Ke

Ke is a character from The Relentless Slaughter.

Weapons/Abilities
Ke can fly, being as light as a 80gsm sheet of A5 paper. Her method of flight is much like the way a squid swims. Ke will breath in air, then respire it by shooting it back out as thrust. She tends to float on winds if she's in a particularly floaty mood, but she has hooks on the ends of her eight legs that stop her wantonly blowing away when a breeze blows past. However, being a spider, she's also very capable of spinning webs, (and producing spider silk for other uses) and immoblising prey if she feels the need. Her mandibles are nothing to be sneered at either.

Description
Ke is about as tall as a human when fully straightened out, but when walking she only comes up to a little above a person's waist. She's hairless, sleek, pure white, (almost translucent) and has an impressive sheen not unlike mother-of-pearl to her exoskeleton. There are a few black markings around her mandibles and cethalothorax, but these, along with her glittering black eyes, are the darkest points of her appearance. She has membranous sails on her back that fold and unfold like wings, but these have little practical use other than to offer some method of controlling her direction when in flight.

Fears
Ke is one of the millions of her kind that are children of Nyame, the original keeper of all stories. Following the loss of these to the spider god Anansi, he sent out his children to find more. They all have their separate forms individual to them. Ke chose hers out of admiration for the spider god, and the manner in which he liberated the first stories. As such, Ke has devoted her life to seeking out the tales of the universe she inhabits and recording them, so that they may never be forgetten. But when she dies, who will remember her? She fears, more than anything, that everything she did or will do is pointless, and that she will fade into nothing once she no longer lives. She's also rather sensitive about being trapped due to her exotic appearance garnering interest and a need to imprison her, apparently. Many humans have tried to make a pet of her, but few were remarkable in their attempts.

The ones that were, however...

Biography
'When the Spider of Memory, Ke, first tumbled from the sky and out of the arms of her father, she fell upon the court of an opulent king. There she found a comfortable place within this court, this heart of lies and deceit, to start recording her stories. In return she was an oddity, a pretty spectacle for esteemed visitors to the palace.

However, it could not last. Eventually she grew bored of the same permutations of petty rivalries and lacklustre politics, and made her intentions to leave clear. The king responded with smiles and bows to the strange creature, but he was as two-faced as the rest of his vindictive court. Elaborate traps and steel doors surrounded her while she slept, and ten battalions of soldiers surrounded all this. Ke had become the king's prize. He didn't intend to lose her now.

And so Ke was required to stage her first escape attempt.

The first two tries were unsuccessful, both relying on brute force and how quickly she could spit her silk at the numerous men rushing towards her. The third time, however, needed only patience and the removal of a few bricks. After all, while the king had been certain to consider every angle surrounding the spider, he had failed to realise that her natural instinct was to go up. Her scrapings and scratchings were hardly inconspicuous, but a five-foot layer of steel surround her cell made sure that none of that noise escaped to where others might hear it.

Ke pulled herself out of that small gap and floated away unseen on the wind, through a sky smeared with the rushing and fading colours of day, and landed on a beach many miles away.

For a year and day she lay on that beach, watching the clouds go past and the world ebb and flow, only leaving her spot in the sand to hunt birds and fish. She was confused. Her father had entrusted her to remember the secrets and tales of the world, but she had been betrayed and imprisoned by the only humans she knew. Ke could not trust them, not anymore. But if she couldn't even speak to the keepers of these stories, how would she liberate them? Desolate, she chose to do nothing.

Eventually her apathy was broken by the ship wrecking upon the shore. She was sleeping at the time, curled up amongst the rock pools, but the raging roar of the thunder brought her scuttlign towards the shore. And there, outlined against a crack of lightning that seared the sky, she saw a story. A myriad, even, waiting to be remembered and recorded.

As she leapt and dived into the water, cleaving the soaring waves, she realised that the fear was meaningless. The stories were all she would ever have.

And what more could she want?'

- Extract from The Caged Spider and Other Stories

Ke went on to collect many stories, all of varying lengths and truthfulness. However, while she chose to compile a few, she keeps all of them remembered perfectly. While this would seem remarkable, it is only natural that a collector of stories sent by the sky god himself would be adapted to the purpose in some way.

But although the stories were kept in perfect condition, the nature of their collection began to blur for Ke. The joy she once experience in her collecting became humdrum and everyday. So, in a way, it could almost be regarded as serendipitous that she became trapped in a fight to the death.

If she survived, this would certainly be a story she would never forget collecting.