Kali
The Borrower
"Like wearing someone else's skin in winter. Warm, and wrong."
she shares Smurjan's (K-IV SHAPED). When she steps out alone, the board flickers and shows nothing, as if it can't decide whose number she is.
Look
- Build & height: 1.72 m, wiry and quick, all elbows and grin.
- Face: sharp-chinned, ash-grey skin like Smurjan's but warmer, red markings like war paint across the cheekbones, a grin "all edges".
- Hair: a long red braid that whips when she turns. (Her twin Bali, the fourth piece, wears the same braid in black.)
- Eyes: smoky dark. When she borrows a sin, her eyes flash that sin's colour: silver-rose for Rougeina's Swap, gold for Kompis's Lust, grey for Lärka's Hush.
- Body: one arm. Her left forearm, below the elbow, was burned away by Saltbrand's salt-fire (Saga II ch. 31) and never grew back, which was the first thing in her life that didn't. The stump is wrapped in red cloth.
- Clothing: a sleeveless tunic of hunger-red over grey wraps, a belt of knotted cord, barefoot like Smurjan.
- Weapon: a sickle-sword of black glass (she had two before ch. 31).
- Silhouette: a one-armed woman bursting up out of a shadow mid-sentence.
- Voice: she never stops talking. Fast, sharp, funny, rude. Every balloon is jagged and over-full. She calls Trollmage "mine to annoy".
Power
Kali borrows another fighter's sin, and the power that comes with it, for sixty seconds. She looks at the power in use (a Swap's phantom trail, a heartbeat's pulse) and breathes it in.
- Taken vs lent: when she takes a sin, its owner goes dark for that minute (Rougeina's mark dimmed, ch. 9). When the owner lends it freely, nobody goes dark: the power is shared. She learned this from Lärka (ch. 53), the first person who ever lent her anything.
- What she can't borrow: Vigolas ("There's nothing to borrow. What ARE you?!", ch. 39). Mingus. Anything with no sin. Flisa (ch. 270): she asks to borrow the splinter-stepping to go in and out of the Root-Eater, breathes in, and nothing comes: "…Nothing to borrow. What ARE you?" / "WOOD." (A Scarwood is wood, not a soul the Order assigned.) Then she looks up at the amber book in Gnag's oak chest: "He's got one, though."
- Subtick is useless to her: "Your trick needs a dog." (ch. 14)
HADOM, the heartbeat
- Tempo: 210: Smurjan's K-IV body, Kali's speed.
- Heartbeat technique: THE BORROWED BEAT. When she borrows a sin she also borrows its owner's home tempo. With Rougeina's Swap she is as fast as Astralis allows; with Lärka's Hush she is as still as silence. The only fighter who changes speed by changing whose power she wears.
- Burn cost: after sixty seconds the borrowed power leaves all at once. She drops like a puppet with cut strings, and for a moment she can't remember which skin is hers.
Techniques
| Technique | What it does | First shown |
|---|---|---|
| Borrow | 60 seconds of someone else's sin | Ch. 9 |
| Two Swappers | Borrows the Swap and duels Rougeina at her own game, the first time Rougeina ever lost at it | Ch. 9 |
| Swap-on-Swap | Swaps with the very thing an enemy is holding (Marka's anchor), and stands on their shoulders laughing | Ch. 9 |
| Shadow-Lash | Bursts out of Smurjan's shadow mid-fight with the sickle, from behind | Ch. 39 |
| Lent Silence | With Lärka's lent Hush: two cones, back to back. The Nightmares go blind | Ch. 53 |
| Guard the Meat | Stays awake while the others sleep (she never sleeps) and holds a deck alone | Ch. 49–53 |
| Borrowed Hunger | Takes Gluttony X off the Root-Eater: his book goes dark for sixty seconds (a countdown in the panel corners), and his hunger rides her | Ch. 271 |
The price
- Sixty seconds, then the drop.
- One arm since ch. 31.
- Salt-fire stays dead on her.
- She can only borrow what she can see in use.
- Pride: asking is harder for her than fighting. (She did it once. "I'm asking.")
Personality
- Smurjan: her host, brother and jailer. She loves him and argues with him constantly.
- Bakasura: she pats his teeth.
- Rougeina: sister-rival.
- Trollmage: "Lazy one's mine to annoy."
- Lärka: the quiet one who lent her silence. Kali talked at her for a full minute afterwards without noticing Lärka couldn't hear yet.
- Gnag : the first sin she ever borrowed that tried to bite the world tree through her mouth (ch. 271). During her minute, Bakasura bit his oak half and spat it out: "…Tastes like a ship."
- Key lines: "It'll grow back. It always grows back." (it didn't) · "I always take. I've never once asked. I'm asking." · "Sweet dreams, morons." · "What ARE you?" (to Flisa, ch. 270) · "Ugh. Pine." (ch. 271)