Adelaide Margaret Sheats

Adelaide Margaret Sheats is a character in The Wretched Rite.

Race
Rusalka are a bit like a siren/mermaid/kelpie hybrid; sometimes dead. Supernatural drowned female, if you will. Used to be human. Bit touchy about it.

Weapons/Abilities:
Adelaide constantly and involuntarily drips murky green water from her hair and skin, the exact origin of which is unclear. The water forms pools around her that act more or less like normal bodies of water except for the fact that they have apparently infinite depth and connect to one another at intervals that disregard actual distance; it would take the same amount of time, for example, to travel between pools ten feet apart as it would for a thousand feet. This depends on her knowing her relative location, so it’s unreliable at distances over than a mile or so. She can utilize water she hasn’t personally created at the cost of turning it all green and nasty-looking. The water created or corrupted by the rusalka is her preferred territory, no little in part due to the fact that anyone unfamiliar with it quickly becomes disorientated once submerged due its space-warping nature, rendering escape difficult if not outright impossible. Objects thrown into it will likewise become lost; coins tossed in will not grant wishes.

Underwater, Adelaide possesses freakish zombie strength and speed and can breathe as easily as she would in air. Her preferred method of catching prey is luring unsuspecting targets near her pools and pulling them under to drown, the purpose of which she is not entirely sure. Eating her victims seems to quell her confusion, so she does that sometimes. She possesses an inhumanly beautiful singing voice- not quite a siren song, but very distracting and likely to attract any curious passersby.

On land, however, Adelaide is drastically weakened, and if she dries out completely she’ll die in minutes. The water generation would seem to prevent this, as well as give her a permanent haven and escape route; naturally this relies on the water existing in the first place, and the rusalka avoids dry areas like the plague. A plague that could hurt a dead person.

Description:
Very pretty in a deceased kind of way, with a slender figure bordering on bony and owlish dark eyes. Adelaide has permanently dripping ankle-length greenish hair that closely resembles river reeds, and the very little clothing she wears is actually bits of plant matter. Small trophies taken from her various victims frequently adorn her, most of which currently consist of a number of shiny baubles of varying value and hideousness. Her fingernails are long and sharp, and her teeth are evil pointy little things that bring to mind some kind of predatory fish, as does her rather fluid way of suddenly lunging for your face. Despite being sometimes mistaken for a mermaid, she has normalish legs and doesn’t have any trouble walking or running when on land. She constantly appears soaked when out of the water due to her ability and she will not feel bad when she ruins your nice carpet with her gross hairwater.

Adelaide’s personality shifted when she became a rusalka, though not enough to disguise her dregs-of-the-gutter background. She’s got a bad temper and a worse sense of humor and isn’t above backstabbing, lying, and other rude behavior if it means she’ll get her way. Class and formality don’t mean much of anything to her except as a waste of time and a way to exploit other people. She can be charming when she wants to, however, which is almost always when she wants to eat somebody. Secretly she’s actually rather lonely, since being an undead water spirit doesn’t leave many opportunities for social activities. Apparently she quite misses being human, but may not be sure if she’s ready to give up the ability to chuck a glass of water on the ground and swan-dive into a puddle.

Biography:
The girl by the water was beautiful in the way that a fallen leaf was, black with rot and slick with rain. She sat with her back to Adelaide on the riverbank, combing her long, long hair with a little white comb and singing quietly to herself a song that seemed eerily familiar. The skin on her back glistened softly as she turned, tugging the comb through a knot; she was naked except for the tangled strands of hair and a few black weeds plastered across her. What Adelaide could see of her body was pale and almost translucent in the dim light, like something that had surfaced from deep under the ground, away from the sun and any source of light.

A stick shattered suddenly under her foot; the stranger froze at the sound, her hair bitten halfway through with the white teeth of the comb. Her head turned slowly, fluidly, and Adelaide was looking into the eyes of an animal, dark and distrusting. The angles of her face glowed in the light shining off the river and brought into painful contrast the shadows under her eyes and on her lips. She smiled, suddenly; her teeth were small and sharp and white. The comb glistened quietly in her hand.

The startled Adelaide managed to get out a “You’re not supposed t-” before the strange girl slid pushed off the bank and slid slowly into the river, turning away. The water rose to swallow her but wouldn’t take her hair, bearing it up in dark swirls over the gentle current and pushing it back towards the land. She turned back and gave a comb’s smile through the tangles. It took a few seconds for Adelaide to realize that she was speaking.

“Help me.”

It was stupid to listen, Adelaide thought as she stumbled over the fallen branches in the darkness, heading for the river. She pushed a sapling out of the way, letting it crash back into place. It was a terrible idea to do what strange women skinny-dipping in the river at midnight said. A bow cracked in half like a gun going off. She was making a horrible decision. The water rose up around her ankles and her toes sank into the cold mud at the river’s edge, and she watched as a rotten leaf floated silently past her feet.

The river girl came closer, her smile framed by bruised-looking blue lips. Wasn’t that familiar?, Adelaide thought. Hadn't she seen that before? The strange girl’s voice was even more beautiful than her body, rising out of the cloudy water like a pale, terrible fish with arms and shoulders and long-nailed hands held out like a beggar’s. She was lonely, the voice was saying. The girl shrugged and strands of hair fell away from her. So lonely. Lonely like the river at night, running all the time and never getting where it wanted to go. The water was cold, but the girl’s hands were colder, holding her face in an iron vice. Wouldn’t she be lonely with her? Wouldn’t she do that? She was so lonely. She’d always been lonely.

Adelaide was lonely too, she realized as the rusalka held her gently in her arms and laid her down under the water. The river running into her lungs didn’t want to go there and didn’t know where it wanted to go at all, babbling to itself through her throat. It wasn’t talking to her, no one was. No one wanted to move away from the silence of this river. The girl in the water was smiling at her with her blue lips and eyes and she was pushing her to the bed, river bed wedding bed ’til death do you part the seas and bring them back to me, crashing down in waves of cold, cold water in the arms of a river roaring in her ears through the rusalka’s soft and lonely night.

The only thing she could see in the green light were the animal eyes of the girl in the river, holding her down and saying that she wasn’t the right one at all, after all. She was so lonely. She would understand, wouldn’t she? She would understand now. She would, and the river swelled like a bursting heart and dragged her away with arms of iron and earth.