Eighth Soul of Keris
The Princess Calesco is never seen without her veils, whether they are the physical ones which exist around her, her lies, or darkness. It is her oft-spoken claim that there is nothing to her beneath them, but some who have seen her slip or found truth amidst her deceptions have caught a glimpse of glowing white feathers and blood-irised eyes beneath the satin, and felt a pang of breath-taking agony like an arrow to the heart. She is peerless in the art of disguise, but the form she prefers to take is that of a child approaching puberty, with hair the colour of midnight and honey-chocolate skin covered in intricate, brightly coloured tattoos. They reflect her home; the bubbling predator traps between Marsh and Ruin whose honey-tar leaks out to form brightly coloured scum on the surface of nearby rivers. Though they smell sweet and nourishing, the pits are impossible to escape for those who fall in, and their cries attract others who are trapped in turn. The same scent of caramel clings to Calesco herself; enrapturing to predatory beasts. Hawks will flock to perches near her; never looking away. Wolves follow fawningly in her wake, and clouds of ladybirds hum in the air above her. None of the animals she captivates dare approach her, and most will trail her steps until they die of hunger or exhaustion; unable or unwilling to tear themselves away long enough to eat or rest.
The Midnight Whisper is a melancholy soul. It is her nature to see the painful truths that others avoid, and her calling to convey them to others. Instead of embracing this task, she denies it wherever she can. The powerful are fitting targets for her tongue, but she tries to shield those weaker than her from the ugliness of the world with beautiful falsehoods, becoming bitter and depressed enough to lash out when she fails. Beautiful things bought with the pain or suffering of others will bleed in her presence; ugly black ichor that leaves a stench of rot and decay that can never be cleaned away. She lies to make the world more palatable, but sees through such lies herself and cannot hide from what she knows. Thus, she tries to prove herself better in deed, and is the kindest of the monarchs, doing her best to make her citizens happier and improve their lot in life. She spends time in the City funding public works, and invests heavily in the imperial schools. Always, though, she will sink back into depression in time, lashing out at those who fail to live up to her standards and secluding herself from the world.
So, Echo is Keris's whimsy, the joy she takes from her lethality and the disconcerting intelligence she sometimes shows. Rathan is her conviction in her hatred and grudge-bearing nature, her desire for attention and the cruel sense of poetic humour she shows in her view of justice. Haneyl is her drive to self-improve, her ferociously possessive nature and the cultural imperialist in her that takes ideas she likes and makes them hers with no regard for what their original owners used them for.
Calesco, then, is her compassion and her conscience; the part of her that sees the harm she does and feels guilty. She's the bit of Keris that can see how terrible the world is, but lacks the ability to forget or ignore it. She's "painful truths and comforting lies", and the knowledge that caring and helping is hard, but hurting and harming is easy. A moral centre, if you like - the struggle to do good when destroying is the easiest thing to do with power. She hates what she knows, because it hurts, and so she tries to protect those she sees as innocent from it while punishing those she sees as guilty. Keris is currently rather getting the short end of the stick there, because despite looking ten-ish Calesco is still newborn into a life that hurts, and she's taking it out on her mother. She may warm to her a bit, especially since Keris is currently working on helping the owlriders, which is something she can at most only raise half-hearted objections of "you're still getting something out of it" to, and will probably mostly approve of.
There's a lot of quite interesting nuance to her, really. I deliberately made her as a soul with truths like "no love without pain" and "mortals are fragile" and "casual cruelty is the best route to power; compassion is a weakness" at her core, but who defied them instead of embracing or accepting them. But at the same time, she's not entirely a soft touch. She will, for instance, probably agree - grudgingly, but still agree - with Rathan on the concept of punishing slavers. Just for completely different reasons - and she'll go to war with him over who gets them, because he wants to torture them while she wants to teach them to be better. She's not exactly a pacifist, she's just Compassion and hates the ugliness and pain of the world, and the way that power is so easily used to hurt people.
Her placement in the Domain is quite deliberate. She's directly opposite Rathan (mutual hatred there), who's sort of the Buddhist-esque vice to her virtue (small v's); sloth and vanity and self-indulgent revenge and the easy route of using power selfishly - while Calesco is hard-won painful enlightenment and putting it to a good cause. Amusingly, given this; Rathan's is actually the most accepting and egalitarian of the courts of Krisity, while hers is the least - he doesn't care who you are or what you're like as long as you love him, whereas Calesco has even higher standards than Haneyl in some ways. And she's between the Ruin and the Marsh too; Echo and Haneyl. So beside enlightenment we have joy and self improvement. Haneyl is too attached to material things, and Echo is too free from the world, too willing to flit on and forget about the suffering of others. Heh. You may be able to guess a little about the remaining two souls Keris has yet to bud, actually - they fit between Echo, Rathan and Haneyl in similar ways on the other two Directional borders. And yes, she also has very strong themes of being a predator trap who leaves prey animals untouched. I thought it fitting.
Amusingly enough, despite the fact that she's a demon whose Essence is a weird blend of Adorjan and the Ebon Dragon... I suspect Salina would get along really well with Calesco if they talked for a while. And Calesco would approve of her, because... sigh. While Salina's aspirations did lead to harm, Calesco is too young and too much a soul of Keris to really see it, and Salina's actual in-the-moment attitude is exactly her kind of hard-won painful enlightenment and struggle to do good with power.
Word of God, incidentally; her appearance - all dark skin and dark hair and veils and shadows - is the biggest lie of all the ones she tells. There is something under there. I know exactly what it is, and what her "true" Third Circle form will look like, under the falsehoods.
There is a reason she never lets it show.
