Lady Zenovia [Approved, 2-5; High Spec Human] [Hazard Rank C]

» Name: Lady Zenovia » Titles: The Witch Who Seeks to Reside in Heaven on High » Age: At least 600 something years old » Gender: Female » Nicknames: Just Zen is fine. » Physicality: Old, frail, and hobbled over, Zen stands straight at 6'2, but because she's hunched over she looks more like 5'4 at the highest. Her skin is wrinkly, her hair is graying, and she looks about as grumpy as she feels. Her attire is robes and a witch hat, because she thinks it's funny to look like an old witch. The thematic amuses her, even if it's not really her thing in terms of style. She can't really rock what she used to, though, so this is her compromise. » Personality: Old, crotchety, and impatient. Zen no longer has the patience she used to. In her head, she's not that bad, but some might find her insufferable. Her only real goal is to fully unlock the limits of, as well as fully discover the nature of, the soul. At her heart, she is a good person. Helping other people brings her joy even if she doesn't know them. Everyone deserves at most two chances, but never a third. The value Zen personally gives life ranges drastically across a complex spectrum. Those values are judged based on inalienable virtues, the fragility of life, the identity of the soul, and her own personal merits. No one has any right to truly judge a person's worth, as everyone has an inherent right to life. That is, until they forfeit that right by committing atrocities against those who would simply live their lives. Evil is a quantifiable thing, but things are to be judged as such sparingly. Otherwise, she is painfully indifferent towards almost anyone and everyone until they give her a reason not to be. She is not so cold and lifeless that she is a robot, she has her self given directives and natural human desire after all, but she's tired and jaded and needs good reason to not be indifferent towards any particular thing.

» History Humanity has always had a need to understand. Everything that happens does so for a reason. Cause and effect is not just a concept, it is a force. From the day of her birth, Zenovia has had an inherent desire to understand the cause and effect of the world itself. What causes the plants to grow? What are they made out of and why do they work? How do they work? What about the rocks and the water? Or even fire and air? What about people themselves? And so Zenovia’s endless curiosity began just as she was born in the year 1834.

Her childhood was uneventful. Education was sparse where she lived and only a few children got to go to school. At first, she did not. Her family couldn’t afford the fees of even the cheapest of low class schools. Instead she lived in the slums of the early Massachusetts Bay Colony that first settled in America, though in which specific town she does not remember. To her, life was dull and work heavy. She didn’t mind the effort put into living, the need to work for your place to live, the need to eat and drink. It was difficult, and her family wasn’t very well off, but she made due. What she really wanted though was to know why. Not about why her family was poor, she already knew that, but why things worked the way they did. What made the ocean waves lap at the shore, and what made the dogs bark at nothing?

Education was a priority for her no matter what. Even if she had to sell her body, she would do anything it took to afford the proper schooling. And so that was what she did. Her parents didn’t find out about it until years later. They just presumed she had stolen the money but didn’t have the courage to punish her for it.

So she went to school, kept selling herself for money, and with surprising luck managed to lure in a rather wealthy man who was willing to pay for her expenses as long as he got to have her more than once. It was a foul deal, but she didn’t have much of a choice if it meant getting what she wanted. So Zen took the deal, although her name wasn’t Zen at the time. It was something else, something boring that she’s simply forgotten.

School became a full time thing for her out of sheer luck. It also just so happened that she was one of the few women of her age to actually get any form of further education. From simple elementary things to college education, Zenovia got what she wanted and was satisfied with the results. She aimed one day to study science, specifically in nature, but that goal would have to wait.

One day, she came home just as her house set on fire. There was no indication as to what had caused it, but there were strange black spots on the ground where the dirt and wood had decayed somehow. Not only that, but her mother was floating. Just as Zenovia called out to her mother, she watched the woman who had raised her get impaled on something she couldn’t see. This was, in fact, a Hollow attack, but Zen didn’t know that yet. Next, her side was slashed open without warning, leaving her to collapse and reel in pain on the floor. All seemed hopeless to her, and she didn’t even know what was going on. Not mere seconds passed and suddenly, the entire house was cleaved in half, there was a loud thud, and suddenly everything seemed to settle down. A shinigami had saved her, but she didn’t know that either.

Of course this opened up a whole new world of questions, but the evidence of her house being cleaved apart and her mother being impaled was overruled. The house she grew up in had burned down, her mother’s corpse burned under the fire, and the strange cleave in the building meant nothing since the building had just collapsed. No one would believe what she had seen, and her father, as well as the rest of the town, simply dismissed it as a freak accident.

By the time Zen recovered, she had barely come to terms with her mother’s death. But what had actually happened? This experience would bother her for a good few months afterwards. There was no explanation that she could find. No matter how many books she read, nothing gave her any satisfying conclusion or reason to these strange events. But that would start to change as she one day, while passing by her old burned down house, saw someone she didn’t recognize. Upon asking who they were, they simply looked at her dumbfounded and asked if she could really see them. Zen looked around and realized that she was getting strange looks from someone else passing by, and it was then that her curiosity peaked for the first time in her life.

A quick conversation, a description of the chain on the person’s chest, how they felt and what they were doing here all led her to believe she was talking to a ghost. She didn’t have any hard evidence, but this person had said they died right? Well they were either actually a ghost, or a lunatic. But that didn’t explain the unrealistic hole in their chest. And when Zen asked another passerby if they could see the man? Just more looks, a quick ‘no’, and they were on their way.

The rest of the conversation was a bit strange, but unimportant. Zen then continued to witness people like this on rare occasions. Each time she found a new spirit, she would try and talk to them. Zen wanted to understand them and what made them stick around after death. After all, if everyone who died stayed around then there would be plenty more spirits around, right? Yet she had only ever found a few. None of these spirits really gave her any explanations, and so she was left to try and understand the nature of spirits by herself.

This is where her curiosity of the soul first began.

A few more years passed and Zen had become a historian. That was the first place that she assumed she would find information on souls, in the annals of history. Surely there were records that someone left of their interactions with spirits? However, the truthfulness of the said records quickly came under suspicion as she took note of how they all seemed like tall tales. She simply dismissed them and kept looking for something, anything to satisfy her wonder.

When she was around 24 years old, Zen heard the clashing of metal and, being her curious self, went to investigate. She assumed she would simply find some men fighting over something indignant again, but instead she found a strange looking person in black and white garb. They were wielding a sword and was… fighting a monster?

In reality the sheer coincidence of this encounter is insane, but again, she does not realize that. It was the luck of being turned into a spiritual human, then this chance encounter with a Shinigami that truly set her on the path she continues to this day.

Zen waited for the Shinigami to finish their battle, watching from around the corner of a building the entire time. The moment they were done, she hurried over and started pestering the stranger with questions. Of course they were surprised that she was able to see them, but then the Shinigami quickly got annoyed with her incessant questions. They answered a few, wondered how she was able to see them-- which she responded to with an understandable shrug, as she didn’t even know herself-- and then sighed and reluctantly answered a few more before leaving. Just before they left through the strange eastern doors that led them somewhere else, Zen asked them what she should do if she gets attacked by one of those things, to which they tossed her the wakizashi they had at their side before leaving.

And sure enough, just a few days later she was attacked. This was the first Hollow out of many that would come at her, smelling that something unique was nearby. Just being a spiritual human meant she had a higher chance of being attacked like this. That person had told her as much. And if it weren’t for the wakizashi at her side, it would have come straight at her. Fortunately for Zen, it was entirely too cautious. Unfortunately for Zen, she didn’t know how to use a sword, and the musket she had bought didn’t do shit. If it weren’t for that same person having been ordered to keep an eye on her, she would have died. Just before she was struck down, they came in and saved her. As it turns out, they were told to watch her from afar. Spiritual humans were apparently exceedingly rare at the time, and supposedly she was worth looking at to see if she was anything particularly unique. Of course she wasn’t, though. At least not yet.

But now that they had seen proof that she was indeed a target for Hollows, the Shinigami decided to start training her how to actually use a sword out of pity. At some point they even tried teaching her Kido, but obviously that turned out poorly. Yet at the same time, it wasn’t totally fruitless. What was supposed to be a Byakurai, something you totally absolutely definitely teach someone just learning Kido, ended up being a blast of air? But what?

Further practice and study made the Shinigami realize this was something akin to spiritual alchemy, the ability to

So then with this information, as well as the books and data records that were smuggled to her, her life truly began.

The next few decades were a blur. Zen quickly realized she wasn’t visually aging whatsoever and she simply surmised that it was her spiritual powers that were keeping her like this. During these years, her life became a mess of research. It was her job as a historian and her hobby to try and learn about the spiritual parts of the world around her. Most of the world had some traces of Reishi in it, although not as much as anything her Shinigami friend had brought her. For some reason that stuff had a lot more Reishi in it than anything else in the Living World. A decade would pass, her research would lead her to have a solid understanding of Reishi and her ability to alter it would continue to grow.

Science started to become more and more advanced, some forfeiting their faith in pursuit of a more realistic understanding of the world around them. Zen was one of those people. With a more complete understanding of nature now at her disposal, Zen started to experiment with her powers and slowly began to further her potential. More and more scientific discoveries were made over the decades. Everything she did was in secret, but this was rather easy as her home was out of the way anyways. She was free to hoard books and documents to read at a later date all she pleased, too, so she began stockpiling and reading them all over the years.

The Hollows kept coming, of course, and even once her and her Shinigami friend parted ways for the last time, she was still able to defend herself. By this time she was about 70 years old. Yet despite her age, she still had some of her childlike curiosity. Could she open a portal to the Soul Society? Zen had read plenty of books about the methods of opening such a portal, but she had never tried to do so. Better late than never, right?

It went about as poorly as you could imagine. But what was supposed to be a portal ended up simply being a window. And what she saw was most certainly not the Soul Society that was described to her. No, what she saw was of blood and satanic symbolism. Demonic beings and creatures in robes chanting incantations while corpses were littered inside of bloody pentagrams adorning the floor of a candlelit room.

The window closed suddenly, and Zenovia was left shaken. It wasn’t until another decade later that she tried again to open a portal.

The 1900s hit and Zen was in a groove of human biology with a hint of medical science. Being a historian was a long forgotten job, so she had attended college for the purposes of studying the human body with a major in medicine. Zen was always hungry for more information, and given her decelerated aging, she had plenty of time to indulge in various studies of a much wider variety. Being specialized only really had its merits for long term goals, but Zen didn’t have any of those asides from trying to figure out why her body was the way it was. And maybe, in the process, she could learn a little about what a soul was, too?

One day, however, she heard an explosion around her house. Asides from how confused she was, Zen immediately went to look out her window and noticed a series of demons fighting. She had only ever read about them in the documents she was given from her old Shinigami friend. But upon taking a closer look, she recognized some as having similar robes to the people she saw in her fucked up portal from years ago, if only because of the very distinct design of their outfits. A circle of sprawling eyes, all colored a certain shade of purple.

Zen couldn’t believe what she was seeing. What were they even fighting over? Zen noticed they were getting closer… And then they were on top of her house, breaking through her walls, windows, and doors, and shoving her out of the way as they tore through her home. They were shouting in some strange language, one she didn’t understand, and their fighting also never really stopped. Swords plunged into bodies, leaving blood all over the place while the others continued to destroy her floorboards. This continued for a few minutes before one increasingly exhausted demon simply aimed their hand at her floor and blew a giant hole in it with a sudden blast of energy. All that was left was a crater, the rest of her home almost completely destroyed, and in the middle of said crater was a strange, leatherbound book. Upon realizing it was there, the remaining strugglers all scrambled for it, fighting their way through each other without any care for Zen. The moment one of them so much as touched it, a sudden explosion of spiritual energies burst forth and flowed through the book’s new holder. The remaining demons were annihilated in a burst of gory destruction, and then the remaining demon, wielder of this strange book, simply left.

Before Zen could even recover from the shock, a voice resounded from behind her wondering what was going on, to which Zen could only look over and blink in surprise. It was a demon woman, an old hag dressed like a witch who looked down at her with frustration and contempt. Zen recounted the events to which the woman sighed and began to explain what happened. This woman then introduced herself as Haggis, and the book in question was the Necronomicon.

The next however many years were a blur. Zen managed to beg Haggis to take her in as a student, to which the witch simply declined because she had no idea how to help Zen manage her powers. Enough incessant groveling eventually wore Haggis down, and Zen was taken in as her pupil. In addition to this, Zen was still furthering her education of medical science and human biology.

As it turns out, there was something called the Dark Wizard Wars which never truly ended. There were various demon factions vying for control over the two remaining copies of the Necronomicon. One of those was buried in the middle of nowhere on Earth, and eventually Zen’s house was built over it. There was a demon faction that eventually figured this out, but said faction had various spies throughout it that informed their respective factions. After that, the war reignited and found itself at Zen’s doorstep, quite literally, in an attempt to get to the tome before the other factions did.

Haggis was specifically looking for the two remaining copies in order to create more powerful artificial demons, to which Zen had no real right to deny. But still her curiosity got the better of her, and she had yet to be burned, so she continued to live as Haggis’ direct pupil for a while. This also meant she was allying herself with Haggis the Witch directly. If there was anyone who opposed Haggis, they also opposed Zenovia. That didn’t mean much at first, but Zen started to get more and more powerful under Haggis’ watchful eye. Constant use of her personal power for regular, almost daily combat, as well as mundane daily tasks, led her to become proficient in their usage. From creating white hot flames to amplifying her body, Zen’s abilities became second nature to her and only expanded more and more over the years.

Haggis also put her through regular training, all of which could kill Zen at any given moment. There was a wide variety of homunculi and artificial abominations that she pitted against Zen, all of whom were met with very short lives. Between this and real fights while the two fought in the Dark Wizard Wars, Zen very rapidly expanded upon her powers as a witch and became Haggis’ star pupil.

Centuries then passed, the 2100s hit, and the second copy of the Necronomicon was still yet to be found. Haggis herself was going through a lot as well, her various creations coming and going, and some of her most beloved ‘children’ died while she still lived. The most devastating of which was Eric Zarathos, the death of whom sent Haggis into a spiral of depression.

At this point Haggis and Zen were about as friendly as a human and a demon could be. Zen knew full well that Haggis valued her ‘children’, as she had always found complications when trying to have a proper biological one of her own. So as her creations started to perish one by one for varying reasons, she only became more and more depressed. This led to her lashing out at Zen and the two got into a fight. It was hard to really say there was any competition, as Haggis was one of the most powerful witches in hell. All Zen could do was hope to calm her friend and mentor down, which she did after almost an hour of enduring Haggis’ tantrum.

Their relationship resumed as normal, but from then on there were underlying somber tones in everything Haggis did.

The 2200s hit and Zen was known as a lot of things. A respectable witch in her own right, Haggis’ lapdog, and a human meddler in demon affairs. She was reviled, to say the least, but she could hold her own even among demons, and that was a feat in and of itself. If it weren’t for Haggis, that would not have been the case. The woman was responsible for most of Zen’s growth by this point, but that would eventually change.

Haggis caught wind of which demon faction it was that held the first Necronomicon, and finally located the second around the same time. It was then that she and Zen would go on a hunt together. As a pair, they were like a natural disaster wherever they went. Unending carnage was left in their wake as they sought out the last two remaining pieces of the Necronomicon. Of course, though, that didn’t happen without a fight.

At no point did Zen really question why Haggis wanted them, but she trusted her mentor fully at this point. It hadn’t occurred to her to doubt anything that Haggis did, as she was really just in it for the ride. As long as she could further understand the forces at play, the magic of demons, the composition of the soul, and read the vast expanses of knowledge that adorned Haggis’ infernal library, Zen didn’t really care.

2250 happened and they finally found the first Necronomicon. Zen was pleased and desired to peer within to witness its contents, but Haggis refused. She sealed the book away somewhere else and said that it was to be saved for a special occasion. Zen was disappointed at first, but then she stopped to think about what that could possibly mean. What special occasion? That question would sit with her for a year or so before she eventually forgot.

Zen went back to the human world, which she always kept in good touch with, and decided to settle down. She had no real reason to meddle in demon conflict much anymore, but she left a note with Haggis to let the witch know she would be available at a moment’s notice. From there, Zen began refreshing her knowledge of medical science, as well as began acquainting herself with technology and civilization. Reintegrating was a pain, but she founded a Doctor’s office in Karakura and began to use her powers for the sake of helping people. The money she got from this job was used to buy a house, and eventually she sold her business. From there, she dedicated her life to studying the soul and perfecting her alchemy-esque powers.

World War 4 hit and Zen didn’t participate whatsoever. She was content to sit on the sidelines and live her life. By this point she was a warlord amongst men after how many struggles she had within the secret Dark Wizard War. She was sitting in her living room, petting one of her cats, reading a piece of fiction for once when she heard a knock on her door. By this point she and Haggis hadn’t talked in almost a century, but she was elated to find out that the woman had come to visit. And on top of that, she knew where the second Necronomicon was.

Zen left her home to lay siege to the lesser demon faction where this tome was held, fully confident that between Haggis and her, nothing could go wrong. So of course that cockiness is what led to her getting cursed.

In the heat of battle, the two were separated. Zen was cut down within an inch of her life, and from there a group of demons placed her within a ritual circle that they immediately began casting. Her screams echoed through the open air as she was cursed over and over again, the demons spiteful towards her for stealing their copy of the Necronomicon from them. Haggis was nowhere to be seen, and to this day Zen doesn’t even know if the witch thinks she’s still alive.

The demons finished laying their curses upon her, but in a furied burst of power, Zen wiped them clean of existence, leaving nothing but ash even as she was coughing up liters of blood and fending off constant white outs. Between very rapidly dying and the ungodly pain, Zen cast spell after spell to keep herself alive. First she mended her stomach and stopped the bleeding while she struggled to get any form of air in her lungs. Then she began to write down the symbols for a spell that shifted the curse on both of her lungs to just one of them, and then repaired her destroyed one.

After that, she struggled to bring herself to her feet but her body felt like it was being weighed down by a few tons of raw steel. All of this occurred while one remaining demon was casting the final two ritual spells. The first of which was one last curse, a weak one, but one that would be most devastating as it brought incredible pain that fired through her synapses nonstop. Her screams continued to echo throughout the sky as the second spell was cast, and Zen was banished from the demon realm forever.

The events afterwards were a struggle just to stay alive. All of Zen’s research and culmination of knowledge was focused on repairing her body as much as possible while accommodating to her new life. Once she realized she was rapidly aging, she very swiftly staved off that curse with a spell that suppressed those particular demon energies. Then she removed several of the curses that weighed down on her, but by then her body was becoming older and more brittle, until it felt like there was still a ton of metal tied to her body and pulling her down to the earth.

The years went by, and to this day Zen is still cursed and alone. Without her mentor, she is forced to fend for herself. Her doctor’s business is still alive today and she uses that to fund her living expenses and research. With the years of knowledge given to her by Haggis, she can undo the demon energies with relative ease. That is, when she gains the power to do so. As it is, Zen is using regular instances of her power to alchemize different cures for each cures. Each one has a different solution, so she can’t remove them all at once. It also just so happens that some of these methods are rather expensive, and others are just purely time consuming. Given her weak body and suppressed spiritual energies, she can only do so much in one day without wholly risking her own health. Maybe one day she’ll get back to normal, or maybe she’ll perish like a dog… Who knows?



» The Penultima: The culmination of centuries of research. It is a sword that is simply made of steel and reinforced with Zenovia’s own soul. She doesn’t use it much anymore but at the very least it has some passive effects that are useful just by having it around.

Reishi Easing: The easiest way to describe this is as the ability to uncluster or optimize the flow of Reishi once it is being controlled. It passively alters the flow once it starts getting altered from whatever state it is currently in and thins it out into multiple smaller streams that are easier to collect in bulk than one big one. This synergizes well with her ability to alchemize Reishi, allowing her to use her powers faster and with greater potency because of how much easier it is to disassemble and reassemble Reishi and Reiryoku. This effect extends to a quarter mile radius. It is also a double edged sword, in that anything that would benefit from faster, more efficient Reishi does so. It’s a passive area effect, not a personal effect specifically for Zen.

Steel-and-Reishi-Cutting Blade: The Penultima is sharp enough to cut through solid steel as long as Zen herself has the strength to make that happen. This blade also has the ability to cleave clean through Reishi constructs of similar strength. Any Reishi that the blade passes through parts for this sword as it is being separated by the molecules via unnatural means rather than because of the sharpness of the blade. Physical objects are what the blade part is for.

» Book of Shadows: A Book of Shadows is a personalized grimoire that pagan witches fill with any relevant spells, knowledge, and rituals they need to keep on hand. In Zenovia’s case, she fills her book with spiritually infused words, incantations, and spells that, with her personal human power, she can cast as long as she has her Book of Shadows in hand.

» The Witch’s Hut: AKA her very modest house. It is out of the way in the middle of the state of Massachusetts not for any other reason than that is her home state. In it is a series of alchemical tools that, with her ability to alter Reishi and Reiryoku, she uses to craft objects of power both for herself and other people. Here she can alchemically separate and infuse pieces of her trained spiritual energies into objects to give them new properties based on the engravings and writing she puts on them. After that, all it takes is the person involved to fuel it with their spiritual energies, and Zen’s infused energies will pass on the information and directions to the wielder’s reiryoku to perform the intended function. Zen has specialized ritualistic tools that she needs to do this though, and it also takes a few days.

» The Witch's Cauldron: A large metal pot that she puts over a basic open flame. The cauldron is covered in various Latin phrases that form various enchantments, all of which form the actual function of the cauldron when powered with reiryoku. It is the tool that allows Zen to perform any complex forms of alchemy. All she has to do is jot down a few lines of text on a piece of paper and drop it in and the cauldron will perform the rest. It then takes 15 minutes for it to alchemize whatever it is that Zen wants, and she is able to make basically anything from it as long as she can feasibly do so. Equivalent exchange plays a vital part in limiting what she can actually do, as she needs equal parts Reishi or physical elements to create the thing she wants to create.

If she doesn't have a spell to perform any form of immediate alchemy, it should be assumed she needs this cauldron to perform said alchemy.



» All Brittle, No Brawn: Her body used to be ungodly durable and resilient to extreme amounts of stress, but that was in her younger form when she was in peak shape with several permanent spells placed on herself. Now even the slightest bit of a breeze poses a threat to her. Her body has been made more durable and her bones have turned fragile. If she falls over, whatever she lands on, and probably more, will quite literally break. A single, well placed punch from the fittest of humans will instantly kill her. Her frail body also comes with a lack of stamina, as Zen cannot move more than 200 feet in a single day without nearly collapsing, which by proxy will then shatter some part of her. Whatever hits the floor the hardest, probably her legs too. Of course she can heal it off, but it takes a while which then takes even more energy and just leaves her mind numbingly sore.

In addition to this her stomach has been so borderline irreparably damaged that she can only consume pureed food. Her left lung is permanently crushed and destroyed due to a curse, and the only reason she hasn’t removed it is because she’s shifted the full brunt of the curse to that one lung so her other one can remain functional. There are 6 separate curses all weighing down on her like a literal weight, and with her strength she is able to withstand them. However, standing up straight is a danger, as if she becomes unbalanced or weakened there is a chance the weight will become unbearable and she will just fold in half and die. And as if that wasn’t enough, Zen is constantly in agonizing pain just because. There’s a specific curse on her body that makes it feel like she’s swimming through sharpened, molten rocks. Just out of spite. It keeps her awake at night until she quite literally cannot stay awake any longer, at which point she simply stumbles somewhere to sit down and pass out. She can’t lay, because she wouldn’t be able to get back up without help, of which she has none. Her existence is misery, but still she goes on with the hopes that one day she can return to a normal life. Even if those hopes seem less and less feasible the more the days go by.

» God-Defying Determination: And yet despite all of this, Zenovia continues onwards. Her body may be fragile, but her mind is absolute. She did not come all this way, live through hell and back, and does not endure the amount of pain and suffering she does on a daily basis just to give in. She will live out of the most pure spitefulness towards those who have wronged her in the past, and those who yet wrong her to this day. Zen will not give those people the satisfaction of outliving her. No, she’ll not even give them the satisfaction of knowing she’s not long for the mortal realm should they die before her. There is not a thing in this world she will openly allow to kill her. Whether that’s out of courage or the most soul-consuming spite that lives remains yet to be seen.

» Mystical Amazon Destructionist: Zen has always used her power liberally since she acquired it. Her ability to manipulate spiritual energy remains on par with high tiered Quincies, while her understanding and usage is diverse and unique. When she uses her powers in a new way, it’s always significantly different than before. And because of how diverse her power is, limited only by the fact she needs to continually train a specific new Spell for weeks if not months before she can apply it in any meaningful sense, there is very little she actually cannot do. From conjuring fire, to buffing her physique by constant use of reiryoku, to manually healing wounds, to decomposing matter and turning it into something else. Her power can do almost anything, but because doing any one thing requires so much repeated training until her energy itself understands it as ‘muscle memory’, she can’t just pull things out of her ass. Yet at the same time Zen is so familiar with her power and the methods with which it works that she can do anything with a bit of problem solving, a sufficient supply of energy, and the necessary practice. Using powers she’s already trained to use is like second nature to her as well, and every spell is quick and natural to her once it’s ingrained in her soul’s muscle memory.

She’s so used to casting spells without much preparation that it ties in partially with her Martial Skill, at least in the idea of casting spells between sword swipes. Zen used to be an excellent swordswoman, but picking up her sword since she was cursed has become basically impossible, let alone using it in combat in any meaningful way. Back in the day, however, she used to shoot fire between flashy sword swipes and impeccable footwork.



» The Nature of the Soul and Spiritual Control: Zenovia’s innate human power can only be described as spiritual alchemy. Technically Zen is able to alter Reishi on a molecular level, but doing so on such a minute level is beyond impossible by herself. However, her spiritual energies have a function similar to muscle memory. By ‘training’ it to react in certain ways in response to certain gestures, symbols, and objects, she can tell it to do more complex actions similar to how witches in folklore perform complex spells. However, this has a few requirements. The body can only perform so many functions so tying spells to certain body motions, especially ones that take a while to perform like hand signs, is something she doesn’t do much. She has one spell that’s tied to bodily motion. The rest require symbols, more specifically Magic Circles, which Zen has taught her energies to recognize, read, and then act upon. These Magic Circles can be written on any object, but they’re mostly inside of her Book of Shadows, which is why it’s so important. After that, she needs to spend several weeks, to several months attempting to cast this spell over and over until her energies not only learn to do it, but on a meaningful level as well. This time investment is the biggest limiter to her powers.

» Spells: Zen has a slew of spells that don’t need incantations. The only real necessity for these spells is her Book of Shadows, which, by the way, is completely required to be within five feet of her for these spells. They are as follows.

Everyday Telekinesis: AKA the ability to move objects no bigger than a basketball at 15 miles per hour or less. This spell literally exists to help Zen in her everyday life. In actuality it's less telekinesis and more along the lines of using formulas to calculate trajectory and speed to move an object in any given direction. Requires steady concentration and a flow of energy to perform. Telekinesis on any higher level than this is out of the question, as it’s too taxing. This also doesn’t work on anything with any significant spiritual presence, such as humans.

Repulse: This is equivalent to Hadō #1, with the exact same power and function. It is a burst of kinetic energy that is dispelled from any point on Zen’s body. She can use this once per post.

Quadruple Layered Barrier: Her first meaningful combat spell is a series of four spinning barriers layered on top of each other. They are perfectly flat and cover a ten square meter area. Each barrier can block a Kido up to level 5 and reduce the power of spiritual attacks by about as much before breaking. A Kido up to level 20 would break through all four barriers but dissipate on the last one. Anything stronger will break through, though its power will be significantly diminished. There was a point where Zen could manifest eight barriers, but that is no longer the case. Four is her limit for now. She can do this once every other post, twice a day.

Mending Touch: By channeling her reiryoku through a spell in her book, then through her other hand, Zen can cast a spell that repairs a large variety of wounds. What this looks like though is the wound will catch on fire with a clear, slightly effervescent fire. That is literally just for cosmetic effect. She actually has a few dozen spells in her Book of Shadows dedicated to different wounds, but they all look the same. Simple wounds like cuts, bruises, lacerations, and light stab wounds take a single full post to heal. Severed limbs can be reattached with two posts, but Zen cannot regrow anyone else’s or her own limbs. If the limb is too mangled, she cannot do anything. The cut must be clean. Damaged, but not fully destroyed, organs take three posts, and the person in question has to live during that whole duration. She can repair any organ that isn’t the brain in that time. She could heal brain damage, but that would take several days, not in-combat posts. It’s too complex of an organ.

Disassemble: Something that is slow and meticulous but technically automated by the instructions written on the Magic Circle that is written in a chapter of her Book of Shadows. It takes a post or two, but she can separate the physical atoms of an object, both physical and spiritual, down to its base elements. Of course this can be physically toxic and fairly dangerous, but Zen does this in her lab at home. This is the basis of her more permanent alchemy, not the spiritual alchemy she performs to create things like fire or perform healing or any of her other spells. All that is purely spiritual.

Dimensional Closet: Or just her personal pocket dimension in which no living things can reside. It is a space she personally created and can pull things from, but its space is limited to 20 cubic meters. This is where she stores The Penultima and several copies of her Book of Shadows. She can also store other inanimate, non living objects here as well, she just doesn’t do that very often. Moving something to and from this dimension is as simple as saying the phrase, “Come hither.”, or activating a magic circle that she keeps beneath her robes. Once either of these conditions are met, another magic circle appears and from it, the object will partially stick out for her to grab and pull the rest of the way through.

» Born to Fly Free, Cursed to Drown in Pain: After meddling with the demon world for too long, Zen eventually became infamous in lesser parts of the demon realm and pissed off the wrong people. Those same people cursed her twenty times over with the intent of killing her in as brutally painful a way as possible. Of course, being the spiteful bitch she was at the time, Zen lives to this day. Seven of those curses have been broken, and the other thirteen are on their way out. The remaining curses do as follows:

1-6 Are all body destroying curses that quite literally weigh down on her being. She cannot stand straight without nearly snapping her own spine underneath the pressure. Walking is a pain, but she manages from time to time. Only when she needs to, and no more than 200 feet a day before the strain becomes unbearable.
7 Makes her age rapidly, though she has slowed this process heavily. It used to be a year a day, now it’s a year every week.
8 Brings her extreme pain constantly. To Zen, it feels like her organs are constantly being grinded against molten razors.
9 Instantly collapsed both her lungs once she received it, but she managed to restore one and then shift the curse to her destroyed one which only stays inside of her body to act as a target so her other lung can at least still breathe some air without strain. Her cursed lung Instead just feels like it is being crushed constantly.
10 Has nearly destroyed her stomach and intestinal tract, but Zen was able to perform surgery on herself fast enough to stop herself from dying. Now she can only eat pureed food and in incredibly small quantities. The rest of the nutrients she needs to survive are absorbed via a spell she created.
11 Completely disables the various enchantments she has placed on her body.
12 Makes her bones incredibly brittle, and even the slightest of falls or the lightest of bumps can cause serious damage to her. She has to be extremely careful when doing anything or she will outright die. With this and the first six curses, she is nearly in a constant state of having some part of her body broken.
13 Cuts her overall power in half for as long as she has this curse.

Even after a hundred years of withstanding these curses, she still lives. To this day, she seeks to break them like she did the rest of her curses, but progress is incredibly slow. One day, she’ll get rid of them so she can settle down in her home, pet her cats, and live quietly for the rest of her days.

» Impassioned Conflagration ~ Combusting Vigor: Zen can create fire, but only one kind. It is a white hot 2700 degree fahrenheit (1480~ Celsius) flame that can be conjured with a snap of her fingers. This is her only spell that does not need her Book of Shadows, and the gesture and phrase used are a snap of the fingers, and/or (but not explicitly always both) the phrase “Singe”. These flames actually cannot be controlled, and instead Zen applies other formulas to change her reiryoku from spiritual energy to kinetic energy in order to throw fire in various shapes and directions at her enemies. The speed is consistently 50 feet per second and the magic circle she uses for this is tattooed on the back of both of her hands. Anything normally combustible is likely to get lit on fire, depending on whether or not it can withstand the 2700F heat, that is. Anything past 150 feet from where Zen is standing will be snuffed out. It can also be extinguished like any normal fire, by depriving it of oxygen, throwing large amounts of water on it, etc. The only main difference is that as long as Zen is in range, the flames will last forever unless otherwise put out. They use every last bit of matter, spiritual or otherwise, as fuel until all is reduced to ash.

(This next part is inactive because of the curse disabling her body enchantments)

The human body naturally produces heat as it exercises, but because of the numerous enchantments that boost Zen’s physical prowess, the amount of energy she produces also creates an extreme amount of heat in addition. More than her body could possibly sweat out. So in order to combat this heat, Zen has a small, nameless spell that vents the heat from her body by simply making it steam. Yet even that isn’t always enough to reduce her body heat fast enough. Sometimes, in times of prolonged physical exertion, her body will catch fire. The same white fire that she conjures with a snap of her finger.



General Skills

• Durability: Untrained
  
• General Speed: Untrained
  
• Strength: Untrained
  
• Martial Skill: Advanced
  

Will Skills

• Willpower/Determination: Elite
  
• Mental Deduction: Advanced
  
• Focus: Beginner
  

Racial Skills

• Power Control: Elite
  
• Physical Augmentation: Beginner
  
• Spiritual Adaptation: Beginner
  
• Mediumship: Advanced