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[Ariana Lenoir]

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Ariana stood motionless as the tailor knelt in front of her and focused on the hem of the dress. He carefully inserted pins, making minor alterations and checking the final fit of the custom dress. The black silk hugged her chest and waist tastefully before flowing over her hips like an ebony waterfall as it draped down to her ankles. The silk has been carefully harvested from a wild colony of dread spiders and meticulously dyed in numerous washes to give it a rich dark color. She pivoted her ankle slightly and arched her back to examine the back of the dress in the vanity's mirror. The backside of the dress was open with the silk pooling at the lower curve of her back and then cascading over the rise of her rear end. The infamous tattoo of the large dragon that she had sought so desperately to hide for years would be fully revealed to everyone. Her face showed no emotion, although her eyes looked distant as she felt herself examining the reflection of the tattoo.

The tattoo was of a large serpentine dragon with deep blue scales. The scales were tipped in various shades of light blue and teal. The entire tattoo was outlined in black and appeared to have been done by an artist of exceptional skill. It covered her entire back, even beyond the black silk of her dress and downward to the under curve of her rear. The dragon had silver claws made to look as if they were digging into her skin. At various points there are tiny diamonds embedded partially under her skin as if they had been surgically placed with the faceted part visible. In place of the dragon's eyes were flawless star sapphires. These gemstones alone might be worth millions if they were sold on the open market.

Despite the beauty of the design, she could still see the lines and ridges as the tapered towards the small of her back despite how masterfully they had been worked into the mural of color that splashed across her skin. The artists had done an excellent job of hiding the scars, but she always knew where each damned one was. Some of the scars were covered in a translucent sheen of skin and others caused her skin to curve slightly in raised portions. The scar tissue was hidden so well in the design that the effects they gave would appear to the casual glance of being intended by an artist of superior expertise. The artist had painfully embedded gems into key points in her skin to help camouflage the damage even more by drawing the eyes away to other points. A truly observant individual, someone who knew what they were looking for or someone who had extensive time to study the design and touch it might be able to see beyond the mask of artwork to the horror it covered.

She was a living work of art. However, it wasn't the art she wished to expose to critique, but the horror underneath. For tonight, she was a proverbial lamb among predators. She was human. She needed to not only reveal to them the torture that she had endured, but flaunt it.

She had to put doubt in their minds as to her weakness. She had to make them question whether she was more than she seemed.

The mistakes most folks make is they are too obvious in their shows of power. They display it flamboyantly with harsh words or a heavy hand, but the true art of power is to never be questioned. The true art is letting their own self doubt frenzy them to the conclusion that she could kick their ass. She was in a world of predators, where physical violence was often what kept the followers in repose. In that arena, she truthfully had no defense. She knew in a physical confrontation, she would stand little chance of coming out the victor, let alone still living. She had survived in such worlds before and it was always her demeanor and intelligence that had saved her from having her throat slit. Ronin and Ian. She had driven each of those elder kindred into a near frenzy in confrontations, but her mind had always managed to find the right thing to say to keep them from killing her. Could she manage to do it again? How many lives had she used up in such matters? Would all her intelligence and experience save her tonight or would she be dead?

The risks were higher than ever for her and for her family's future. Her father used to tell her that everything had a price and sometimes the richest rewards required the biggest risks. She hoped that her experience dealt her a good hand tonight.

Playing poker for high stakes could be bad enough.

Playing poker with an ante of your very life against a lich lord was a nightmare.
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