy. Unfortunately, her birth may have done what the city could not. Her mother was just an average woman, of small stature and little ability and likely would have died a gruesome death if it hadn’t of been for the man she was married to. He was a former gang member with enough combat skill and knowledge of how the darker side of the city worked to keep his family relatively safe as long as they didn’t draw too much attention to themselves.

And a shade child was unwanted attention and an unwanted addition. But with eyes as clear as the sky and a smile that could light a room, his wife would not allow him to rid them of this so-called ‘blessing’ no matter what marks it bore. So they hid Ahlai’s ‘deformity’, her undesired birthmark, her curse from sight.

She was a sweet child, if one ignored her penchant for violence. She was a normal child, if one ignored her unnatural physical talent. She was unnoticeable, if one ignored her. However, the way she would pick fights with her brother, who was six years her elder, at the age of six and come out victorious with total ease was not natural. Especially when one considers that her father had been training his son, teaching him to defend himself, and ignoring his ‘daughter’.

What could not be ignored was the distance that existed between the family members. The mother who was warm to all seemed the only one that was consistently kind to the youthful monster. The son, Rene, was kind when no one was looking. And the father, he had little penchant for kindness at all, but for the one that should have been his youngest daughter he had nothing except open contempt.

She fought for his attention, his acceptance even as a toddler. What little girl doesn’t want her father’s approval? At the age of six, she spied on her brother’s training and trained herself, wishing for nothing more than for a single smile from the man she called “dad”. She’d never have that wish granted as the city extinguished the flame that was her family before it could be.

Somehow, someway a gang with dreams of harnessing the power of shades found out that there was potential material for the taking. And took they did.

When she was seven the life of her mother and father were taken and the freedom to live human lives were taken from her and her brother and they became the gang’s research subjects.

She was kept bound and in relative isolation for twelve years while they took blood, skin, DNA, and any other biological samples they needed from her and injected her with whatever new invention they had created, on of which would eventually turn her eyes red. But they never did too much. They never killed her. They needed her capable. They needed her to be able to slaughter the failed experiments or die at the hands of a successful one. That was after all the easiest way to test the value of the shades they created using her as source material.

The pain she went through each day of this life was immeasurable. It was torture both physically and psychologically. A torture she wished on no one. She felt guilty before when destroying the creatures they’d pit against her, but such feelings left her, she grew numb, and saw it as saving them.

It is unclear how she made it through twelve years of such agony. Perhaps, it was the rare instances she would see her brother that kept her going, knowing he too was going through this pain. Or perhaps it was because of a comparatively ‘kind’ doctor, who gave her medication to relieve her pain, occasionally instigated better conditions, and allowed her the opportunity to see her brother. Or maybe, she was simply that strong willed. As it were it doesn't matter how she kept her sanity because the point is she managed to hold onto to it (mostly) until the day she got away. Somehow during one of the many experiments she was forced to undergo, her brother escaped his cell, murdered the scientist performing the experiment, and freed her. She never asked questions such as how he seemed to know the facility so well, or well enough to know the way out without being noticed and frankly she didn’t care. Nor would she ever.

She was free.

Free to finally destroy the men who destroyed her.

Revenge is like a disease. It eats away at you; it tempts you with its thrill and destroys you slowly when you succumb to it. Forgiveness is its cure, but this disease she’d happily let kill her. Together she and her brother would begin a quest to eradicate the scientists, the doctors, anyone who is foolish enough to cage and maltreat a monster or create a monster that could and would eat them alive (metaphorically speaking, of course).

She was unwise, however, apparently going on a two year long killing spree, leaving the bloodied corpses of doctors and former doctors in your wake is a good way to end up with a price on your head. As a result, Ahlai and Rene ended up spending a year or so having to shield themselves from some gangs and their members, and while they had been successful in protecting themselves up to a certain point they did eventually hit a snag. Ahlai is reckless and instinctual. And someone separated her and her brother and took advantage of that, cornering her and then using their prize to corner her brother.

Yet, they did not end up dead. Rather, they ended up tarot members in a sequence of events that still confuses Ahlai to this day.