Rakkis
Description
Aethereal and translucent, Rakkis is a small, swirling snake made of translucent glass. When floating away from the Summoner, it hovers in the air and moves with an undulating coiling motion, a being that is agile and incorporeal. Mundane strikes will not harm it, just as it can never harm in mundane ways. Within the center of its body, tiny wisps of flame fan out like veins, giving it a soft warm glow under an overcast sky. It is shy in contrast to its Summoner, preferring to stay hidden until called upon. To Rakkis, flesh is like a warm soup it can move through, and others feel it as a heated presence within the body when it enters.
Evolution
Apprentice: Rakkis is a support creature. It does not cause direct harm, just as most physical interactions cannot harm it. However, spells and effects like curses and wards that do not rely on physical touch definitely can. At this level, it can dart around at a decent pace, but it's nothing too hard to avoid. This creature possesses the innate ability to mark objects with Aetherial embers beneath the skin, appearing as a glowing patch that allows it to sense the location of any it has marked within the distance of one mile, as well as peering from the mark to spy upon its surroundings. When a marked individual that the Summoner cares about is visibly in danger, Rakkis can feel it and will communicate the fact. Up to eight individuals, locations, or objects can be marked this way.
Journeyman: At this point in its evolution, the Vestige's speed and reaction time grows, becoming far more difficult to avoid and even becoming a challenge to follow with the naked eye due to its small size and darting movements. At this stage, Rakkis is still serving a scouting function, but gains the ability to communicate clearly through telepathy. Its personality becomes a reflection of the Summoner's, able to draw upon the mage's ideas and help them with fresh perspectives, matching their intellect and serving as a separate mind to work out problems separately from the mage.
Expert: Rakkis becomes more opaque, its body becoming colorful and geometrically complex like the surface of bismuth. It gains the ability to take the shape of small to medium-sized objects Nuraku can imagine, becoming corporeal and capable of hovering. These are hard, like bismuth, but pretty to look at. While generally non-functional, Rakkis can serve as vessels for liquids in a pinch, become tools Nuraku is familiar with, or shape itself into keys that fit locks through careful trial and error. Given a minute of time and added aether by the mage, Rakkis can even become small furnishings such as anvils and chairs. While shifted, Rakkis can still communicate with Nuraku, but little else.
If shattered while hardened, the Vestige will be destroyed, disintegrating immediately.
Master: Rakkis becomes more hardy to magical tampering, its reality reinforced by Aetheric reserves. While it does experience yet again an up-tick in speed, the additional amount is only slight. Developing another ability of great use, Rakkis can now serve as a Summoning Conduit, allowing Nuraku to summon creatures at her Vestige's present location. Doing so increases the aether expenditure for vast distances, roughly doubling the cost at one mile, and doubling again for every mile thereafter. Nearby, the added cost is negligible.
Eidolon: Upon becoming an Eidolon, Rakkis develops two bright-blue eyes just above its narrow snout, and can begin to see the flows of Aether within the world. It can identify mages and their caliber with its sight, though not what type of power they may possess. Revealed mages and powerful spirits are especially bright, while gods and demigods may be truly blinding. By expending a small amount of Aether, Nuraku may briefly meld her sight with the Vestige, allowing her to utilize this sight through its eyes at a distance, or overlapping her own when Rakkis flows into her body. This ability may also help Nuraku to understand when items or creatures are more magical than others. Any details must be understood with advanced knowledge--something might flare brilliantly with the hue of a casted spell, but she wouldn't know what spell that is without indicators from her other senses.
Paradigms
Only one paradigm can be active at a time. As per Summoning's guidelines, switching consumes a minor amount of Nuraku's aether.
Viddashan
Becoming more aetherial and glowing a soft, blue light, Rakkis within this Paradigm begins to resemble the haunting ghost of an eel-like creature undulating through the air. It begins to cast off billowing, thick clouds of fog as naturally as breathing, quickly filling the area with a carpet of soupy, thick air that can hardly be seen through. Ascending into the sky, it can blanket an area of roughly one square mile in thirty foot deep fog in seconds before dissipating, necessitating that it must be summoned once more. This fog is dense and thick, leaving moisture upon the skin as a body moves through it. As it manifests, it appears to roll in from one direction like a swiftly approaching wave. Once re-summoned, Rakkis allows Nuraku to see through the fog via their shared aether-sight.
Irothar
By far Rakkis' most comfortable form, the Irothar paradigm causes the glass upon the Vestige's snake-like form to become more opaque and reflective akin to a mirror interspersed with plate-like, jagged scales. No less incorporeal than before, Rakkis merely enjoys the ability to become armor for others. By darting into a body, the Vestige may manifest an orange, surface-level glow of radiance, suffusing them from head to toe in its protective embrace.
This glowing aura upon the skin is akin to a suit of armor. The smooth, diffuse heat is extremely durable, yet vulnerable to high-impact attacks such as those from blunted weapons. When struck, it will harden into glass and crack, eventually chipping away like shards of ceramic that dissipate as they hit the ground. As more integrity is lost, the armor loses its cohesion, falling away in bigger plates. The armor may be repaired slowly by the Summoner by feeding it aether, causing the cracks to slowly revert, new material forming to replace the old.
Mirdun
The Paradigm of Mold, Rakkis dims a darkened green, casting off billowing blankets of sparkling spores into the air through a pair of siphon-like tubes forming upon its head like horns. These spores begin immaterial, only affected by the wind. As they come into contact with people, they solidify beneath clothing and armor alike. As they are inhaled, they cling to the throat and the sinuses, creating a powerful urge to sneeze when entering the airways. Upon the surface of the skin, the spores dig in, manifesting magical rashes that itch and scale, quickly rendering the average person rather miserable.
The rash may begin to crackle and split the skin, fungal roots spreading through the wound, necessitating that they must be pulled out as a painful, white series of threads. This can happen up to a minute after exposure begins, and the effect is more pronounced within ten feet of Rakkis, or within an enclosed space. After about five minutes of full exposure, the roots will begin to dig their way into joints and muscle tissues, causing rampant weakness and reducing the range of motion.
Diffusing the presence of spores can dramatically slow the progression of symptoms, but even light contact can cause the rash and sneezing effects. Unlike true fungus, the spores do not reproduce, and the malady will cease progressing once exposure to new spores ends.
Cordreyn
Sprouting feathers in a ridge down its tail and growing a beak, Rakkis takes on the appearance of a snake-shaped bird with rainbow-like feathered wings similar to a coatl when donning the Paradigm of Cordreyn. In this form, it becomes capable of melting into a pool of fungal sludge, emerging seconds later into smaller, equally intelligent copies of itself that may be assigned various tasks such as scouting or devising intellectual solutions to problems. Each of these may be interacted with as normal by Nuraku's abilities, and they are limited to eight in number.
While split apart, the group forms a council of squawking ghosts, capable of holding discussion and sharing ideas with one-another. They may also split up to various locales around the city, surfing through walls and spying from quiet corners. The council of Rakkis must be reformed to switch Paradigms once more, or else it will cost the same as summoning Rakkis anew, and each will vanish.
Tar'haen
Manifesting as vivid, woven sprigs of undulating leaves, the paradigm of Tar'haen allows Rakkis to become slow and corporeal, allowing Rakkis to bind an enemy in a series of hard, steel-like branches that expand and scathe across the skin with prickly thorns. This is usually done to targets that are already subdued, as Rakkis is slow and vulnerable with this Paradigm active.
Vesj'vakar
Embodying the mysteries of the depths, Rakkis takes on the paradigm of Vesj'vakar and darkens to a blackened, fish-like creature that is no less incorporeal. In this form, it may leap into the mouth of another, filling their throat and lungs with a strange, slimy shifting that yields them the ability to breathe underwater. Gradually adapting their physiology to the depths, this allows them to see vast distances across the ocean floor, withstanding enormous pressures from water while rendering them immune to the internal affects of swiftly changing pressures. Movements will displace far more water than usual, allowing the supported individual to swim with similar propulsion to a fish.
Rakkis' abilities cannot be borrowed with Ritual of Integration.
